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What
follows is not a political story you have yet read
in the "mainstream media." But I ask you:
Where did you first read the column predicting that
Gov. Mark R. Warner and the state senate Democrats
would reverse course and kill repeal of the Estate
Tax... that Warner would increase the compensation
given to innocent prisoner Marvin Anderson... that
Warner would have to get his Virginia Tech board
appointees to help reverse the Kilgore-inspired
ruling on affirmative action or face a Democratic
firestorm... and that the General Assembly was so
bloated that guys like Sen. Walter Stosch, R-Henrico,
who have been leading the expansion of state-paid
legislative largesse would have to call a halt
[Senators have now agreed to a $3,000 cut this
year]?
So,
let's keep going rolling like the First Marine
Division: You are now gonna read it first here, the
story of the Bush/Warner deal on racial
discrimination, a potentially huge political story
that has Jim Dyke, the former Education Secretary
under Governor L. Douglas Wilder, saying publicly
what yours truly started saying last week in
my column.
Jim has been talked about as a possible candidate
for Lieutenant Governor. But I don't read his
speaking out against the Bush/Warner deal -- as to
why it is best seen as a Bush/Warner deal, not a
Bush/Gilmore deal, read further -- as part of any
trial balloon for a 2005 political run. Rather, I
believe he has finally broken his public silence for
one simple reason: He is baffled how advisors to a
Democratic governor could have talked Warner into
taking a deal that had originally been negotiated by
former Governor Jim Gilmore to pander to a important
and well-financed wing in the Republican Party.
I understand Jim's feelings. As an African-American,
Jim knows how hard folks have had to work to begin
to level the playing field. He has heard Gov. Warner
tell people how he ran Wilder's campaign and helped
draft his strategy for overcoming the race card
being played by the Republican opposition.
So
naturally, Jim never thought a transparent political
deal on racial discrimination would be approved by
the Warner education people.
But
it has.
So, over the weekend, Jim said that "[s]ome of
us absolutely disagree" with the Accord
reducing the power of the state and the federal
government to remedy and prevent racial
discrimination in the Commonwealth as it applies to
our educational system.
As readers of my
column last week know, I tried to warn Secretary
of Education Belle Wheelan to expect the Accord to
lead to a big controversy.
It didn't require a crystal ball to realize
Robb/Baliles/Wilder officials like Dyke would have
trouble understanding how anyone could agree to a
deal based on a "finding" by the Bush
administration that Virginia's higher educational
system "had a clean bill of health on the issue
of equal opportunity," as one key architect put
it.
Why? Because they know it isn't true. Just recently,
in commenting on a recent state government report,
the Daily Press wrote that "[n]o
progress has been made since 1992 in the percentage
of students at four-year colleges who are
black."
This leads to the self-evident question: If state
and federal officials saw the Robb/Baliles/Wilder
policies as necessary to address the lingering
effects of past discrimination, and no real progress
has been made in the last 10 years, then, logically,
how can state and federal officials now say these
policies have done their job and are no longer
needed?
Answer: They can't, as the state's Council on Higher
Education and just about every other knowledgeable
education advisor would agree. Former governors
Robb, Baliles and Wilder know the
"finding" wasn't true. So did members of
the 2001 Democratic ticket. And so do the political
advisors to Gov. Warner.
We have made a lot of progress, and this is not the
1960s or 1970s. But a "clean bill of health on
the issue of equal opportunity?" I wish it were
true. But it isn't by any responsible standard.
More importantly, the Governor's political advisors
know a bigger secret: This whole deal, this
Bush/Warner Accord is rooted not in education policy
but rather in pure, partisan, Republican politics.
The truth is that modern-day Republicans have never
wanted to give the federal government the power to
insist that Virginia take certain actions to combat
discrimination.
With the election of President Bush, Gilmore saw his
chance to do what every Republican Governor has
wanted to do: get the federal government out of the
business of telling Virginia what it had to do to
correct past discrimination. This federal power over
the state has been a bone in the throat of powerful
elements in the Republican Party.
By the stroke of a pen, the Accord takes away not
just some of the power of the state of Virginia, but
more politically important, it takes away certain of
the legal authority of the federal government
to make Virginia combat discrimination under any
future Governor.
Professors Sabato and Holsworth call it the battle
between "state's rights" vs. federal
rights in Southern politics. That is useful but
wholly satisfactory shorthand.
Nonetheless, it does help make the basic political
point.
As the Richmond Times Dispatch said, the
Gilmore Administration believed the deal cooked up
with the President meant "the state will have
no further desegregation obligations to the federal
government" once all the deal provisions are
implemented.
Thus, this Accord was not about what was best for
Virginians in need of protecting its citizens from
discrimination: it was a political decision based on
ideology, much as these same forces had never wanted
the Voting Rights Act to provide remedies for proven
racial discrimination.
So Mr. Dyke is saying in his own way: Why is the
Warner administration risking its credibility for
what was never anything more than a Bush/Gilmore
political deal to score points with a narrow element
in the GOP?
The reasons for now calling it a Bush/Warner deal,
and not a Gilmore/Bush are deal, are based on the
slowly emerging facts in the matter. The 14-page
Accord document was signed during the waning days of
Mr. Gilmore's Administration as he was leaving to
become President Bush's new chairman of the
Republican National Committee.
Normally, such an important decision on this type of
issue would be left by a lame-duck governor for the
newly elected governor. But this was a Republican
political deal, and they naturally figured a
Democrat, particularly one elected with 93 percent
of the African-American vote, would not sign it.
But would he be willing to take the political heat
for nixing the deal once in office, as it would
surely lead to an effort in the General Assembly to
have it reinstated?
This was a shrewd analysis on their part. The truth
is the Gilmore/Bush deal is very popular in the
whole of the Virginia electorate. Anything that can
be painted as "keeping Uncle Sugar out of our
state's business" has always been popular in
the Old Dominion. So Warner surely knew that getting
into a big fight with Gilmore/Bush on their
political deal would be a loser with the general
public. Truth is, the Dyke position is the
politically unpopular one, and any honest
commentator has to point that out.
Clearly, Warner had to choose sides. The Accord
itself was binding on Virginia only if the governor
and the General Assembly fulfilled what lawyers call
"conditions subsequent" to a contract,
meaning that the Accord was premised on Virginia
taking certain actions starting in 2002 and ending
in 2005, the last year of Warner's term.
THIS IS THE KEY: The Accord, once you read the
document and work through it, has the state and
federal government agreeing to give up legal
authority to protect Virginians against
discrimination IN EXCHANGE for Virginia agreeing to
provide money to Norfolk State University and
Virginia State University and take other actions the
state had previously said it would do, as one
member of the General Assembly confirmed to me.
Page 14 of the Accord says this:
"Implementation by Virginia of the commitments
undertaken herein... will fully discharge Virginia's
obligation to eliminate any vestiges of past
discrimination in its system of education."
On page 8 of the Accord, in the Section entitled
Virginia's Commitments, the document reads:
"Subsequent to the execution of the Accord by
the parties, the Governor will advocate the
legislature's adoption of a budget in conformance
with this Accord."
These paragraphs, while perhaps Greek to you as a
non-lawyer, explain why Gov. Warner wanted the
General Assembly to pass a resolution endorsing the
Accord, which it did in February, 2002.
In effect, he was getting the legislators to provide
the political cover for the Bush/Warner deal.
Why?
Simple: The money was due NSU and VSU long before
there was any Bush/Warner or Bush/Gilmore accord as
it was owed to remedy prior discrimination whether
there was an accord or not.
The state owed the money: it didn't need any
transparent political deal to make it happen.
But by making it part of the Accord, the politics
gave the Republicans the ability to claim a big win,
gave the Legislative Black Caucus the ability to
claim a big win, thereby cutting off any criticism
of Warner agreeing to the deal.
It might have been a perfect political play but for
the decision by Attorney General Kilgore to use the
Accord as the basis for his telling Virginia Tech to
scrap all its racial preferences.
This brought the Accord to the attention of guys
like me, who had never read it before. Once I read
it and wrote about it, then the Jim Dykes of the
world realized people would want to know what he had
been advising Democrats to do as he once served on
the state commission that monitored the state's
efforts to satisfy federal demands regarding the
effects of past discrimination.
Governors Robb, Baliles and Wilder never would have
signed this accord, much less implemented it. I know
of no Educational Secretary in any Democratic
Administration that would have signed nor
implemented Accord. The Clinton Administration would
not agree to it.
In his immortal protest song against racial
discrimination, Bob Dylan, then billed as the
"Rebel With a Cause" by Columbia Records
wrote these words:
"How many times can a man turn his head and
pretend that he just doesn't see?"
As a commentator, I have to call it like I see it.
The Accord is pure politics, and the decision to go
with it, as opposed to scrapping it, was pure
politics.
The Accord was approved without a dissenting
Democratic or Republican vote in 2002. The measure
approving the Accord was House Joint Resolution 169.
The sponsor was Del. Jerrauld Jones, now a major
official in the Warner Administration.
He was the Chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus.
Mr. Gilmore has said he was very proud of having
been able to get the next Governor to implement the
deal to free Virginia from the yoke of federal
intrusion.
I rest my case.
--
April 7, 2003
(c) Copyright. All rights reserved. Paul Goldman.
2003.
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