Thursday, October 25, 2007
Wilder still provides drama for Virginians
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Shanna Flowers is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
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Ah, Doug Wilder -- we can't live with him; we can't live without him.
Whether in the governor's mansion in the early 1990s or in Richmond City Hall now as mayor, Virginians have come to expect drama from Wilder.
A Richmond School Board member recently told The New York Times that her experience with Wilder was "one unrelenting psychodrama of nonstop negativity."
The nation's first black elected governor is in the news this week because Richmond City Council won the right to sue him. Aren't these guys supposed to be on the same team?
The court proceedings stem from a little stunt Wilder pulled last month.
He ordered the school board offices moved out of city hall in the middle of the night. Late on Sept. 21 and accompanied by police, 150 workers from three moving companies dismantled the top six floors of city hall and moved school officials' belongings.
School board members rushed to the scene to stop the eviction. Shortly after midnight that night, a judge issued a temporary restraining order. The movers put everything back.
You can't blame the council for being honked off over Wilder's latest fit of pique. The aborted move is estimated to cost taxpayers from $300,000 to more than $1 million, not counting the hourly fees lawyers are racking up.
What really chafed council members, though, is that Wilder's power play came only two months after they passed an ordinance permitting school administration to remain in city hall for five more years.
So the council sought -- and this week was granted -- permission to join the school board's lawsuit to permanently block its removal from city hall.
It's all classic Wilder.
"He certainly had another controversial stretch as he is wont to do," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
I didn't live in Virginia during Wilder's history-making term as governor from 1990 to 1994. So I missed a lot of the fun.
He was charming and engaging when he was in Roanoke this spring for a political fundraiser. But I've never gone toe-to-toe with the man in a political brawl. Though I've heard the Wilder-isms.
Just after Wilder assumed the governor's office, he squelched a decision by outgoing-Gov. Gerald Baliles to reward a few loyalists with low-numbered license plates, considered a political plum.
While in the governor's mansion, Wilder rankled Virginians by spending too much time out of the commonwealth pursuing the presidency.
After leaving the governor's office, Wilder worked in the private sector a while, then ran for mayor in 2004.
He swept into office with 80 percent of the vote and as Richmond's first popularly elected mayor.
Before he took office, however, Wilder ordered the police chief fired. Less than two months in office, he removed metal detectors from city hall. The reason, he said, was to save money. Yet he managed to find enough dollars to establish a bodyguard detail of 10 police officers to protect him.
Wilder has butted heads with supporters of the Performing Arts Center, the city council and the school board.
"He's just a fighter. He had to fight all along the way, every step," said Sabato, who knows Wilder and is friendly with him. "It's ingrained in him."
Won't all of these political squabble tarnish Wilder's legacy?
"Two hundred years from now, he's going to be one of the few Virginians of this era, maybe the only one" to stand out in history, Sabato said.
"You cannot take away that status. The legacy is fine."
Sabato added, "This is the last public chapter of his life."
If it is, Wilder is going out fighting.
