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A guide to political news, commentary and resources in Southwest Virginia

Preston Bryant is a Republican who has represented Lynchburg and part of Amherst County in the Virginia House of Delgates since 1996.

The Unpredictable Doug Wilder

By PRESTON BRYANT
MARCH 8, 2004

So much, perhaps too much, is made of so-called divisions within the Republican Party of Virginia over the state’s tax-and-spend policies. There’s no disputing that such is fair game – after all, the GOP is Virginia’s ruling party and significant differences within it can have ramifications that simply can’t be ignored.

But attention drawn to Republicans’ internecine scrimmages shouldn’t mean ignoring those within the state’s Democratic Party. Those also can provide for some interesting commentary, especially because the one most often at the center of Democrats’ in-house food fights is the colorful Doug Wilder.

Most of our recent chief executives have taken to heart the notion that there is, as the saying goes, “no higher honor” than serving as governor of the great Commonwealth of Virginia. Once they’ve left office, they’ve simply returned, quietly, to the private sector, letting their time in that high office be the crowning achievement in their careers. Most have ventured from the shadows only rarely to comment on matters of public policy. That’s the way is should be.

Wilder, however, has not gone quietly into the night. While it’s true that he sought no office beyond Virginia’s governorship – well, save that odd, ill-fated run for the ’92 Democratic presidential nomination – he’s done his darnedest to stay in the headlines. This has usually been to Republicans’ delight because, most of the time, Wilder’s antics involve dinging on the head his fellow partisans.

We can never forget Wilder’s never-ending feud with Chuck Robb. It lasted for a decade and was responsible for Wilder’s tepid endorsements of Robb in his ’94 and 2000 reelection campaigns for the U.S. Senate. Then there was his refusal to endorse Don Beyer’s ’97 gubernatorial run, which translated into a perceived endorsement of Jim Gilmore, a Republican, who overwhelmingly won that race. And even when his good friend, Mark Warner, was running for governor in 2001, Wilder withheld endorsing his fellow Democrat for an unusually long time.

So it wasn’t really shocking when, a couple of weeks ago, Wilder joined U.S. Sen. George Allen, a Republican, at a state capitol news conference to decry the tax increases proposed by Warner, a Democrat, and the Republican-controlled state Senate, and to call for a statewide referendum on the tax increases. It was a bipartisan half-hour that was destined to make the front pages.

Likewise for Allen, it was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up. Warner, you see, lurks large on the political horizon as a possible opponent to Allen for his Senate seat. Why wouldn’t Allen jump at the chance to stand alongside a Democratic former governor to bash Warner for proposing a billion dollars in new levies in a state that generally eschews higher taxes? And to have Wilder say, amazingly, that had he known of Warner’s tax-hike tendencies – especially after Warner vowed repeatedly during his campaign not to raise taxes – then he’d never have endorsed him, well, that was just a delicious bonus. You can bet the video footage of that news conference is safely tucked away in Allen’s campaign vault for possible future use.

Wilder’s Democratic Party eye-poking goes back decades, all the way back to the 1980s when, as a state senator, he had to maneuver around old line party bosses to get the nomination for lieutenant governor and four years later for governor. Many, ahem, “mainstream” Democrats feared what a black man on the ticket would do to the chances of other, ahem, “mainstream” Democrats who also were seeking office at those times. Wilder did, of course, win both of those statewide races in ’85 and ’89, respectively.

So Wilder has never forgotten the way he was treated, and probably rightly so. He forever found himself having to work harder than otherwise necessary to succeed in a party that, to many, was always touted to be the political home for blacks who wanted to get ahead in life.

Warner should know as well as anyone how this apparent nagging at Wilder’s political soul can lead to the unpredictable bursts that for years have defined him. After all, Warner was alongside Wilder during his ’89 gubernatorial campaign and saw firsthand the party hurdles Wilder had to jump and the bosses he had to neutralize. Warner’s seen Wilder up close and personal and knows how the guy works.

That’s why many thought Warner was playing with fire when, almost immediately upon taking office in 2002, he named the maverick Wilder to head a high-profile, blue-ribbon commission to root out government waste, streamline state agencies’ operations, and make more efficient the state’s procurement and service delivery systems. An obvious payback to Wilder for his eventual endorsement of candidate Warner, it was a good deed that was destined to bite the new governor.

During that commission’s deliberations, Wilder at one time announced rather unilaterally that he’d found some $500 million in potential savings, upstaging the work of the other commissioners. In the end, the commission argued that more than $1 billion could be saved over several years should their recommendations be enacted.

For those who know how entrenched state bureaucracy really is, the magnitude of those recommendations set an unrealistic and unreachable goal for Warner. In some respects, Warner was “fortunate” to have a dismal economy because it forced him to work with the General Assembly and exact some $3 billion in cuts and another $3 billion in transfers. Without the economic and budgetary necessity of these unprecedented cuts and shifts, one wonders if Warner otherwise would’ve been able to enact even a billion dollars worth of meaningful reforms.

Some Republicans today are holding up that commission’s work as evidence that a billion-dollar tax increase isn’t needed – just a billion dollars in cuts and streamlining. Wilder, who’s never shy about speaking up, has said nothing to dispute those GOP claims. He’s simply chastised Warner, quite publicly, for proposing new taxes.

So Warner’s good deed certainly did not go unturned. One of these days, Democrats will recognize the value of keeping the unpredictable Wilder at arm’s length. But they’ll never do it, because they’ll always be taken in by the ex-gov’s caginess, masquerading as charm, and they’ll always believe his endorsement to be worth the political pain that’s destined to come with it.

And as for Republicans, they’ll always be backing Doug Wilder in most anything he wants to do, because they know that in the end it’ll somehow play to their advantage.

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