By DJ Rippert
Almost heaven. West Virginia state legislator Gary Howell is spearheading an effort to allow Virginia jurisdictions frustrated by Richmond a chance to join West Virginia. While this might seem like gimmickry, Howell claims that “43 out of 100 West Virginia house members are sponsoring a resolution that would let West Virginia accept some of the largely rural Virginia counties unhappy with how things are being run in Richmond.” More specifically, West Virginia State Senator Charles Trump (no relation, I don’t think) has invited Frederick County, Va., to cross over to the Mountain State. An editorial in the Roanoke Times says Sen. Trump is on “firm legal ground.” A good summary of the matter written by Hoppy Kercheval, dean of West Virginia talk radio, can be found here.
Plantation elite. Before West Virginia’s offer is pushed aside as nonsense, it makes sense to examine some of the history behind such a proposition. After all, as Kercheval points out, western Virginians getting fed up with Richmond-based rule is not exactly a new or unique thought. In my mind, Virginia has long been under the yoke of a minority of Virginians from the plantations of central and southeast Virginia. This “plantation elite” are led by families who claim to be descended from Pocahontas and who further self-define themselves as “the first families of Virginia.”
They came to wealth on the whip-scarred backs of their African slaves. Yet their condescension of those they saw as inferiors went beyond the unspeakable atrocities they visited on their slaves. They used land ownership requirements for voting to disenfranchise white residents of western Virginia. They regulated against railroads that didn’t terminate in Virginia ports thereby economically stranding communities like Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia) which depended on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. The plantation elite led the secession of Virginia in an immoral war they could not possibly have won. They lost the western third of the state when the Virginians living there decided they could take Richmond’s abuse no more. After the catastrophic Civil War the plantation elite enacted Jim Crow laws, built a machine around a racist named Harry Byrd, implemented Massive Resistance and fought the integration of Virginia schools. When Arlington County tried to integrate its schools in 1956 the General Assembly passed legislation stripping Arlington of its elected school board. It wasn’t enough for the plantation elite to be racist in their own regions they had to export their illegal racism to everywhere else in Virginia. Against this backdrop the possibility of areas within Virginia trying to escape the tyranny of Richmond (one way or another) may not be as far fetched as it seems.
The Virginia Way. The condescension and arrogance of the Richmond-based plantation elite remains in place today. It has nothing to do with Democrat vs Republican, north vs. south or liberal vs conservative. It is the self-proclaimed elite vs the rest of us. In his excellent book, The Virginia Way, Democracy and Power After 2016, Jeff Thomas analyzes both the history and modern aspects of our toxic state government. Our own Peter Galuszka provided a positive review of the book as part of its “liner notes.”
Thomas writes, “There had been a long campaign to convince voters and scholars of the Virginia Way myth of clean government in which examples of corruption were usually dismissed as deviations from a glorious history stretching back to Lee, Jefferson and Jamestown. The “deviations” were actually the main story. Virginia politicians ignored plain facts and evident consequences in service of a Virginia Way ideology that just so happened to benefit themselves.”
The fact that Jeff Thomas published his book in 2019 is evidence that many in the Commonwealth will no longer stand idly by while the plantation elite economically pillages Virginia. The real test of our new Democratic majority will be whether they are willing to take on the plantation elite and destroy “The Virginia Way” once and for all. The overture from West Virginia may be a cosmetic act but it touches on a real issue — for good reason, many Virginians no long trust or respect our state government in Richmond.
The Virginia Way today. Some plantation elite defenders will try to convince people that the bad aspects of the Virginia Way are a thing of the past. Not true. In 1924 Virginia passed a eugenics law legalizing the sterilization of committed people to protect “the purity of the American race”. Ancient history? The law that allowed forced sterilizations of the “feebleminded” stayed on Virginia books until 1979. On a more recent note, last September, Virginia was ranked the worst partisan gerrymandered state by the USC Schwarzenegger Institute. The plantation elite as represented by our General Assembly continue to defile even the most basic definition of democracy in Virginia through extreme gerrymandering. Today’s gerrymandering was a bipartisan effort where the House of Delegates was gerrymandered by Republicans and the State Senate was gerrymandered by Democrats. Both parties are guilty of anti-democratic disenfranchisement of their constituents. Will the new Democratic majority chart a new course in 2021?
Dillon’s Rule as a tool of coercion. If the pigs of Richmond simply fed at their local troughs and left the rest of the state alone it might be tolerable. But that doesn’t happen. Virginia has a strict implementation of Dillon’s Rule. This restricts regional and local governance in favor of statewide control. The strong implementation of Dillon’s Rule has long been used as a stick by the plantation elite to beat their fellow Virginians into line. When the City Council of Charlottesville wanted to remove Confederate statues from parks in that city it could not do so. Why not? Our arrogant General Assembly decided that localities cannot remove war statues from their own parks regardless of what the local citizens think. If a local school district wants to start classes before Labor Day they have to beg the nanny state in Richmond for permission to open their own schools on their own schedule. The list goes on and on. This has to end. Why shouldn’t the citizens of rural western counties be able to have different gun laws than the citizens of urban and suburban Virginia? Barring that, why shouldn’t they be able to join West Virginia if that state better represents their needs?
For years many of Virginia’s conservative authors and commentators sang the praises of Virginia’s version of Dillon’s Rule. But now the worm has turned. Gun control laws supported by majorities of urban and suburban voters are being foisted on rural and small town Virginia. Up spring second amendment sanctuary localities who suddenly don’t like Dillon’s Rule and refuse to enforce Richmond’s laws. Extreme options like non-enforcement are being discussed. How long can the tyranny of a gerrymandered state legislature with structurally non-competitive elections last? We Virginians don’t live in a democracy we live in a kleptocracy.
Rip’s Wrap. Tyranny always eventually fails. Virginia’s modern plantation elite have used disenfranchisement, extreme levels of gerrymandering, off-year elections, unlimited contributions, a lack of term limits and a strict implementation of Dillon’s Rule to retain a despotic hold over Virginians. Yet their grip is loosening. Grassroots resistance seems to have thwarted the unholy alliance between the General Assembly and Dominion over the various pipeline projects In a rebuke of state law the Commonwealth’s Attorney in Fairfax County will no longer prosecute simple marijuana possession cases. Localities across the state are refusing to enforce new gun control laws. East coast fisheries regulators have effectively ended our General Assembly’s corrupt management of menhaden stock. West Virginia may be set to offer a rural haven to disaffected localities in the western part of the state. I hope some of our counties proceed with this initiative – whether it has a chance of success or not. Send a signal to the new Democratic majority in Richmond. The time has come for the Virginia Way to end. The time has come for the Virginia General Assembly to realize that its days of thwarting the will of the people has expired.
