What Kaine and his successor, McDonnell, have in common is they are Virginia’s first two Roman Catholic governors, and both are mindful of the church’s opposition to capital punishment. Kaine allowed executions to proceed, as has McDonnell, despite faith-based teachings to the contrary. “I think they’re both right. Justice is a fundamental tenet of our society, but so is forgiveness and rehabilitation.”

This is not in your grandfather’s Republican playbook: Forgiveness toward felons.

But Gov. Bob McDonnell is on pace to restore the civil rights of more people who’ve done their time than any governor in modern Virginia history.

Republicans would scald a Democrat who did that as being soft on crime. But for McDonnell, a former Virginia attorney general elected as law-and-order candidate, it moderates the hang-’em-high image that endeared him to supporters and appalled his opponents.

At 27 months into the single, non-renewable four-year term Virginia allows him, McDonnell has restored rights for 2,888 felons. Democrat Tim Kaine restored 4,402 felons’ rights in four years, more than 1,500 of them in his final year in office.

“I believe in second chances. I believe when you’ve paid your debt to society, our goal should be to generate productive citizens who don’t come back to prison,” McDonnell said in an Associated Press interview Friday. “We’ve all made mistakes in our lives.”

His motive, in part, derives from his days as an attorney in private practice in Virginia Beach.

In Virginia, as in most states, a felony conviction brings with it the lifetime loss of some basic rights, among them the right to vote, to hold public office, to sit on juries, become a notary public and to own firearms. A time-killing bottleneck forms when thousands of requests await one man’s attention.

“Before I became attorney general, I represented a couple of people trying to get their rights back and it was the most agonizing process,” McDonnell said.

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