Superintendent Selection Process Redux

After my posting yesterday, I received an e-mail from a member of the School Board stating,

Since the seating of the new board, we had 2 public meetings where we talked about the search process. Because no one from the media attended the first, we made sure to do the attached presentation at our meeting last Monday to try to shed light on the process.

The attached PowerPoint presentation contained this outline of the search process starting in May of 2008.

• May 2008
– Search committee appointed
– School board conducted public forums, sent out public surveys to determine attributes sought in next superintendent
• June 2008
– School board members presented public forum findings to search committee
– School board hired search firm through RFP process
• August/September 2008
– Search firm conducted interviews with individual school board and search firm members
– Search firm developed leadership profile and “Characteristics Desired in the Superintendent of Schools” based on 200 community, 9 school board, and 14 search committee responses
– National posting of vacancy
– School Board approved the job description
• September – December 2008
– Search firm continued to receive applicants and to actively recruit promising candidates.
• December 2008
– Search committee met with each new school board member and Mayor Jones to review the status of the process
– Search firm presented resumes of 20 candidates to search committee
– Search committee narrowed candidates to 12
– Search firm interviewed 12 and narrowed to 5
• January 2009
– Search committee interviewed 5 candidates and narrowed to 3 preferred
– Search committee presented 3 candidates to school board and provided opportunity for board to review resumes of all 5 final candidates.
– Board elected to interview the previously identified 3 candidates

The presentation also contained explanations of the rolls of the board, search committee and outside search firm in the selection process.

This maven lauds the School Board for publicizing the stages of the search process. I retract my statement that the process was “as far removed from government in the sunshine as one can imagine.” And, hopefully, I was wrong in thinking that the election had not brought change.

I must say, however, that making this presentation only days before the board revealed its choice for our new superintendent does not make up for the six months that the citizens of Richmond were kept in the dark. Had the board and its search committee been open throughout the process it is unlikely that some of my neighbors would have been suspicious of the validity of the whole search. I certainly hope that in the future the board will continue to choose open rather than closed processes (even if the laws of the Commonwealth provide an excuse to meet in closed sessions).

Government In The Dark

For those of you who thought you were voting for change in November, you need to rethink. Richmond still has both a City Council and a School Board that think they may carry out their functions in secret. Today the board appointed Dr. Yvonne Brandon as our new School Superintendent in a process that was as far removed from government in the sunshine as one can imagine. All we know is that there was a search team (whose members were subject to a confidentiality agreement) that hired a contractor to find candidates. The contractor produced the names of five candidates. The School Board reduced that to three finalists. Then they chose Dr. Brandon. We have no idea who the other candidates were. We don’t know the process the board went through to make its decision. We were simply told that they decided.

Why should we be concerned about this? During the summer when I was campaigning I met several people who told me they felt that the search for superintendent was a sham; that it was merely a cover for the appointment of Dr. Brandon, which was already a done deal. I checked with people on the search committee who told me that there was in fact a genuine search. But there are still people in Richmond who do not trust the School Board’s process, even with a new majority. The board has some work to do in convincing Richmond residents that they are to be trusted.

Then there is the City Council and the vacant 7th District seat. As you know, former delegate Dwight Jones resigned his seat in the House of Delegates when he was elected mayor. City Council 7th District member Delores McQuinn ran and was elected to the vacant House of Delegates seat. She then resigned from the City Council. Under our City Charter the council is authorized to fill the vacant seat by appointment until the next regular election. Several citizens have filed applications to be appointed to the vacancy. According to the chatter on Church Hill People’s News the selection of Ms. McQuinn’s successor will be done in the dark. According to a statement by a policy advisor for the City Council, “The interviews, as well as any further discussion and consideration of candidates will all be held in Closed Session." Only council members Chris Hilbert and Charles Samuels thought it was wrong to make this significant decision in secret.

Why should we be concerned with this? In the last few weeks there has been a great deal of talk that the selection of Ms.McQuinn’s successor is a done deal. The talk suggests that Dwight Jones approved Ms. McQuinn as his successor and that Ms. McQuinn has approved her successor who will be rubber stamped by the City Council. As in the case of the School Board, a decision by City Council to make its decision in closed session will only fuel this type of talk.

The eight people elected to the council and the nine people elected to the school board in November need to understand that they cannot govern without having the trust of the citizens of Richmond. They will not have that trust unless they do their work in the sunshine where we can watch them. The decisions to do their work in secret were bad from them and for River City.

So Help Me Dog

Okay, I’ll admit it. It probably is not as easy as it looks. For one thing, you gotta be careful to use the President Elect’s name rather than your own. It would not do for Barack Obama to start his oath with “I, John Roberts.” And then, there was the crowd. Mr. Justice Roberts is used to speaking before a few hundred people at the Supreme Court. Now he was facing more than a million. It could get one a bit nervous. Of course he could have read the oath rather than reciting it. Or, if he has difficulty reading in public, he could have printed it on a piece of paper and handed it to Mr. Obama to read. Perhaps it was the cold; perhaps it was the wind. Perhaps it wasn’t a mistake at all. Maybe it was Justice Roberts zinging one at the man for whom he mostly likely did not vote.

Was administering the oath to Mr. Obama the most important thing Justice Roberts has done so far in his career? Nope. Is it the most important thing he is going to do in the many years he will serve as Chief Justice of the United States? Nope. Is it the one mistake for which he will always be remembered? Yep. If this were a hundred years ago, in all likelihood no one would ever know of Justice Roberts’ gaff. Back then, only the people in attendance would have witnessed his mistake and only the few close enough would have even heard. But, poor Justice Roberts screwed up with hundreds of millions of people watching and listening. What’s worse, his blunder was recorded and will always be there to be viewed in generations to come.

Well, all’s well that ends well. President Obama is at the White House trying to get us out of W’s disaster. Justice Roberts is back at the Court just waiting for the opportunity to strike down Obama’s major legislation as unconstitutional.

How Guilty Should I Feel?

"What is good for General Motors is good for America" - GM Chairman and CEO, Charlie Wilson, 1955

Reader, the maveness and I make the last payment on our car number one this month. As is our usual practice when this happens, we are retiring car number two, moving car number one into the number two position and buying a new car number one. So, we have been looking at cars for a few weeks and finally decided to buy a Toyota. This is not a surprise because our current car number one is also a Toyota. What I do find interesting, especially with the economic plight facing our domestic car manufacturers, is that we didn’t consider buying an American car for more than about three seconds. We just assume that GM, Ford and Chrysler do not make a car that is better than the Japanese.

This is not the way it used to be. Our first car, nearly forty years ago, was a Chevy Nova. We liked it fine. When our family started growing, we replaced the Nova with a big Impala wagon. (I sure loved that car). We really didn’t think about buying foreign cars. Aside from simply assuming that American was best, we also had to deal with the fact that my father-in-law would have disowned us if we had bought Japanese and my mother would have gone ballistic if we bought German.

Then, at some point and for some reason, we bought a Ford Taurus. Both I and the maveness hated that car. It turned us off to Ford totally. When the maveness went back to work and we needed a second car we chose a Nissan (or were they still called Datsun back then?) After that it was Toyota and Subaru and Toyota and now Toyota again.

But that was before. Shouldn’t now be different? Didn’t the CEOs of GM, Ford and Chrysler fly into Washington to get their share of the mighty federal buck? Didn’t they promise us that if they didn’t get the money they would be floating belly up in the Detroit River in weeks? Don’t I owe it to all those Detroit executives to buy American so they can continue to live in the style to which they have become accustomed? Don’t I owe it to the members of the United Auto Workers who are really sweating their jobs? Don’t I owe it to the residents of the Detroit metro area who just went through the worst football season ever? If one or more of those “Big Three” goes under, the city could become a ghost town. So what if their cars aren’t as good as the Japanese; don’t I have some patriotic duty to buy them anyhow?

What is the appropriate atonement for the sin of buying Japanese? Should we be required to wear a big scarlet “J” on all our stuff? I mean, people will already know we have bought Japanese just by looking at those letters—T, O, Y, O, T, A—on the car. Should we get a bumper sticker that reads “We wanted to buy a Cadillac for $54,000 but the Devil made us get this cheap thing?”

I know, precious reader, that I should not be joking about these things. Our economy is tanking. Many thousands of Americans have lost their jobs. Many thousands more will probably lose theirs too. If GM or Ford or Chrysler go under, a whole lot more will become formally employed. That is tragic, not funny. But should I feel guilty that we did what we thought was in our best interest?

I know that many businesses in this country are badly hurt or even dying because of something they had no control over. But, I can’t help feeling that GM, Ford and Chrysler decision makers have a lot to do with how poorly their companies are doing. They’ve had decades to deal with the growing competition from Japan, Germany and, more recently, Korea. They have made many corporate decisions that might have helped them in the short run. Certainly, the executives have all been well compensated. But their short sightedness kept them from planning and developing the cars that would have kept them on top. While Toyota and Honda and Nissan and Kia and others were producing and selling cars that people wanted, GM and Ford and Chrysler were producing the vehicles they wanted to make and were spending tons on advertising to try to convince American drivers that these were the cars they should want.

There are certain corporations in this country that are so big and fill a niche that is so essential to our national economy that we are unwilling to allow them to be subject to the normal rules of a free market. So, in the last several months we have pumped billions of dollars of our money into these corporations to make sure they survive (even when their own stupid or greedy decisions caused their economic downfall). Although the sub-prime fiasco has caused many Americans to lose their homes, and a lot more, nobody thought they needed a bailout. “Losing your home? Tough, you never should have bought something you couldn’t afford.” But, did we ever say to any bank, “You guys screwed up now face the consequences.” No! They are too important.

The free market should be the one place in our society where “survival of the fittest” governs things. Instead, we have borrowed hundreds of billions of dollars from our grandchildren to rescue corporations that are unfit to survive. It makes little sense to this maven. But what can we do? Saving unfit corporations has become a tradition in the US of A. How many years has it been since Tom Paxton penned these words?

I am changing my name to Chrysler
I am headed for that great receiving line
So when they hand a million grand out
I'll be standing with my hand out
Yes sir I'll get mine.

Time To Shake Things Up 1

Recently I had an e-mail exchange with Jonathan Mallard, my fellow also-ran in the Fourth District school board race. Jonathan had asked me what I thought of his analysis of the Request for Procurement (RFP) for renovations to make Fox Elementary School compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act. You can find Jonathan’s analysis at http://jonathanmallard.com/maintaining-the-curtain/

Here is how I replied to Jonathan:

Unfortunately, RPS has developed a corporate culture of indifference. We have had mediocrity or even incompetence for so long that it has become the standard of performance. I have seen this before in the District of Columbia government and the Department of Defense.
Things will only change when either the superintendent or the school board demand competency. The attitude must come from the top. The school leadership needs to communicate to all RPS employees that mediocrity or incompetence will no longer be tolerated. Employees should be given a period of time to improve. If they do not, they should be replaced with other employees who are competent.

Maven, how can you say such things? You are being terribly unfair to all the RPS people who work really hard and are doing a good job. Besides, didn’t you lambast Keith West for saying similar things last year?

Vigilant reader, you are right. There are many many RPS employees who are doing an exemplary job. But, I was not talking about individual performance. I was talking about an attitude. It’s like the old saying “Close enough for government work.” Clearly there are lots of government employees who take their jobs very seriously and will not settle for “close enough.” On the other hand, there are enough of the other kind of employee to have given birth to the stereotype.

As to Keith West, I remember two posts I wrote about him. Just about a year ago, I did lambast him for his decision, after losing his challenge to George Braxton to be chair of the school board, to walk away from his responsibilities to the children of Richmond. Keith, It’s All About The Kids Then I wrote another piece responding to his Style Weekly revelation that he and his wife had decided not to send their children to RPS because of their fears they could not receive a decent education. We Have Nothing to Fear but . . .

In Style Weekly, Mr. West said:

Will your children learn the value of honesty and hard work? Is cheating really tolerated in some classes? Will they show and receive proper respect and courtesy? Will they learn to love learning? In some classrooms the answer is yes. In a few schools the answer is yes. But consistently across the entire school system, the answer is no.

I replied:

I guess I must be lucky, because in the schools in which I have been I have seen the children learning the value of honesty and hard work. I have seen no example of cheating, let alone cheating being tolerated. I have seen children showing each other and their teachers respect and courtesy. I have seen so many young faces glowing with the love of learning.

Mr. West then said:

In every job category from custodian to central-office administrator you will find sterling examples of effort and ability working alongside people who aren’t doing their jobs and shouldn’t be drawing a paycheck. You will find some teachers who are imbuing a love of literature in their students, and others writing evaluations with made-up words and nonexistent grammar. You will find some principals prowling the halls gently correcting the transgressions of their little ones, and others hiding in their offices.

My response was:

Again, I have not been in the schools in which the support staff does not earn their pay, where the teachers are unqualified, and where the principals hide. In the schools that I frequent, I have seen just the opposite.

In my post I acknowledge that as a school board member Mr. West had been in a lot more schools than I have. I was just saying that I had not seen the poor performance that he had seen.

Since that time I have been educated by many Richmond parents. I have a list of “horror stories” on my computer testifying to the instances in which Richmond Public Schools or its employees have not done well by particular students.

But, again dear reader, I am talking about an attitude, not individual performance. What I was saying to Jonathan was that because nobody at the top of Richmond Public School’s administration demands excellence there is a belief that what we are doing is good enough. I will go beyond that to say that the citizens of Richmond are also not demanding excellence from RPS and its staff. During the school board campaign I asked Antione Green (President of the Crusade for Voters), at one of our morning coffee meetings (at which neither of us consumed any coffee), why the residents of Richmond tolerate a school system that is not first class. I pointed out to him that in Fairfax County, where my kids were educated, there is no way that parents and other taxpayers would put up with what we put up with in Richmond. If Fairfax County schools performed the way RPS does every member of the school board would have been driven out of town dressed in tar and feathers.

The first thing we need is a new Superintendent of Schools who has not spent a considerable part of his or her career at RPS. I had and have a great deal of respect for former Superintendent Deborah Jewell-Sherman and Interim Superintendent Yvonne Brandon. Unfortunately they both developed professionally within RPS and are too closely wedded to its corporate culture. They worked for too long side-by-side with the people they had to supervise when they became superintendent. Last summer when the School Board appointed Dr. Brandon as interim superintendent I knew that they were choosing someone who was well qualified to run our school system. But I was a little disappointed by Dr. Brandon’s announcement that she would carry on the programs and policies of Dr. Jewell-Sherman. I would have been a lot happier if she had said that she intended to make changes for the better.

I set out the talents we needed in our new superintendent last spring. The Next Superintendent Now I add the additional qualification that the person we choose should come from outside RPS. Only an outsider can bring us new ideas. Only an outsider can change the corporate culture of RPS. Only an outsider can come to the job without any “debts” owed to others in the system.

This year we have a new mayor. We have five new members of the school board. We need a new superintendent too. We need someone like Michelle L. Rhee.

Who, you may ask, is Rhee? Rhee is the Chancellor (when the school system is big enough that is what they call their superintendent) of the District of Columbia Public Schools. Depending on who you talk to, Rhee is either the great savior of D.C. Public Schools or a publicity-seeking, power-hungry, out-of-control administrator who doesn’t care who she hurts in carrying out her objectives. I think the jury is still out on whether she is either of the above or something in the middle. But, what I like most about Rhee is her attitude that the public schools in Washington are there to serve the needs of the children, not the desires of any adults or block of adults. This has made her very unpopular with the District’s teachers union. Just last week, Rhee announced her plan to remake Washington’s teacher’s corp. Ms. Rhee intends to remove a “significant share” of teachers (those who are not succeeding) and to retrain all the rest. Rhee Plans Shake-Up of Teaching Staff, Training.

I am not suggesting that we need such radical steps in Richmond. But, we need to rethink the way we train, evaluate and compensate our teachers. In one of my earliest opinions involving RPS, I said:

We must hold all teachers accountable for their students’ achievements. We must have a performance appraisal system that measures how effectively our teachers teach. We must do a regular evaluation of each teacher’s students to see how many are truly excelling. We must not accept as an explanation that “I used the same lessons last year and it worked with those students.” Although ultimately it is the student that learns, we must expect our teachers to prepare lessons that will enable each of their students to perform at their maximum capacity.
We must retrain all our teachers in new teaching methods. There have been many improvements in teaching methodology in recent years and we must make these developments available to all our teachers. We should not settle merely for teachers to be recertified periodically. We must insist that they constantly improve. Since many of our students are at risk because of their background, we must make sure that all our teachers know how to help these children.
Fix Our Schools, Now

Then, in October, in an attempt to inject some life into my school board campaign, I wrote:

I propose that we move RPS employees, including administrators and teachers, from a system in which pay increases are based on college degrees and longevity to one based on performance. Let me be clear, I do not propose that compensation be based on student SOL scores. As I have said several times here and in the questionnaire from the Richmond Education Association, there are far too many factors other than teacher performance that affect how well students do on SOLs. We need to develop a system in which we can measure how much progress students are making in a particular year (by comparing where they are in September to where they are in June). We also need to handicap that system so that teachers in schools with concentrated poverty can compete fairly with teachers in schools that are primarily middle class.
We need to start with a voluntary system for teachers already working for RPS. Teachers would be given the option of staying in a compensation system based on longevity and degrees or moving to the merit system in which pay raises are not guaranteed but can be significantly higher than on the longevity scale.
I expect that the Richmond Education Association will participate with the School Board in designing this new compensation system.
From Outside The Box

One of my campaign advisers urged me to postpone this type of suggestion until after the election. She feared it would cost me votes.

But, getting back to Chancellor Rhee, Richmond needs a superintendent who will put the needs of our children first. We need a superintendent who understands that nobody is “entitled” to be employed by RPS. We need a superintendent who is willing to really shake things up.

Politics And Money In The Old Dominion 1.5

Loyal reader, did you see the story in the Metro section of the Washington Post on New Year’s Day? It says that, although money can’t buy you love, it can buy you endorsements if you want to run for state or local office in Virginia. 1

It seems there’s a guy named Jon Bowerbank who wants to be the Democratic candidate for Lieutenant Governor of the Commonwealth. He recently was endorsed by Delegate Lionell Spruill, Sr., as the best Democrat to take on incumbent Tim Bolling. What the endorsement announcement did not indicate was that Bowerbank had just hired Spruill as a political consultant. Of course, Bowerbank was not “buying” Spruill’s endorsement. Spruill has made it clear that his services are very valuable because he has contacts all over the state.

There must be something to Spruill’s assertion because Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brian Moran has also hired Spruill as a consultant to the tune of $7,500 per month. And, you guessed it, Spruill has endorsed Moran’s candidacy.

Getting back to Bowerbank. Four years ago he raised over $37,000 for the campaign of Leslie Byrne to be Lieutenant Governor. In his effort, Bowerbank contributed his own money and convinced his wife and stepson to also donate to Byrnes campaign. Also, by some coincidence, nearly a dozen of Bowerbank’s employees also contributed to Byrne’s campaign. This year, Byrne returned the favor by endorsing Bowerbank for the office she didn’t win. Of course there was no quid pro quo—Virginia is not Illinois. Byrne did acknowledge, however, that "When someone shows an interest in you, they show a loyalty to you, there is an inclination to return that."

Bowerbank also donated funds to Senator J. Chapman Peterson to help pay off part of his campaign debt from 2007. You’ll be pleased to know, loyal reader, that Peterson has endorsed Bowerbank’s candidacy. Was it purely a coincidence? No way! According to Peterson, "Was that a factor in my trying to help him? Of course it was. Obviously, when you make a contribution, it helps you get your foot in the door."

Don’t think for a moment that this is just a Democratic practice. Over the years, Republican Paul Jost has distributed more than $1 million to candidates around the Commonwealth. When he decided to run for a vacant House of Representatives seat last year, he was endorsed by the same people he contributed to. Was there anything wrong with this? Not according to Jost. "It is not a quid pro quo. I never gave money to someone and said, 'Hey, I will give you money if you endorse me.' But certainly life is about doing favors for people and them doing favors for you."

And then there are the parallel attempts of Brian Moran and Terry McAuliffe to spend their way to the Democratic nomination. Since 2006, Moran has donated nearly $300,000 to state and local candidates in the Commonwealth. Although McAuliffe, as the new candidate on the block, has not yet filed his first campaign finance statement, he has been spreading cash all over Virginia to help his candidacy grow. (The Post article said nothing of spending by the third Democratic candidate, Creigh Deeds, to win the nomination. However, Deeds most recent finance statements indicate that political donations only constitute about 1% of the money his campaign has spent).

So, loyal reader, what are we to make of this mix of money and politics in our beloved Commonwealth. Perhaps Republican Delegate David Albo of Fairfax put it best. He said he will never support a candidate unless that candidate has contributed to his own campaigns. As Albo put it, "You have to develop relationships, and contributions are the easiest way to do it."

Politics And Money In The Old Dominion 1.0

Last week I expressed my astonishment and misgivings about Seventh District Representative Eric Cantor raising $4.5 million in “campaign” contributions during the last election cycle. Fund-raising at this level is obviously for a lot more than just running for re-election. But money is not just a Republican thing. Just this week I was invited to a special reception for the Honorable Delores McQuinn, candidate for the 70th District House of Delegate seat formerly held by our new mayor Dwight Jones. The reception is scheduled for January 8; two days after Ms. McQuinn will have already been elected to the House. After all, she is running unopposed. Just so everybody understands that this is not just an opportunity to shake hands with the new Delegate, the invitation indicates the following range of “contributions:” Friend--$150.00; Patron--$250.00; Sponsor--$500.00; and Benefactor--$1,000.00.

Now, if Ms. McQuinn’s election were being contested and if this was two or three weeks ago, I would understand the need for this fund raiser. But, as this morning’s article in the Times-Dispatch indicates, Ms. McQuinn is not taking this election for granted. 1 According to TD reporter Olympia Meola, Ms. McQuinn’s campaign raised more than $36,000 in December, of which more than $27,000 was spent—all for an uncontested election. Now it appears that Ms. McQuinn needs even more money. Obviously, Ms McQuinn does not need the money to get elected. She will already be elected by the time of the fund-raiser. So, what is this money for? Well, for one, Ms. McQuinn will have to run for re-election next year. But, that’s ten months away. Why the need for a fundraiser now?

As is becoming more and more apparent to this maven, members of Congress and members of the General Assembly need a minimum amount of money in their campaign accounts just to garner any respect. Any senator, representative, senator or delegate has to have tens of thousands of dollars in the “war chest” at all times. Very little is going to be spent on getting re-elected. It will be spent, however, on buying influence within the national or state parties, or within the legislative body. Or it might be spent to put people in debt to you for favors in the future.

So, I urge you all, whether or not you are going to the reception, to send those checks into Ms. McQuinn. We can’t send her to Richmond (the capital, not the city) without a respectable amount of cash on hand. The voters of the 70th District, whether or not they bother voting tomorrow, are depending on you to make their delegate a force to be reckoned with.

Race-Based Politics? In Richmond?

In his January 1 TD column, Michael Paul Williams had this to say about Douglas Wilder’s mayorship:

“Wilder gets props for changing the arc of Richmond history by ushering in a new era of civic democracy. In doing so, he aided Richmond in its maturation beyond race-based politics.” 1

Like Mike Williams I would like to think that Richmond has gotten beyond race-based politics. But, being a little closer to the political process this fall, I am a bit less optimistic about things than Mike is. When I was canvassing voters for my own campaign I spoke with many voters. Some of those voters wanted to talk about the mayoral race. All of the African American voters that indicated their choice for mayor to me supported Dwight Jones. The Caucasian voters who spoke to me about their choice were not united in who they supported, but they all strongly opposed Dwight Jones. I know it’s not a reliable sample. Further, I don’t know (because I didn’t ask) why the white voters I spoke to opposed Delegate Jones. So, let’s look at some research I did for a piece that I started but never published back in October.

According to the 2000 Census, six of Richmond’s nine council districts have a majority black population. (“Black” and “white” are the terms used by the Census Bureau). The three other districts have black populations of 4% (First), 31% (Second) and 27% (Fourth). This census data is eight years old so things may have changed but I don’t think the changes are significant.

Now, let’s look at the election results. Dwight Jones received just under 40% of the votes cast for mayor in Richmond. He won a plurality of the votes in six of the nine council districts, enough to be elected. The three districts that Delegate Jones did not carry in the election were the First, Second and Fourth districts—the same three districts that had majority white populations in the 2000 Census. In the First District, the district that had less than 10% black population according to the census, Jones only won 9.8% of the vote and finished third behind Bill Pantele and Robert Grey. In the Second and Fourth districts, Jones won 23.1% and 25.9% of the vote respectively. In the six districts that he did win, Delegate Jones received 37.9% (Third), 42.6% (Fifth), 57.4% (Seventh), 61.3% (Sixth), 63.1% (Eighth) and 65.1% (Ninth).

I know that there are a whole lot of factors (other than race) that motivated voters on Election Day. But, to this maven, it appears that there was some correlation between the race of the voters and the candidates they favored for mayor on November 4. I know that on the City Council and the School Board race seems a less significant factor in determining who gets elected. However, unlike Mike Williams, I don’t think that race-based politics is a thing of the past in Richmond.

What does this mean for Mayor Dwight? He must work just a bit harder to demonstrate to those people in the districts that he did not win that he is their mayor too. In governing, he must address the needs of the city as a whole, rather than just the needs of the communities that supported him in the election. He also has to divorce himself from the attitude that was reported in the TD last week. According to that account, Senator Henry Marsh considers Mayor Dwight to be next in the line of Richmond’s black mayors. 2

Dwight Jones must not think of himself as a black mayor. He must think of himself as the mayor of Richmond who just happens to be African American. And, he must communicate that attitude to all the citizens of our fair city. He also must communicate his view that politics in Richmond is not a battle between whites and blacks over who controls the city. Only then will be begin to mature beyond race-based politics in River City.

Happy New Year Mister Mayor

In his January 1 piece TD columnist Michael Paul Williams pointed out the change that the end of Douglas Wilder’s term as mayor will have on the jobs of reporters and molders of public opinion here in Richmond. In Williams’ words:

“L. Douglas Wilder's departure from the mayor's suite in Richmond City Hall should leave local news gatherers in a state of mourning. Wilder's headline-seeking antics were the gift that kept on giving. Our new minister-mayor, Dwight Clinton Jones, reserves his fiery pronouncements for the pulpit. Jones the politician is as taciturn as Wilder is flamboyant.” 1

Of course, this maven has known for months that it will be harder to find things to write about with Mayor Doug leaving. Although Doug and his behavior provided much grist for my mill to grind last winter, since he announced that he would not run for re-election I only wrote about him once and that was to wish him good luck in the future.

Style Weekly, in its “Score 2008” on December 23, went so far as to declare Doug to be no longer relevant:

"We thought about writing a long perspective piece on the legacy of Mayor L. Douglas Wilder… but then we realized no one really cares anymore. It’s official: Wilder was such a complete bust that he merits only a couple of paragraphs.
* * *
No, it wasn’t a dream. Wilder did beat up lots of people and took credit for a whole bunch of things that don’t actually exist. But pinch yourself. It’s over now." 2

Here we are, only three days into the term of Dwight Jones as our mayor and things are radically different. When Mayor Doug took over (was it only four years ago) he came out punching by challenging sweet heart severance deals that had been given to certain city officials in the waning days of the old regime. It was clear that Doug was arriving at City Hall in a war mode. He was the knight that would fix everything in Richmond in short order.

As for Mayor Dwight—
· First, he writes an OpEd declaring education to be his highest priority;
· Second, he delivers a sermon in which he makes it clear that he cannot fix what is wrong with Richmond, that the citizens of our fair city must work hard during these tough times to make things better;
· Third, he tells the members of City Council that he will cooperate with them rather than trying to force them into submission. (In the mayor’s words: "I offer to you the hand of cooperation and the hand of collaboration, and I offer to you an open door. If you receive that offer . . . I believe that we can do great things together. That's what the city is expecting." 3

Well, we haven’t even gotten to the first Monday of Dwight Jones’ term. But as of now I’m willing to say Happy New Year Mister Mayor.

Dems Heading For A Big Fall?

Surely, ‘twas a great victory! For the first time in more than forty years, a Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama, won Virginia’s electors, capturing more than 52% of the vote. Democrat Mark Warner won the U.S. Senate seat by an overwhelming landslide. Democratic candidates won previously Republican House of Representatives seats in the Second, Fifth, and Eleventh congressional districts. Oh yes. For Virginia Democrats, ‘twas a great victory!

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a reception for the Virginia presidential electors sponsored by the local Democratic committees. There was a moderate sized crowd, and it was fascinating for a college Political Science major like me. I always think of the electoral system by which we elect our presidents as an archaic relic of the eighteenth century. But here were eight or nine of Virginia’s electors describing the constitutional function that they had carried out earlier in the day. As the speeches went on, the gathering morphed into a belated election victory party. Everybody was bragging about what a great job they hand done to move Virginia out of the red. Now, all they had to do was concentrate on next year’s House of Delegates races to turn Virginia truly into a blue state. I mumbled under my breath, “We’ll be lucky to keep the State House.”

So why is the maven so discouraged when everybody else is so upbeat? For one thing, I am trying to avoid complacency. It is vital that Virginia Democrats not get into the mindset that the Commonwealth will become a permanently blue state by means of some inevitable historical development. That will not happen. Nothing is inevitable. Virginia will become a blue state only if lots of people put in the kind of time and effort they did this year to get Obama and Warner elected.

I am also not quite secure with the ability of the Virginia Democratic Party to get candidates elected. As I stated two years ago, Let’s Talk about the Democratic Party of Virginia, the Democratic Party does not elect candidates in Virginia. Rather it is the individual candidate committees that elect candidates to office. After this year’s election, I am convinced that I am still right.

The kind of party politics that I grew up with in Brooklyn is long gone. Now campaigns are run by professional political consultants hired by candidates rather than by political parties. One result of this change is that candidates don’t have any real loyalty to the party since they do not have to rely on the party to get elected. They run their own campaigns and raise their own money. The campaign staff they hire and the volunteers they recruit do not feel any loyalty to the party. When the election campaign is over they go back to doing what they were doing before the campaign. They generally do not transfer their talents to the state or local party.

This fall there were separate committees operating to elect Barack Obama as president and Mark Warner as senator. There were also eleven separate committees working to elect or re-elect members of Congress in the eleven congressional districts. They did not necessarily work together with the state Democratic Party or with local Democratic committees. This led to a rather chaotic situation, at least here in the City of Richmond.

At the September meeting of the Richmond City Democratic Committee, it became apparent to me that the committee as an entity was not a major player in the November elections. Rather than urging those present to work within the party for the election of the Democratic slate the message was to volunteer through the Obama or Warner headquarters within the city.

At the same September meeting, the followers of mayoral candidate Dwight Jones had sufficient members present to have the committee vote to endorse Jones for mayor. Although this vote was overturned by the state Democratic Party, the Jones supporters were again able to garner enough votes at an October meeting of the committee. (I am not criticizing Jones for this action. I also had my supporters work to get the committee to endorse my school board candidacy.) What did Jones gain from this endorsement? He was able to portray himself as a Democrat in his campaign literature and his name appeared as part of the Democratic slate on the party’s sample ballots. However, his campaign continued to be run by his own campaign committee.

During the last weeks before the election I tried to contact the Democratic leader for the fourth district (in which I was running) but without success. I e-mailed the members of the Richmond City Democratic Committee residing within the fourth district to find out who was covering the polls on Election Day. The few replies I received indicated that it was the Obama campaign, rather than the Democratic Committee that was staffing the polls on Election Day. I contacted the fourth district leaders for the Obama campaign to try to coordinate Election Day activities. I was told that they had everything under control and did not need my help.

During the final days before the election I found out that there was some kind of screw up with sample ballots and that I wouldn’t be receiving as many as I felt I needed for the election. I was told not to worry because the Obama campaign had lots of sample ballots which would benefit my candidacy. I found out at about 6:00 PM on Election Day that the sample ballots being distributed by Obama volunteers at the polls in the fourth district did not even have my name listed.

During the last weekend of the campaign I also discovered that only two of the six precincts in the fourth district had Democratic Committee members assigned as precinct captains. Fortunately, several of my friends had volunteered to cover the polls for me on Election Day.

I am not setting forth these facts as a complaint. My failure to win the fourth district school board race was not the fault of the Richmond City Democratic Committee. Even if the committee was well organized and worked for my election I would probably have still lost for a multitude of reasons. I do set forth these happenings to point out that the committee is not meeting its stated objective of promoting “Democratic principles through the support and assistance in the election of local, state and national Democratic candidates.”

The 2009 election will be tough for several reasons. First, Republican leaders throughout the country have indicated that winning the Virginia gubernatorial race is the key to the party’s recovery from the 2008 elections. GOP Aiming to Plant Seeds of Its Resurgence in Va. Governor's Race There will be tons of money coming into the Commonwealth and all the stars of the GOP will be working to win our State House.

Second, the Virginia Republican Party is united behind Bob McDonnell as its candidate for governor. The Dems, however, already have two declared candidates and most likely will have a third ere long. So, this spring, while Mr. McDonnell is concentrating on the general election campaign, the Democrats will be bogged down in what may be a divisive primary campaign.

Third, Bob McDonnell has been serving as Virginia’s attorney general for the last three years and is clearly better known to voters in the Commonwealth that any of the potential Democratic nominees. This will give him a clear advantage in the November election.

If Virginia is to truly become a blue state the state Democratic Party must organize itself to provide maximum support for whoever wins the primaries. Local committees, like the Richmond City Democratic Committee, must also organize to assure that the Democratic candidates for all offices are fully supported in their campaigns. We Democrats cannot rely on a charismatic candidate, like Obama or Warner, to turn on the electorate.

One final thing. In this year’s election campaign I saw very little support of one Democratic candidate for another. While individual candidates were happy to run as Democrats because they thought it would help their own candidates, there was only one instance that I am aware of where a Democratic candidate urged the election of all Democrats running for office. The week before the election, I received an automated telephone call from third district representative Bobby Scott urging voters to vote for Barack Obama and the entire Democratic ticket. This has to change.

Cantor Raised How Much?

Reading my Times-Dispatch on Saturday, I was drawn to the lead story in the Metro section, “Cantor to keep donated money.” The gist of the story was that Seventh District Representative Eric Cantor was not going to return $2,300 in campaign contributions he received from Robert I. Toussie. If you remember, Toussie’s son was pardoned by President Bush last week and then his pardon was revoked when Bush learned that Toussie senior was a major contributor to the Republican Party. I don’t care too much about the Toussie issue. If Toussie merited a pardon before the disclosure of his father’s largess, I would assume he still merited one after the disclosure.

What did open my eyes was this statement in the story: “Cantor’s campaign raised $4.5 million this election cycle.” Did I read that right? Four point five million dollars? Why would an incumbent running for re-election in a safe Republican district need to raise $4.5 million dollars in campaign contributions? Considering that he was running against a political unknown, I am sure that Mr. Cantor could have easily been re-elected without spending a cent on his campaign.

Reader, you know that since I am a Democrat and mostly a liberal I am not a great fan of Eric Cantor. I’ve never met the guy, but I just don’t like his politics. As I have expressed here, and in a letter to the TD back in 2006, I think that Cantor is a big part of the cause for the problems that we face in this country after eight years of Republican governance. But that is not what this is about. What this is about is the outrageous campaign finance laws that permit members of Congress to raise obscenely large amounts of money and use them for just about any purpose they care to.

The federal campaign finance laws are administered by the Federal Election Commission. In the regulations the Commission has issued to implement the laws there is a Part 113 entitled “Use of Campaign Accounts for Non-Campaign Purposes.” I would have hoped that these regulations would put severe limits on what campaign funds can be used for. Instead, they seem to legitimize every use of the funds other than the member of Congress putting it directly into his pocket or her purse.

So what kind of things does our Mr. Cantor spend campaign funds on? First, he spends on salaries and benefits for a staff. (These are all based on financial statements filed with the Federal Election Commission by “Cantor For Congress.”) From the financial statements we cannot tell whether these expenses were for a separate campaign staff or to augment federal funding for Mr. Cantor’s Washington or Seventh District staffs. (Please keep in mind, dear reader, that I am not suggesting that Mr. Cantor is doing anything illegal. He spent a significant amount of his campaign funds for legal consulting, so I must assume he got good advice.)

Mr. Cantor spent big bucks on airline fares, hotel rooms, car rentals and other expenses of travel in many places around the country. I cannot tell whether these trips were related to his re-election campaign or his campaign to become Minority Whip. Mr. Cantor also spent a significant amount on catering for various events. Again, many of these were neither within the congressional district nor in Washington so it is hard to tell how they related to the campaign.

Mr. Cantor’s campaign spent a lot on fundraising consultants. Payments to G.R. Seppala and Associates, in Wayzata, Minnesota, for fundraising consulting amounted to over $85,000 during the campaign. (This amounts to more than Mr. Cantor’s opponent spent on the whole campaign.) To me this suggests that Cantor for Congress is more a money producing entity than an election campaign committee. When you pay that kind of money to one consultant, you are obviously expecting a rather big return on your investment (like maybe $4.5 million).

Mr. Cantor also spent a big chunk of his campaign funds on what I call “win friends and influence people” expenditures. He contributed tens of thousands of dollars to the election campaigns of other Republicans around the country. These are the kinds of contributions you surely want to be making if you’re running for Minority Whip. He sent money to the National Republican Congressional Campaign, the Nevada Republican Party and local campaign committees. One of the larger contributions was $5000 to the John Doolittle Legal Defense Fund. (Mr. Doolittle, one of Mr. Cantor’s former fellow Republicans in the House, is charged with corruption and is in need of lots of money for his defense.)

So, trusted reader, what are we to make of this? We have a campaign finance system that allows representatives and senators to raise huge amounts of money and use it for purposes not directly related to their re-election campaigns. Is this the way we should be electing our public officials? We need the Congress to go back and look at the campaign finance laws again and impose restrictions on themselves. Write to you senators and representative and urge them to fix a system that seems out of control.

Merry Christmas Etiquette

Tuesday night I went to the ABC store to purchase a bottle of brandy. After the financial transaction was complete the sales clerk wished me a “Merry Christmas.” Instantly I was caught in the dilemma that every non-Christian in this country faces every December. I certainly appreciate that the sales clerk thought enough of me to extend his best wishes. However, because I am a Jew the words “Merry Christmas” present a problem. Since I don’t celebrate Christmas someone’s seasonal greetings in terms of Christmas is unimportant to me. In fact, sometimes I get a little resentful. Why should anybody presume that because it is December it necessarily means that everybody is a Christian? I often get the strong urge to reply “and a Happy Chanukah to you,” but that would just come across as hostile. So, I might reply “the same to you” or “happy holidays to you,” but I still walk away feeling upset.

There was a time, a few years back, when it became fashionable to drop “Merry Christmas” and just speak in terms of “Happy Holidays.” It was a time when everybody was being sensitive to the Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, Hindus and other non-Christians in our society. Then there was the claim from some Christians that Christmas was under attack. They demanded that “Merry Christmas” be brought back. They even threatened to boycott businesses that insisted on using “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” So now we have the strange situation of people wishing both “Happy Holidays” and “Merry Christmas,” as if Christmas was not included in the definition of holiday.

So, what to do with my problem? I suggest that your seasonal greetings be customized to match the recipient. If you know you are speaking to a Christian then certainly “Merry Christmas” is appropriate. However, if you know that the person you are addressing is not a Christian then “Merry Christmas” is not appropriate. It makes as much sense as you wishing me “Happy Birthday” on YOUR birthday. In those instances “Happy Holidays” makes more sense (even though there are many people who don’t celebrate any holy days in December). Dear reader, what do you think?

To all my Christian friends I wish a very Merry Christmas. To my Jewish friends I wish a happy fourth day of Chanukah. To my friends who are neither I wish a very happy holiday season.

Be Of Good Cheer!

After reading through the Times-Dispatch this morning I am feeling real good about this holiday season. Of course, the lead article about Circuit City’s continuing plunge was a bit of a downer. But you can’t just look at the big headlines. You have to read and analyze and then synthesize to get to the really good stuff.

I start with Zach Reid’s front page piece “Why we feel compelled to give.” After interviewing VCU’s Everett L. Worthington, Zach concludes that we American’s truly believe it is better to give then receive. (Of course, Zach didn’t see my family’s Chanukah party on Sunday where an entire generation of our future engaged in a joyful orgy of receiving.) So, keep in mind that we Americans are a giving people.

Also on the TD front page there is an Associated Press story with the headline “Banks keep quiet about bailout cash.” For those of you who were not paying attention, last fall (about the time that the Republican National Committee was warning us that Barack Obama’s policies would lead to socialism) the high officials dealing with the economy in our Government came out with their “the sky is falling” prediction. Apparently, or so they said, the financial crisis in this country was so severe that Western Civilization was about to go under. (Why they felt that the economy was basically sound until that point they didn’t say.) The only way to save us from a disaster that would make the Great Depression of the 1930s look like a Sunday school picnic was to buy all the bad debt that our big banks were saddled with. Under this rescue plan, the big banks would get a big infusion of cash that they could use to make more loans and the Federal Government would own the bad debt. The tax payers would be protected because some day that bad debt would become good debt and we would be paid back. The price tag--$700,000,000,000 (seven hundred billion dollars). (By comparison, NASA runs the entire space program for about twenty billion dollars per year, the entire Environmental Protection Agency runs on less than five billion per year, the Department of Veterans Affairs costs about forty two billion per year.) Well, despite this maven’s warnings (700 Billion Tax Hike To Pay For Bailout), the Congress provided the $700 billion to save our free market economy. Sometime after the congressional action, the Secretary of the Treasury decided that instead of buying up the bad debt he would just give the money to the banks.

Well, according to the article, when the AP asked the banks what they had done with the money, they refused to answer. Apparently their view is that the money is now theirs and they don’t have to tell anybody what they are doing with it. They may be loaning it, or they may be keeping it on deposit, or . . . (continued on page 8).

Another AP article “Bailed-out banks’ execs got $1.6 billion.” This article indicated that the 116 banks that have received federal rescue dollars this fall gave their top executives a total of $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses and other compensation during 2007. The article pointed out such gems as:

1- The president and CEO of Goldman Sachs received compensation of $54 million in 2007. The top five executives of Goldman Sachs were compensated at $242 million. Before Goldman Sachs’ blip fell off the radar, it explained its executive compensations as essential to retain and motivate executives “whose efforts and judgments are vital to our continued success, by setting their compensation at appropriate and competitive levels.” Goldman Sachs received $20 billion in federal rescue money on October 28;

2- The CEO of Merrill Lynch received compensation of $83 million last year. This executive who was formerly with Goldman Sachs came to Merrill Lynch in December of 2007. For his one month’s work for Merrill Lynch he received $57 thousand in salary, a $15 million signing bonus and $68 million in stock options. Merrill Lynch received $10 billion in federal rescue money on October 28.

After reading these three articles and blending them in my mind, I am feeling really good. First, we Americans are a people that love to give. Second, we must look at the $700 billion not as a bailout (or something else nasty like that) but as a gift to the banking industry. Third, the banking industry will use this gift to provide adequate compensation to their top executives. Now, I don’t have to worry that the children or grandchildren of these execs might have to do without this holiday season. So, everybody comes out ahead. We taxpayers satisfy our urge to give. The corporate execs get enough money to make it through what would otherwise have been a sad holiday season for them.

In rescuing the wealthy we Americans did some real good. Some might ask why we don’t make a similar rescue effort for those in our society who are truly suffering this holiday season. The answer is simple—doing that would amount to socialism.

I’m Back!

It’s been at least six weeks since this maven last spoke to you. During that time the world has changed a great deal:

1- Barak Obama was elected our next president winning a majority of the popular vote and a decisive margin in the Electoral College;

2- The Washington Redskins stopping playing over their heads;

3- The voters of the Commonwealth elected Democrats for President, for Senator, and for a majority of congressional seats for the first time since “Democrat” had an entirely different meaning in Virginia;

4- The American economy went further into free-fall with hundreds of thousands losing their jobs;

5- The James Madison Dukes and the Richmond Spiders are both in the semi-finals of a football division that actually chooses its national champion by playoffs;

6- America’s remaining financial institutions accepted hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer largess and did nothing with the money;

7- The Governor of Illinois, with an unpronounceable name spelled “Blagojevich,” gave an entirely new meaning to “let the free market decide”;

8- The Richmond Renegades played a hockey game in which the their opponent’s players served more penalty minutes than there are minutes in a game;

9- Dwight Jones was elected mayor of River City;

10- Hillary Clinton agreed to serve as our next Secretary of State.

And-- this maven lost his bid to serve on the Richmond School Board.

I could say that the election was close, that I only lost by 2553 votes. But let’s face it, I got thumped. I could blame all kinds of unexpected adversities that plagued my four month campaign. However, the fact is that more people voted for Andrea Graham Scott than voted for me.

Looking back at Election Day, I can say that I would have much preferred to have won. Finishing second is not something to be ashamed of, but it’s no great honor either. I really loved the campaigning and meeting with the voters. I loved the intellectual stimulation of expressing my ideas for fixing Richmond’s public schools. I loved the support I received from so many of my neighbors.

So, what’s next? I will get back to working with the kids in our public schools. They have such great need for a caring adult in their lives. I will continue working to make my neighborhood school one that my neighbors will send their kids to. I will do what I can to make sure that our new mayor and the members of the City Council and School Board give the citizens of Richmond the high-quality government to which they are entitled.

Let’s face it, dear reader; mavening can certainly be a full time job. As for politics—it was great fun, but it was just one of those things.

What This Campaign Is Really About

Now, that we are down to the last five days in the School Board race, this maven is thinking again about how I got here in the first place.

Why am I running?

· I am running for the children of Richmond. Although Richmond Public Schools has made considerable progress in the last four or five years, and although there are particular schools or programs that are outstanding, I am convinced that many of our children are not receiving the quality education to which they are entitled.

· I am also running because my religious upbringing taught me that if I see injustice in the world I am obligated to do something to fix it. To me the fact that the quality of education that children in Richmond receive varies significantly with the school they attend is a significant injustice. The fact that some of our children finish their education in Richmond (either by dropping out or graduating) without receiving the skills they need to make it in the world is also a significant injustice. We need to do better.

· Further, I am running because I am deeply concerned with the fact that middle class families are leaving the city to seek what they feel are better educational opportunities for their children. I am worried that if this trend is not reversed, we will end up with a very family-unfriendly city. We must stop this middle class hemorrhage.

· Finally, as a taxpayer, I am running to change the business climate at Richmond Public Schools so that waste and mismanagement of the taxpayers’ money stops.

What I will do? If elected,

· I will work with parents and school principals to make neighborhood schools work for all our children. Our neighborhood schools can be the core around which we build healthy and safe neighborhoods. Getting parents involved in our neighborhood schools will strengthen their ties to the neighborhoods and will improve the learning experience for everybody’s children.

· I will add funding to the Richmond Public School budget for four International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programs. I intend that one of these programs will be implemented in a fourth district school. I have previously explained why I think that the International Baccalaureate approach to learning will teach our children how to think, how to gather information, how to make decisions, how to understand that everything is related, how to communicate and how to relate to a world of different people from different cultures. International Baccalaureate Revisited.

· I will bring accountability to Richmond Public Schools. My twenty five years experience with the Government Accountability Office in Washington has given me the knowledge and skills necessary to uncover and eliminate unlawful and wasteful spending in government programs, including Richmond Public Schools.

· I will involve the entire Richmond community in providing a high quality education to our children. Neither a new Superintendent of Schools nor the nine members of the School Board will be able to make the changes we need to make Richmond Public Schools great. We need the involvement of our next mayor, the city council, the PTAs, the Richmond Education Association, the business community, our three universities, faith and civic groups, parents and those without children to join in this endeavor.

· I will bring new ideas to Richmond. Since my children did not grow up in Richmond, I have experienced what other successful school systems are doing. I have already suggested 1-changing curricular emphasis from teaching children only the facts they need to pass SOLs to teaching them the skills they need to compete in a global market place; 2-further rewarding our teachers and administrators by offering them an optional merit pay system that will enable them to earn larger pay increases each year; 3- creating “hybrid” or contract schools, in which school principals are given greater autonomy to achieve certain goals and have the opportunity to earn greater compensation based on how well their school performs; 4- creating an “Order of Richmond Heroes,” and offering bonuses to quality teachers who will agree to teach in our more difficult schools; 5-extending the school year or the school day to provide more learning time for our children.

Why I am the best candidate

· Unlike other candidates who talk about their “passion for education” or who run on slogans, I have demonstrated my commitment to the children of Richmond by working as a volunteer in Richmond Public Schools for almost as long as I have lived in Richmond. I have worked in Westover Hills, my neighborhood school, and in Carver School, which is located in one of the poorer neighborhoods of our city. My experience has enabled me to understand the issues that school administrators and teachers deal with on a daily basis. I have also been active in Friends of Fourth District Schools, which is working to improve all the schools in the district.

· I have established relationships with others committed to bringing great schools to Richmond. These relationships will help me build community support for making our public schools the best in Virginia.

· I am a uniter. I will work to get all the stakeholders in RPS to understand that they are all in the same boat and must work together for the good of our children. I will convince parents in all economic circumstances that they are not adversaries fighting for a limited piece of the education pie.

· I understand that politics is the art of getting things done. The word “compromise” is part of my vocabulary. I also understand that I do not have all the answers. I will work well with the other members of the school board.

· I am impatient. I am tired of continuous discussions and planning. We know what has worked in other school systems. It’s time to stop planning and start acting.

So, dear reader, that’s what it’s all about. By late Tuesday night we will know which of us the voters of the Fourth District have chosen to represent them on the Richmond School Board. We will also know who they elected to serve them in such lesser offices as president, senator, representative, mayor and councilperson.

Too Inexperienced

Fellow Americans. Troubled times lay before us. Our nation will be challenged like it never has before. Can we afford to have a man in the White House who has not been tested in crisis? This is no time for on the job training. The man from Illinois is too inexperienced to be president. He has only served in the Illinois legislature and briefly in the Congress. Never has he had to face what lies before us. We cannot afford to take the risk. Therefore, on Election Day you must reject Mr. Lincoln and vote for Senator Stephen A. Douglas for President of the United States.

Patrick Henry Volunteers Needed

Now that the Patrick Henry charter school contract has been approved by the school board, volunteers are needed to make the school a reality. On Saturday, November 8, at 11:00 AM (lasting no later than 2:00 PM) a volunteer rally will be held at the school, 3411 Semmes Avenue (at the intersection of Forest Hill Avenue). If you are interested in volunteering to help get the school going, you should attend this rally. They even promise to feed you.

Good “Religious” Hate

Well, the maven did something stupid. I responded to a hate message about Senator Obama and now I am being overwhelmed with all kinds of nastiness in my email. The original message, mailed to a whole bunch of addressees, used a letter from a Christian missionary in Africa that spoke of years of violent oppression against them in that African country. The conclusion was that electing Obama would result in similar oppression here in the U.S. of A. As I often do when I get indignant, I fired off a reply and clicked on “reply all.” That was a big mistake. Now I am getting hate mail from everybody on the list.

What did the maven say that brought on such indignation from the haters? I said,

I have no need for this hate and fear campaigning. If I had any doubt about who I was voting for, you have cleared it up. I'm voting against hate and voting for Obama.
Leviticus 19:18

The scriptural citation was in response to all the cites that filled the hate message. (For those of you not familiar, I was referring to “love your neighbor as yourself.”)

I am sorry, but I have real trouble with anyone who uses religion to stir up hate. I feel the same way about Christian, Muslim, Jewish or any other religious hate that relies on some scriptural text to justify its position. I was raised to believe that God loves all people and that God expects us to love each other.

Why this very selective reading of scripture? Why do the haters ignore all the messages of love in the holy books of all religions? Do these people really think that God wants us to hate each other? To this maven, using God’s name to stir up hate against other humans is nothing but a profanation of that name. We have enough problems in this world without the purveyors of hate trying to stir up people’s passions to do evil. The hate has got to stop!

I Guess They Think We’re Stupid

One of Republican Jim Gilmore’s TV ads accuses Mark Warner of lying. The ad says “he promised not to raise taxes but he raised taxes” or something like that. Well, this maven has read the Constitution and laws of Virginia and I know that in this Commonwealth the governor has no power to raise taxes. Only the General Assembly can do that. I guess Mr. Gilmore and his campaign publicists figure that the voters of Virginia are too stupid to know the difference.

I saw one of mayoral candidate Robert Grey’s TV commercials. Mr. Grey pledges that he will increase the amount of school funding that is spent in the classroom to 75% of the whole. Of course, under the laws of Virginia it is the school board that is given exclusive authority to run the schools and it is the superintendent of schools and the school board that have the exclusive authority to prepare the annual Richmond Public School budget. I guess Mr. Grey and his campaign publicists figure that the voters of Richmond are too stupid to understand.

Mayoral candidate Bill Pantele’s mail out ad claims that he has reduced the real estate tax burden while on the City Council. Of course Mr. Pantele doesn’t acknowledge that the City Council is a corporate body of nine members, so he could not single handedly have reduced anything. He also expects that voters in Richmond might not notice that in fact their real estate taxes have gone up every year that he has been on the council. Mr. Pantele’s TV ad claims that he “hired” extra police for the city and “saved $25 million” by ordering an audit of Richmond Public Schools. It is amazing to me that a single councilman, with no executive functions, could have accomplished so much. I guess Mr. Pantele and his campaign publicists think that voters of Richmond are too stupid to know the real facts.

Reader, the only way we can demonstrate to these candidates that they cannot make these outlandish claims and get away with it is to vote against them next Tuesday. Before you cast your X on Election Day, check to see whether they appeal to your intelligence or toss you distortions expecting you to be too stupid to know any better.

Hey, I’m A Democrat

Thursday night, the Richmond City Democratic Committee endorsed this maven for the school board seat in the city’s fourth district. This brings me full circle to my early days of being a Democratic precinct captain in Brooklyn, USA. I don’t know if I hold the record for the political career with the longest interruption, but who cares. I would sure prefer running as a Democrat than as a candidate without a party. And, I’m proud to be running with all the rest of Virginia’s Democrats. Let’s get out there next Tuesday and put this country and city back on the right track.

No Clue

Thursday was the day from hell for this school board candidate. I went to meet the voters at an Oktoberfest at a local retirement residence, then went to a PTA meeting at one of our elementary schools, and ended up at the final candidates’ debate of the campaign. Also scheduled on Thursday was a public meeting at one of Richmond’s high schools to deal with a violence problem and the meeting of the Richmond City Democratic Committee. I really wanted to be at both of those events but just couldn’t make them.

For me, the most eye-opening event was the PTA meeting at J. B. Fisher Elementary School. Fisher is one of the elite elementary schools in the City of Richmond. It is in a middle-class neighborhood that is somewhat isolated from the rest of the city and is one of those open enrollment schools that parents elsewhere in the city try to get their kids into. Well, what opened my eyes was that there were about forty parents attending that meeting. No, dear reader, that is not a typo. There really were about forty parents at that PTA meeting. Now, I often go to PTA meetings at Westover Hills Elementary School, my neighborhood school. Usually, about seven or eight parents show up for those meetings. And, earlier in the week, we candidates were at a PTSA meeting at Huguenot High School. Again, there were less than ten parents at that meeting.

The forty parents at the Fisher PTA meeting prove what I have been saying here for a long time. Middle class parents generally are more involved in their children’s schools. That is why I am so determined to reverse the exodus of middle class families from River City. We need those parents in Richmond’s schools working to make those schools better.

At the debate, my opponent Adria Graham Scott made a remark that suddenly made everything clear to me. Adria is the one that has been getting all the endorsements, has all the professional campaign help and also the big campaign bucks. I don’t remember exactly what the question was, but Adria came out with, “We are lucky in the Fourth District because our parents support our public schools.” Well, my pen dug a big question mark and then an exclamation point into my pad.

Adria, where have you been all these years? Is it possible that J. B. Fisher is the only school in the city you have been in? Is the Fisher neighborhood the only neighborhood you have been in? Because, I know that in most neighborhoods in the Fourth District the parents do not support our neighborhood public schools. In fact as I have said again and again right here, my middle-class neighbors are leaving the city in droves because they don’t support our neighborhood schools. Haven’t you noticed that Adria?

Now, I have been stressing in this campaign that I am the only candidate who understands Richmond Public School’s problems from the inside because I have been working as a volunteer in those schools for more than three years. But, I didn’t realize how much I know and how little Adria Graham Scott and John Lloyd and Jonathan Mallard really know about our schools. (At least Jonathan does realize that our middle class parents do not support our public schools.)

Adria, you need to wake up to the truth. Because, if your endorsements and your campaign staff and your money win you this election you are going to be in for a rude awakening. Since you only know Fisher, you are going to be surprised that most of the schools in the city are not nearly as good. You need to know that Southampton and Westover Hills elementary schools have 67% and 76% respectively of their children on free and reduced lunches, while Thompson Middle School has about 80% receiving subsidized meals. And you need to know that these schools have such high concentrations of free and reduced lunch children because their parents cannot afford to use private schools, home educate their kids or move out of the city. And, if you end up on the school board, you will not only be representing the kids from Fisher Elementary but also the kids from George Washington Carver Elementary, where I volunteer each week. Carver has a free and reduced lunch population of over 95%. Adria, if you’ve never been with these children, you cannot possibly understand the problems they have to overcome to succeed in school. And, Adria, you’re going to have to learn about the injustices that are widespread in Richmond Public Schools, because if you are elected you are going to be dealing with those problems every day for the next four years.

Well, tomorrow will be only the eighth day left before the election and I have to be out campaigning. I’ll be back with more revelations about our political system soon.

Chutzpah Squared

It has been many months since the maven has issued a chutzpah award. It is often difficult to find someone whose statements or positions are so outrageous and so full of gall that they merit the word chutzpah. But, the time has come for another award. Today the maven’s chutzpah award goes to (drum roll) Senator John McCain of Arizona.

So, you may ask, what has Senator McCain done to merit this highly prestigious award? Precious reader, John McCain has made himself the first presidential nominee in our nation’s history to run against the incumbent president of his own party. After trying to gain the Republican presidential nomination for at least ten years, when he finally achieved that prize John McCain suddenly became the Anti-Republican.

A Republican? Me? Oh no, I’m not a Republican. I’m a Maverick. I know the country is going down the tubes, but don’t blame me. I’m a Maverick, not a Republican. The economy sucks? Not my fault, I’m a Maverick, not a Republican. The world is facing a climate crisis worse than humans have ever known. But, that’s not my fault. I know that Bush and Cheney and the Republicans were fiddling while the earth’s temperature continued to rise. But that has nothing to do with me. I’m not a Republican, I’m a Maverick. While in control of the White House my party’s president added nearly five trillion dollars to the national debt. But I disagreed with that all along. I’m a Maverick.

Oh, I voted in agreement with President Bush 90% of the time. But, you gotta understand. After the way W whupped me in the 2000 race, I knew that to get the nomination next time I would have to appear to be even more Republican than Mr. Bush. But, when I voted to support President Bush, my fingers were crossed behind my back. I didn’t mean those votes. After all, I’m a Maverick, not a Republican.

But, you may ask, is McCain really the only candidate to run against his party’s incumbent president? What about John Adams in 1800? Didn’t he run against his own party? Sorry, reader, that was different. In 1800, it was Alexander Hamilton and his ultra-Federalists who campaigned against their party’s incumbent president, Adams. It wasn’t Adams running against his party. Well, what about Millard Filmore running in the 1856 election? Ex-president Filmore did run in the 1856 election, but not against the incumbent of his own party. In fact, the incumbent president, Franklin Pierce was not running for reelection. Okay, maven, what about Teddy Roosevelt in 1912? Now you’re getting close, reader. Teddy Roosevelt did seek to wrest the Republican nomination from his former protégé William Howard Taft. And when he couldn’t get the Republican nomination, TR did run for president as the nominee of the Progressive Party. But, he was not a Republican running against the incumbent president of his own party. No, John McCain is quite unique.

Even though he has been a Republican for his entire political career, this year John McCain has abandoned his own party. Even though he has been in the Senate for more than twenty years, John McCain wants us to believe that he never voted for anything that his party wanted; that he was always a Maverick. And for that Senator McCain deserves the maven’s chutzpah award. Congratulations, Senator.

Fear And Loathing In The Extreme

I was behind a pickup truck as I turned from Huguenot Road onto Buford Road last week. The truck stopped at a traffic light and I pulled up behind it. On the back window was a large sign that read “Be Afraid” at the top. Then there was a drawing of Barack Obama in an angry pose. Below that were even bigger letters reading “Be Very Afraid.” I was impressed by the deep level of hate expressed by whoever designed and marketed that sign.

Last night the maveness called my attention to an anti-Obama ad she saw on the tube. Tonight I saw the same ad. The ad was sponsored by the ultra-conservative group, Let Freedom Ring. It was entitled “Never Find Out” and it basically painted the disaster to the world that would ensue if Barack Obama is elected president. It’s filled with some pretty outrageous and unsubstantiated claims. Or course, it is not the purpose of Let Freedom Ring to tell the truth. Rather, its purpose is obviously to scare people out of voting for Senator Obama. This, remember is the same Let Freedom Ring that thinks that George W is the greatest president ever, wants to undo Roe v. Wade, favors going back to the original intent of the Constitution, wants to limit the power of the judiciary, encourages the family as the basic building block of society (so long as the family centers on a heterosexual couple), and wants to restore prayer to our schools. Considering its agenda it is not surprising that Let Freedom Ring is afraid of Barack Obama.

Now, the maven has seen lots of election campaigns. (No, I am not old enough to remember the dirtiest of all elections—the 1800 contest between the Federalists and the Jeffersonians). And maybe my memory plays tricks with me. However, I get the feeling it is getting unusually nasty out there. I mean I remember the “mushroom cloud” ad that the Dems ran in 1964 to scare people out of voting for Barry Goldwater. It was pretty devastating. But, this year there seems to be a concerted effort by those on the right, including the Republican National Committee (whose ads are clearly the best in terms of effectiveness) and the McCain-Palin campaign, to personally attack Senator Obama and portray him as outside the spectrum of political acceptability. The supporters of McCain-Palin don’t have any real issues to talk about, so they are trying real hard to scare everybody. Their message—“electing Obama is unthinkable.”

Is there any way that we the voters can affect the level at which our political campaigns are run? How do we get candidates for public office to concentrate on the issues rather than character attacks? Well, campaigns run these fear and loathing ads because they think they work. The only way we can raise the level of the public debates in this country is to demonstrate to the candidates that we will not be fooled by their slime campaigns. We need to send a message to the Republican National Committee and to the McCain-Palin campaign, and of course to Let Freedom Ring on Election Day by voting for Barack Obama for president. And, if you happen to be one of those people who is exit-polled, tell them that you refuse to vote for a hate-monger or a candidate supported by hate-mongers.

Citizens of Virginia! On November 4 the choice is yours. Will you vote based on fear and loathing? Or will you look at the issues and vote for the man most qualified to be president? I urge you to vote for Obama because he is the real instrument of change. Voting for McCain is asking for four more years of Republic misrule.

Lonely At The Side Of The Road

Just to let you know, I have been running a pretty bare bones campaign for the school board. Not being a long-time resident of Richmond, it has been pretty hard for me to find people who want to contribute to my campaign. So, at the beginning of the summer I purchased only 125 campaign signs (at about four bucks each). I figured I would put them only on major thoroughfares where they would get the most visibility. No need to blanket the whole district I thought.

After the manufacturer sent signs with the wrong color scheme (I guess they didn't realize that red, white and black were only patriotic colors in Nazi Germany) and then finally replaced them, I started planting my signs at strategic locations in the district. But, a not-so-funny thing started happening. As quickly as I put my signs out, they started disappearing. For those of you who live in Richmond, this might ring a little bell in your memory. Wasn’t it just two years ago, in a school-board race, in the very same Fourth District in which I am running, that there was a big sign war? Didn’t a supporter of one candidate take down all the signs of the other candidate? Didn’t the candidate losing signs set up a sting and catch the unsub red handed stealing his signs? (This is apparently not a crime in Richmond because of a strangely worded sign ordinance.)

Now I knew who was probably taking my signs. But, what was I to do about it? After the loss of about 40 signs I decided I was not winning this sign war. So, I adopted the Charleton Heston approach. I decided to stand along the major routes in my district holding up my sign and waving to the crowd. That S.O.B. will have to pry my sign from my “cold dead fingers” if he’s gonna steal one again. So, Monday evening it was the south end of the Nickel Bridge (on which the toll was just raised to $.35). On Tuesday, I stood along Forest Hill Avenue. Wednesday I was at the south end of the Huguenot Bridge (no toll at all). Thursday I took off to attend a PTA meeting and a candidates’ debate. Tonight I tried the Forest Hill exit off the Powhite Parkway.

So, what’s it like standing on the side of the road, holding up a campaign sign and trying to look friendly. At first, I felt kind of foolish. Then, when a few people started honking at me it felt better (although I am not quite sure that the honks were in support or because they thought I was an escapee from an asylum). From the practical side, I can see and be seen by a lot more potential voters than walking from house to house or up and down stairs to knock on doors. Of course, I don’t know whether or not they will actually remember me at the polls next Tuesday.

Mostly it’s lonely. I try to make eye-contact with drivers or passengers as they go by. But that gets harder as the sun goes down and it starts getting darker. I know they can still see me (or at least my sign) with their headlights on, but it’s not the same. All I see coming toward me are cars that are dark on the inside. I feel more and more alone out on the side of the road even though lots of cars are rolling by. Finally, when I’m not sure I can be seen any more I take my sign and go home.

I’ll do it again Monday and every evening rush hour between now and the election. The lonely candidate at the side of the road.

Lies, Fear and Smear, Two Years Later

Two years ago, in one of my first posts as the James River Maven, I said:

Lies, Fear and Smear
The Democrats want to lose in Iraq. The Democrats want to raise taxes. The Democrats want to destroy marriage. The Democrats are in favor of pornography. If the Democrats win control of the Congress, al Qaeda will attack us here at home. If the Democrats win control of Congress, the economy will collapse. The Democrats owe no allegiance to the people of America. Every Democratic candidate is under the control of those left-wing Liberals Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer and John Kerry. A Democratic victory will mean the end of American civilization. I’ve got a list of 250 communists in the Democratic Party. Oops, forget the last one; I forgot what year it is.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” So said Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister of Nazi Germany. Murray Chotner used the big lie technique to bring us Richard Nixon. Karl Rowe used it to bring us George W. Bush. And now President George and his Republican buddies are using the big lie technique in a desperate attempt to hold on to power for the next two years.

Whether it’s the political ad trumpeting the lie or the stump speech stirring up fear, the one thing the Republicans don’t want the voters to look at is their record over the past six years. The campaign strategy is simple: make the Democrats look so evil that the voters will reelect us even if we have done a terrible job. We have to make the people afraid to vote for a Democrat.

This lie-fear-smear strategy appeals to the most basic of human emotions. It is based on a desire to get people to vote from their gut rather than from their mind. It is based on an elitist mentality that says that the American people aren’t smart enough to deal with issues. It’s based on a suspicion that if the electorate actually voted on the issues, they might vote against our side. Therefore, lie to them, terrify them, cover your opponent with slime. But at all costs, don’t let the voters think.

Citizens of Virginia! Isn’t it about time that we told the purveyors of lie, fear and smear that we don’t fall for this outrageous campaign tactic? Go to the polls next week and show them that we Virginians can vote with our minds, not with our instincts. Show them that we are not too stupid to understand issues. Show them that despite their smokescreens we can see that “the Emperor is naked.” Six years of Republican mismanagement is enough. Vote Democratic.

This year it’s McCain and Palin, instead of Bush and Cheney, but our good buddies in the GOP are still using lies, fear and smear as the basis of their attempt to extend their control over the White House for four more years. If they succeed this year by diverting the voter’s attention from their ruinous reign it could prove disastrous for our country and the world.

So, citizens of Virginia, I must again exhort you to vote with your mind, not with your instincts. Vote for Obama-Biden. Vote for Warner. Vote for Scott or Hartke for Congress. It’s time to really get the red out.