Virginia Politics

Circular Firing Squad, Voter Suppression Edition

~ R. Stanton Scott ~ Leave a comment

Here’s a good rundown of the internal Republican Party of Virginia argument over how to nominate statewide candidates. Writing at the Bull Elephant, Doc Troxel lays it out clearly. The State Central Committee finally settled on what they call an “unassembled convention” with what amounts to 37 mini-conventions at Party-run polling locations across the Commonwealth. You can also read Lynn Mitchell’s more succinct account at Bearing Drift.

I can’t improve on Troxell’s explanation – he was in these meetings – so I won’t try. My crack at a TL;dr is that because this system limits the number of votes from each local Unit (even if it does not limit the number of delegates from each local Unit) it creates incentives for candidates to capture local unit delegations, as they would in a more…conventional…convention. Sorry.

As I read it, the minority faction fought for a primary because they believe their preferred candidate, Amanda Chase, can win the nomination with a 35% plurality in a large field. They’re less confident in her ability to win a majority at a convention with rank-choice voting. Of course, they frame the problem as “establishment RINOs” controlling the convention results to make sure Chase has no chance, but it’s not clear how including the broader GOP electorate across Virginia helps the most extremist potential nominee.

In any event, I followed the saga as it unfolded and I think it’s important to note that through the entire debate the core question focused on how to best keep opponents from voting. We see no willingness among any of these factions to form a coalition in support of a set of common goals based on commonly accepted social agreements. At every turn each one sought to expand access to their members and deny it to others.

When someone tells you who they are believe them – and the GOP is telling us that conservatives see a no path to power in building coalitions. Easier to simply shut opponents out of the electoral process altogether, and Republicans across the country have moved to do this to Democrats.

In Virginia they turn this weapon on each other.

Circular Firing Squad?

~ R. Stanton Scott ~ Leave a comment
Screen shot from Facebook video of the February 23 Virginia Republican Party State Central Committee meeting.

The inner workings and various factions that make up Virginia’s Republican Party fascinate me, and I’ve been attending Tea Party meetings and following the debate between these factions pretty much since I moved to Hanover County in 2008. The short non-academic version is that a very active and motivated base has worked to take over the Virginia GOP for more than a decade. This base very much wants to enforce a kind of ideological purity that focuses far more on cultural issues than policy.

This intra-Party insurgency initially manifested itself in the capture of local Virginia GOP units by Tea Party activists after Barack Obama won the Presidency. Ideologically, this group is to the right of what I call “Chamber of Commerce” Republicans (defined as conservatives who want small government but want it to actually work). Think of this as the “conservatives lose elections because they’re not conservative enough” crowd.

They successfully won the 7th District Congressional nomination for Dave Brat over House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in 2014 because the very conservative Cantor was not conservative enough to suit them – these activists ousted a very powerful Congressman for ideological reasons. Brat went on to win the seat and served two terms before Abigail Spanberger won the seat in 2018. She held it in 2020, but narrowly.

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Thoughts on Elections During National Emergencies

~ R. Stanton Scott ~ Leave a comment
Voting in Person, 2019
Photo Credit: R. Stanton Scott

An authoritarian figure who has joked about being President for life runs the Federal Government during a pandemic that could literally kill millions of Americans and disrupt society for months. States are postponing primary elections and struggling to figure out how voters can cast ballots while keeping social distancing. Understandably, some people worry that Donald Trump might take advantage of the crisis to stay in power.

Lots of journalists have written about this, including Evan Halper in the LA Times, Blake Rutherford for The Hill, and Chris Cillizza for CNN. The general assessment boils down to “Trump may be desperate with the economy in the tank but has no power to postpone elections. His term ends on 20 January 2021 even if he could, and the Presidential Succession Act kicks in if he isn’t reelected or replaced through a Constitutional election before that time.” 

These discussions focus narrowly on two questions: whether States could physically hold elections during a pandemic using modern systems and what would happen if they couldn’t. Most agree that elections can take place if state legislatures hurry up and figure out how to use expanded absentee voting, other voting by mail systems, or even the internet. They also think that if for some reason elections cannot be held, someone other than Trump would take power based on existing statute.

What none of these articles mention is the Electoral College and the role of state legislatures in choosing these Electors. This is the group that actually elects the President, as we found out the hard way in 2016. These days voters choose these Electors by casting votes at polling stations or by mail because state legislatures want it that way – this is not a Constitutional requirement. This means that elections for President and Vice President can take place as long as state legislatures can meet and choose Electors before Election Day.  

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Sanctuary Cities and Nullification Theory

~ R. Stanton Scott ~ Leave a comment

So conservatives who complain the loudest about “sanctuary cities” when it comes to immigration seem to be lining up to support “Second Amendment Sanctuaries” now that Democrats control the General Assembly. Yesterday I saw this first-hand at the Hanover and Westmoreland County Board of Supervisors meetings. Both Boards passed resolutions objecting to gun control laws that has not yet passed the General Assembly on the assumption they will infringe on Second Amendment rights.

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Ralph Northam Should Resign – Updated

~ R. Stanton Scott ~ Leave a comment

UPDATE: Governor Northam held a press conference this afternoon and walked back his admission last night that he was in the picture:

“I believe now and then that I am not either of the people in this photo. This was not me in that picture. That was not Ralph Northam.”

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/02/politics/northam-racist-yearbook-photo/index.html

Northam went on to say that he gave photos to the yearbook staff, did not participate in assembling his page, did not purchase a copy, and hadn’t seen it in thirty years. Publication blindsided him.

Maybe the yearbook staff placed the photo in question on Northam’s page by mistake and he genuinely did not know about this until yesterday. Which of course begs the question: why admit to being one of the people in the picture unless you remember wearing blackface or a KKK costume but cannot remember a specific? Someone out there might have photos of me that I’d prefer never became public, but I know one thing with 100% certainty: no picture of me in blackface or a KKK outfit exists. I’ve never worn either. Ever.

Northam’s admission that he wore blackface for a dancing contest, which he won with a Michael Jackson impersonation, doesn’t help. Dressing up like Jackson was common enough at the time – Jackson was on the Jackson’s Victory Tour and at the height of his fame. But he could have performed without the shoe polish makeup, and his claim that he “only used a little because it’s hard to get off” means he was familiar with the blackface concept (and likely knows photos of this exist that he wanted to get out in front of).

Perhaps we shouldn’t hold Governor Northam responsible for the photo appearing on his page – this kind of mistake happens. And I very much hope that Governor Northam was not in the photo. But I’m not sure it matters any more, even if this turns out to be a right wing hit job using a doctored photo or yearbook. That he couldn’t vehemently deny this based on his own memory says quite a lot. Northam’s denial this afternoon muddies the waters. But resignation remains the right course.

Original Post:

Learning that Governor Ralph Northam apparently attended a party in either blackface or a KKK costume during his time in medical school flabbergasted and disappointed me.   

Like everyone, Northam is at least in part a product of the time and place of his upbringing, and his Eastern Shore youth and Virginia Military Institute college career apparently included problematic attitudes on race.  Whatever his thinking on racial equality today, the Governor clearly had no problem joking about terrorizing or making fun of people of color in 1984.  I would hope that Northam’s time in the US Army and as a pediatrician lead to some personal introspection and change.  

But if he has truly adjusted his attitudes about human beings not like him he could have owned his past and used it as a way to help Virginia confront its own problematic history of slavery and resistance to desegregation.  He could have turned it into a teaching point about ways to move America to racial equality.  Instead, Ralph Northam either hoped no one would discover this disgusting photograph or forgot it altogether – which is problematic in itself.  

It matters because racial discrimination is America’s original sin.  Colonization of North America by Western Europeans depended on the labor of chattel slaves, most of them Africans.  America’s founding generations constructed our version of Capitalism on slavery and included clauses in our founding governing document specifically designed to protect slavery in some states.  The Electoral College, equal state representation in the Senate, and the Second Amendment all have roots in the need to protect slavery in order to secure ratification of the Constitution by slave states.  

We still pay for this sin – or at least people of color still pay.  Even after the end of de jure slavery, de facto slavery in the form of Jim Crow laws, redlining and housing discrimination, voter suppression, and depression of education opportunities through segregated schools has kept families of color from building wealth and participating fully in American society.  Efforts by white elites to socialize poor whites to fear poor blacks after the Civil War shows its effects through American attitudes about social safety nets and immigration still today.  I don’t mean to suggest that the United States has not been a force for liberty and justice in the world.  But America becomes more exceptional as such a force when we live by example for others, and we cannot do this without confronting this very real and very problematic history.

None of us has a perfect past, free of troubling actions, decisions, or attitudes.  We all change as we grow, and I seriously doubt that Ralph Northam still holds views on race that would allow him to attend a party dressed in blackface or a KKK costume.  He almost certainly has changed his attitudes about racial equality.  As he became a prominent pediatrician and then politician, he had a unique opportunity to help Virginians have a discussion about its racial history and how people like him could overcome their past and help us move forward together.  This may not have won him the Governorship, but it would have helped make Virginia a better place to live.  Sadly, he forgot his past or chose to bury it instead.

This morning, Governor Northam will hold a press conference and will likely resign. He should.