The Virginia Economic Development Partnership is running a television ad around the country to market Virginia’s business climate.

Although this is not the first time the partnership has produced a television ad, it’s the first time the partnership has received financial support from businesses to produce one, according to Christie Miller of the VEDP. Dominion Resources Inc., Norfolk Southern Corp. and MeadWestvaco Corp. together paid for $450,000 of the ad, which cost $850,000 to create.

The advertisement, which can be seen on the partnership’s homepage, includes comments by CEOs of all three companies and a statement from Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, a key driver of the creation of the advertisement.

Richmond-based Barber Martin Advertising produced the advertisement, which ran nationwide on CNBC, The Golf Channel, Forbes.com and during NBC’s Meet the Press. The advertisement has been running since March and will continue through the end of May.

Global ozone change. New avenues for drug development. Even a good fish tale.
Those are some of the topics being tackled by Virginia’s top scientists and industrialists. They were toasted last night during a gala at Richmond’s Science Museum. About 250 guests came to honor the state’s 2008 award winners.

Yet, it wasn’t a night for weighty speeches. The evening’s best line came from Jack A. Musick, winner of Virginia’s Life Achievement in Science. He told the audience: “My wife says she can’t believe that I get paid to go fishing.” Musick, a professor of marine science at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William and Mary, has won international acclaim as an expert in the ecology and conservation of sharks and sea turtles.

Virginia’s Outstanding Scientist Awards went to James M. Russell III of Hampton University and Sarah Spiegel, chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Medicine.  Russell’s research is being used to understand changes in global ozone while Spiegel stood out for work on a signaling molecule that influences whether a cell lives or dies. 

In business, Virginia’s Life Achievement in Industry went to Charles H. Foster Jr. of Richmond, chairman emeritus of LandAmerica Financial Group Inc.  He is credited for leading a dramatic turnaround for Lawyers Title in the early 1990s and building it into the Fortune 500 that LandAmerica is today. Following a spin off from Universal Corp., a successful public offering on the New York Stock Exchange and corporate acquisitions, Foster transformed Lawyers Title into one of the largest title insurers in the U.S., with LandAmerica earning annual revenue of more than $3.5 billion. 

Virginia’s Outstanding Industrialist is Randal J. Kirk of Pulaski County. Kirk is senior managing director and CEO of Third Security LLC, an investment management firm he founded in 1999. One of his start ups, New River Pharmaceuticals — a company that was on the path to coming out with a new drug for attention deficit disorder — sold for $2 billion last year. The deal made Kirk a billionaire.  He serves as rector of the Board of Visitors for Radford University, where he earned his undergraduate degree.

The U.S. markets may be in one of the worst financial crisis since the World War era, but the current situation is nothing like the Great Depression, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Thursday.

“We will not experience anything remotely like that,” Bernanke told a sold-out audience at a World Affairs Council of Greater Richmond luncheon at the University of Richmond.

During the 1930s the Fed “took a passive approach,” Bernanke said. “We now know the lessons of that, which is to not allow the financial system to collapse.”

The Federal Reserve certainly has taken a different approach in the current turmoil, cutting the federal funds rate faster than at any time in the last two decades. The Federal Reserve dropped the federal loan rate between banks to 2.25 percent, down from 5.25 percent in September.

And the Fed could receive unprecedented power under a plan the Bush administration proposed last week.

The Fed would oversee the entire makeup of the U.S. financial system, including supervising commercial banks, investment banks, insurance companies and hedge funds.

On Thursday, Bernanke addressed more immediate solutions than the ones proposed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Bernanke said policymakers and regulators must begin working now to prevent another financial crisis. “We do not have the luxury of waiting for markets to stabilize,” he said.

Bernanke suggested that federal and state regulators should create stricter regulations on mortgage lenders and that states should adhere to a uniform licensing program.

He also suggested that increasing transparency, improving risk management, and better coordination of regulators is necessary to stabilize markets.

Prince William County supervisors have shown just how serious they are about combating illegal immigration.

Facing a $51 million shortfall in its budget, supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to spend almost $800,000 from the county’s reserve fund to staff and equip a six-member police team the county formed to apprehend and process illegal immigrants. That leaves them with $3,000 in the fund, which typically is allotted in the budget to make up for shortfalls or match grants.

The Washington Post covered the meeting, reporting that the use of the reserve fund to start a new program is unusual for the county.

Illegal immigration has become a hot-button issue in Virginia in the past year, where localities are looking for ways to restrict county services to illegal immigrants and state legislators have considered more than 100 bills on the issue.

Prince William has been on top of the issue, creating a $14 million, five-year plan for a police task force to check the immigration status of residents suspected of breaking the law. The county also restricts the county services it legally can from illegal residents.

Virginians aren’t used to this much attention.

We tend to be ignored in the presidential elections.

In the general election, we’ve been seen as reliably red. In the presidential primaries, Virginians usually vote long after the nominee has been decided.

That’s all changed this year.

With no clear Democratic front-runner after Super Tuesday, Virginia has grasped the attention of campaigns.

Democratic nominees Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are both planning to speak at the state party’s annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner on Saturday evening.

It also means candidates — both Democratic and Republican — are finally spending money in Virginia to put ads on TV.

Virginia can bask in this attention for only five more days. We’ll never be an Iowa or New Hampshire.

But fear not. With recent Democratic gubernatorial and senatorial wins, the parties may see a need to campaign here throughout the general election.

Maybe we won’t feel so ignored anymore.