sign in sign up
<<
Home , Governor of Virginia, Joel Broyhill, Linwood Holton, Mills Godwin

Vol. 75 No. 9 November, 1999

The NEWS LETTER

Republicans and Race in Virginia

By

Author’s note: The 1999 Virginia elections, reason and will find a way to again serve all of which occurred since I wrote this article, added the people. It will be interesting to discover what Republican control of the legislature to Repub- approach the Republican-controlled legislature lican control of all of the statewide elected offices. will take. I was pleased to see true two-party competition Less encouraging are the reports coming in action in those legislative races. When from Congress: rejection of the nuclear test-ban Democrats talked of transportation problems, the treaty, refusal to control handguns, refusal to announced a transportation plan of his reform political campaign finance, refusal to own. He responded with a plan to fund public confirm the appointment of an African-American education facilities when the Democrats pointed from Missouri to a federal judgeship, indis- to a deficiency there. He met publicly with offi- criminate budget cuts to fund a nominal tax cials of the Virginia State Conference of the reduction—in , we Republicans seem NAACP—the first time a Republican Governor to continue on a suicidal path. had a public meeting with these officials since Governor Holton I attended the State Conference in 1972—and hen I returned from the Pacific in promised attention and financial resources to 1946 and saw that Bill Tuck had been elected —anoth- demonstrated needs of the African-American W er in an uninterrupted line of Democrats that community. stretched back into the 19th Century—with just 8 These developments enhance my optimism percent of the registered vote, I told myself: “I’m that the Republican Party one day will revert to going to break this up!”

WELDON COOPER CENTER FOR PUBLIC SERVICE The Virginia Newsletter

But it wasn’t easy. “Old Guard” Repub- the General Assembly in which the give and take licans didn’t want us—a new breed of between those two elements produced better Republicans, eager to challenge the prevailing government for Virginia. political wisdom—to run candidates for Roanoke The greatest source of satisfaction and City Council. But we did, and Johnny Waldrop pride for me from that four-year experience was was elected in 1952. Or for Congress—but we in the field of race relations. It is well-known that did, and Richard Poff, Joel Broyhill and William in my Inaugural address I announced to the Wampler were all elected that same year. world that the “era of defiance is behind us.” I The Republican Old Guard feared that asked that we “make today’s Virginia a model of competition at those lower levels would anger race relations based . . . on an aristocracy of abil- Byrd Organization leaders who would otherwise ity, regardless of race, color or creed.” help elect a Republican President—the major The obsession was not new to me. I still source of patronage plums for the Republican remember being offended when Carrie Porter, Old Guard. my baby sitter who was just a few years older The “Senior Senator” himself—Harry than I, had to sit in the gallery when she took me Byrd—jumped in to save the Democratic nomi- to the movies because she was black. It still hurts nee, Tom Stanley, when Republican Ted Dalton for me to remember my older friend and mentor was on the verge of becoming Governor in 1953. on many activities, John Cloud, when he began “” to desegregation kept the his comments on some mean and arrogant treat- Byrd Organization alive a few extra years and ment of him by one of our mutual friends, with created an atmosphere that defeated Republican the words “now I know I’m a ______,” and candidates for the General Assembly, such as he used the “N” word, which offended me then Frank Angell and me, in 1957. I ran for and is unacceptable to most people today. Governor in 1965 on effort alone—we spent I told General Eisenhower, in a letter writ- about $60,000 against a “shoo-in” Democrat but ten on Dec. 15, 1965, analyzing the guber- got 40 percent of the two-party vote—and began natorial election (he had come into Virginia to the four-year campaign that produced victory in campaign for us that year), that I believed that a 1969. Money for Republican campaigns was two-party system was coming to Virginia in hard to pry loose from Organization loyalists which the Republican Party would “continue to (who had most of it), and it took real courage for develop as a middle-of-the-road party” ...and someone like Lawrence Lewis, who furnished that “we will not, and I regard this as fortunate, needed funds at a critical juncture in the 1969 be the type of Republican Party which bases its campaign, to break old ties and create the “New appeal to Southerners on some sort of segrega- Republicans.” tionist position; that appeal, in my judgment, is We overcame all of those odds through all creating for us more problems that it solves.” of those years and a winning statewide Repub- I also made a speech to the Sixth District lican party was born. With my election in 1969 Republican Convention in early 1956, in which I as the first Republican ever elected in a statewide pointed to the opportunity which was available race in Virginia, one-party domination was gone. to the Republican Party to take the lead in reach- In the Holton administration, we had the ing a moderate solution to the problems which largest capital outlay, mostly for projects in were certain to arise from the decision in Brown higher education, transportation, and mental v. Board of Education. The very suggestion of hygiene, in the history of the Commonwealth. any compliance with that decision, however, sent We had the resources from ’s sales both my good friend Richard Poff (then in his tax, from ’s revenue-sharing second term in Congress) and the editors of the program, and from my own income and gasoline Lynchburg newspapers into orbit. Congressman tax increases, to do the needed job. Poff signed the “,” which The record will reveal many other accom- condemned and defied the U. S. Supreme Court. plishments that took place during those four He likely would have been defeated if he had years and in subsequent years as a result of seeds not signed that document, but I expect he has planted during my term. regretted that signature through the years. But there are a couple that I especially want Congressman Brooks Hays of Arkansas did to emphasize. refuse to sign the Southern Manifesto, and he In the first place, I understood the relation- was defeated for re-election. But I expect he slept ship in our constitutional system between the well most nights. (He told me as much when he legislative branch of the government and the visited me in the Governor’s office during my 2 executive. I welcomed and enjoyed the sessions of term.) Lyndon Johnson was another who refused Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service • November 1999 to sign that document, and he made out very well from within and without Virginia, expressed in subsequent years. approval of my actions. National newspapers I more directly and publicly confronted noted the absence of violent clashes in Virginia Massive Resistance at the end of my unsuccessful which did occur in other states. campaign for the House of Delegates from There were other accomplishments in this Roanoke in 1957. I scraped together enough field during the Holton Administration. Ernie money to run a fulll-page ad in the Roanoke Fears became the first black director of Selective Times, on the Sunday before the election, in Service in the nation. He thoroughly integrated which the words “KEEP OUR SCHOOLS the Selective Service system in Virginia at a time OPEN” in two-inch red letters dominated the ad. when two-thirds of the kids we were drafting These earlier positions helped me to obtain were black. Bill Robertson was the first African- the endorsement in 1969 of the very influential American professional to serve in the Governor’s Richmond Crusade for Voters. The statements office in Virginia, and his four statewide thus became very valuable to me in the long run, Governor’s Conferences on Equal Employment but at the time the temperature was pretty high. Opportunities (all of which drew standing- The great opportunity, of course, came in room-only audiences comprised of officers of September of 1970, just eight months after I Virginia employers) gave impetus, I am sure, to became governor. After discussion in depth with- the placement of black white-collar workers in in the family, my wife Jinks took our children many of the financial institutions and other Anne and Woody to the Mosby Middle School offices in Virginia. on opening day. That was the school to which I must relate an anecdote about race which those young people would have been assigned occurred at a seafood festival in Urbanna several under the city’s busing plan if we had been sub- years after the end of my term. An old black man, ject to the court’s jurisdiction. (Because we lived pretty short and fairly feeble, caught my atten- on state property, we were not under the city’s tion and signaled for me to come to hear what he assignment plan.) Similarly, I escorted Tayloe to had to say. I leaned over to hear his almost whis- the Kennedy High School, and the New York pered words: “First Governor of all the people.” Times photograph of the two of us, together with You can hardly get any higher than that! the well-known fact that Jinks was doing the It is still possible that the “Republican same thing at Mosby with the other children, party will develop as a middle of the road party” demonstrated that our actions would be consis- and that we will abandon the segregationist tent with the words of my Inaugural address. appeal to Southerners which has been so evident Gov. , in a letter to me since I and the other “New South” years later, described the newspaper picture of the completed our terms. But Republicans, in and two of us approaching Kennedy as portraying “. . . out of the U. S. Congress, are espousing such the most significant happening in this extreme measures as to be destructive of our Commonwealth during my lifetime;” and the credibility: vigilante mentality about handguns impact of that photograph was nationally recog- and high-tech automatic assault weapons; nized by its appearance in World Book insistence on federal interference with private Encyclopedia for years afterward. decision-making currently guaranteed to each It was significant because it demonstrated individual by the Constitution of the United that Virginia was indeed a law-and-order state. States; actions taken and advocated which cause Virginia would not defy the Supreme Court of minorities to cast 90 percent of their votes for the ; Virginia’s governor would not our opponents. In the words of a long-time stand in the doors of the school houses (a la chairman of one of the rural counties of Virginia Governors Wallace, Faubus, Barnett and who had turned Republican after a long time Maddox) defending the proposition that certain career as a Democrat, “Guv’ner,” he said to me, citizens, because of their race, would be denied “dem Republicans has dun gone too far!” equal protection of the law. It was significant It is my considered judgment, too, based on because Virginia led the parade; it was a year later the progress I have seen in Virginia since World that Southerners elected a covey of “New South” War II, that the leadership of my party today is, governors: Jimmy Carter, Dale Bumpers, Reuben at both federal and state levels, overly obsessed to Askew, , and, later Lawton Chiles and cut taxes. Virginia is not a high tax state. The Bob Graham. Significant also was the fact that benefits which tax increases have brought to very few Virginians put pen to paper to object to Virginia since 1965 are enormous! Our citizens my performance on that opening school day. By have recognized and appreciate these benefits. far the great majority of those who wrote, both Mills Godwin isn’t remembered for passing the 3 The Virginia Newsletter

sales tax; he is remembered—almost revered— number of independent-minded elected Repub- for creating the community college system and licans whose attention is on solving problems: enhancing creation of our world class system of transportation needs, public school facilities, reli- higher education, neither of which could have able and safe child care for working single moms been done without that tax. Jerry Baliles isn’t who are trying to earn enough to pay the rent, remembered (by anyone except the editors of make the car payment, and have enough left to Richmond newspapers) for increasing taxes, but put food on the table. They recognize the need rather for meeting some of the transportation for safeguards against child abuse, in homes and needs which have helped create the jobs which especially in state-supported correctional institu- have resulted from our vibrant high-tech econo- tions. They seek ways to get at the roots of crime. my. And I’ll bet not 3 of 10 people could tell you My hope is that the Grand Old Party I what tax I increased, but they all appreciate the worked long and hard to make a winner will swimable rivers throughout Virginia which my 1 thereby become a permanent component of a percent increase in the state income tax paid for. vibrant two-party competition which will best Our citizens want the best and, when they guarantee the highest standard of living in the understand the opportunity, they’re willing to pay best possible environment for not just some but for it! Taxes are the price we pay for civilization, all Virginians. and Virginia’s modern tax increases have created Just as kids are asked today to remember a civilization that all Virginians are properly the 3Rs to pass their SOLs, I ask that my admin- proud of. istration be remembered for 3Rs of its own: We Let me conclude this retrospective with a REASONed with legislators to determine needs; telling anecdote. Soon after I was elected in with public support, we allocated RESOURCES 1969, Helen Guerrant, an acquaintance in to meet those needs, and we moved Virginia a Roanoke, sent me a small oil painting which she long way toward being a model of RACE had done in memory of her husband Bob. Bob, RELATIONS based on an aristocracy of ability, she said, was a “died-in-the-wool Democrat,” but regardless of race, color or creed. before his death had expressed support for me as the Republican candidate for Governor. The pic- ture was of a duckling recently emerged from its ABOUT THE AUTHOR shell. She expressed the hope that it would be a Mr. Holton was Governor of Virginia from 1970 pleasant symbol for me of a young and fresh start until 1974, and currently practices law for the in Virginia’s Republican era. Richmond-based firm of Mezzullo & McCandlish. It could be that it is now a dying duck. But This newsletter is an adaptation of a speech to a con- I am optimistic that the Republican Party, one ference sponsored by the Center for Governmental day, will revert to reason and will find a way again Studies and the Weldon Cooper Center for Public to serve “all of the people.” There is a growing Service at the University of Virginia.

VOL. 75 NO. 9 NOVEMBER 1999 The Virginia NEWS LETTER Editor: William H. Wood ENTERED AS Graphic Design: Susan Wormington PERIODICAL The Virginia NEWS LETTER (ISSN 0042- 0271) is published ten times a year by the Charlottesville, Virginia Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, University of Virginia, P.O. Box 400206, Charlottesville, Virginia 22904-4206; (804)982-5704, TDD: (804) 982-HEAR. Copyright ©1999 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia. The views expressed are those of the authors and not the official position of the Cooper Center or the University. To get on The Virginia NEWS LETTER mailing list or to request reprints or repro- duction permission, write or call the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. Periodical postage paid at Charlottesville, Virginia. Postmaster: Send address changes to the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, P.O. Box 400206, Charlottesville, Virginia 22904-4206.

6.2M 11/99