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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Put up, before I’ll put out				April 24, 2002

A few weeks ago I got a solicitation from the Virginia state Democratic organization, urging me to contribute to their Virginia Democratic Victory Campaign Fund.

Whoa. What on earth is that, I wondered. Here I am, living in James City County, where, in the November elections, I’ll have a choice between Jo Ann Davis or Jo Ann Davis and John Warner or John Warner. Where’s the Democratic victory in that setup?

As far as I can tell, the Democrats are like Dostoyevsky’s hero in his “Notes from Underground.” This poor bloke lives in a metaphoric mouse hole, philosophically musing on the fact that life is a series of encounters with brick walls. Much better, he thinks, to stay in the mouse hole.

And so it is with the Democrats. Obviously Warner and Davis represent brick walls that no Democrat will ever breach.

Not long after the Victory Campaign Fund appeal arrived, there appeared in the Daily Press an article about John Warner, who’s evidently ranging about the state like some lonesome cowpoke looking for Democratic dogies to round up or perhaps in the guise of Don Quixote, vainly searching for some Democratic windmills to have a tilt with. But there are none.

“I enjoy strong competition in all walks of life,” said Warner. Well, luck with that, John, because you’re not going to get it from the Democrats. In fact, according to Larry Sabato, the ubiquitous docent of Virginia politics, the state Democratic party is telling anyone who might be silly enough to run against Warner that “you swim at your own risk, and if you do, you’re going to drown and we’re not going to jump in and help you.”

And these are the people who want me to contribute to a Democratic Victory Campaign Fund? I don’t think so.

Don’t get me wrong. I really have nothing against John Warner. Unlike George Allen, that master mason of brick walls, Warner at least answers my letters and tells me that he’ll remember my positions when he votes. Usually I find out later that he hasn’t remembered my positions at all, but that’s okay, since he’s obviously a man of principle and had the good sense to deliver us from the ideological bouquets of Oliver North.

Then there’s that other impenetrable brick wall: Jo Ann Davis. What makes her so invulnerable is indeed an enigma, unless it’s the fact that she opposes trash and abortion and had a post office in Newport News named for Herb Bateman.

She certainly is no great radiance of luminosity among the dim stars that make up the House of Representatives, though I suppose she could be considered one of those free floating quarks that astronomers have recently discovered. Yet Democrats tremble at her name simply because she’s a Republican in what they’ve decided is an overwhelmingly Republican district.

As one local Democratic loyalist put it in a recent edition of “Publius,” the Democrats “are missing the opportunity to mount a principled, issue-oriented campaign showing what we stand for in issues of education, equality of opportunity, progressive taxation, the environment, crime and punishment, the transportation infrastructure and the separation of church and state.”

And he’s right. How can the Democrats hope to get any message out if they remain mute? Even if their candidate has no hope of winning, they should realize that to build any kind of a popular base they must present their case to the people, win or lose.

Generally speaking, all uncontested elections are troubling. In Williamsburg, for instance, both Jeanne Zeidler and George Genakos will be running unopposed in their May elections. While they both have been trying to get their message out to neighborhood groups in the city, the fact is that without any opposition the people hear only one point of view relative to such issues as education, transportation and future development in the city.

And while Zeidler claims that she approves of the non-partisan nature of City Council, I suspect that her views on any number of contestable issues would be more focused if she had someone from the right opposing her candidacy. Non-partisanship does not necessarily imply that views on the right and left must be mixed together to form a muddled middle.

In the end, perhaps it’s time to change the law. Perhaps we should stipulate that if candidates run uncontested they must garner at least 51% of the votes of registered voters in their districts. If they don’t, the district should go unrepresented. Maybe then the delinquent parties, be they Democrats or Republicans, will field candidates who will provide the people with a real choice.

Who knows? Under that arrangement the Democrats might locate their guts and find that Jo Ann Davis’s brick wall is penetrable after all. And maybe I’ll even send in a little something to that Democratic Victory Campaign Fund.