After some independent investigation, I
largely confirmed by brother’s account of events, with some important context
added.
I grew up in bucolic Campbell County,
Virginia, and we join our tale of county politics in medias res on September 16, 2011, when the political action
committee Independent
Conservatives of Campbell County was formed.
Boasting a population of over 55,000, Campbell County
is situated in the central Virginia foothills and includes suburban areas near
the City of Lynchburg and rural areas in the county’s southern reaches.
Established in 1781 and named after a
Revolutionary War General, Campbell County is governed by a 7-member Board of Supervisors. Supervisors serve staggered, four-year terms. Currently, 3 of the 7 Supervisors are
Republicans, with the rest identifying as independents. The County’s state representatives, state
Senators, and U.S. Congressman are all Republicans. The Democrat Party brand does not command
much attention in the county, and the Independent Conservatives were formed as
an alternative to the local Republican Party.
In the 2013 county elections, 3 of the 7
Supervisors were up for re-election, and all three ran
under the Independent Conservative banner.
The three incumbents faced Republican
opponents who campaigned jointly on opposition to a 2012 tax increase.
In November 2013, two
of the three incumbents lost to the Republican-backed candidates. The two losing incumbents had both voted in
favor of the 2012 property tax increase.
One of the ousted incumbents had been endorsed
by the county’s Democrat Party. The
result was enough to flip the 5-2 majority in favor of the 2012 tax increase to
a potential 3-4 majority against further increases.
Those on the short end of the 2013
election did not take the results lying down.
On March 20, 2014, the County Republicans were scheduled to hold their
bi-annual Mass
Meeting, which, in Minnesota terms seems, to be a combination precinct
caucus/BPOU meeting.
Neil Vener worked
for Campbell County government for 28 years, finishing his career in 2011
as a prosecuting attorney. Vener submitted
a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to obtain the email addresses for
the county’s public school and other employees. The County’s public school system
employs 1,300. The county itself employs
another 200 for a public employee total of 1,500.
Like Minnesota, Virginia does not
register voters by political party.
Vener sent each an email urging them to attend the Republican meeting, writing,
in part,
You, your family and your
friends must come to the Campbell County Republican Mass Meeting next Thursday,
March 20, at 6:30 p.m. Having as many
people as possible who share your views is critical because the number of
people is the key to having our voices heard. Please note that you will not have to speak at
the meeting.
Vener added,
There is no cost to you
and you do not need to be a “Registered Republican” to attend. All that is required is that you be registered
to vote in Campbell County.
Vener
emphasized in his close,
Please join us at this
meeting and fight for the future of Campbell County and possibly the existence
of your job. If you don’t feel you can
attend, send family members and friends to let your voice be counted.
And heed his call they did. The Lynchburg News & Advance reported
that the Mass Meeting, which would normally draw fewer than 250 attendees, drew
581. The additional attendees,
presumably, were made up of county and public school employees and related
family members.
In the event, the coup d’état succeeded. By narrow margins Vener was voted Chair of
the Meeting and John Ferguson, a Campbell County resident but employed by a
neighboring county government, was elected to a two-year term as the local
party Chair, ousting the Republican incumbent.
Ferguson’s wife is employed by the Campbell County schools. In Ferguson’s campaign
literature, he emphasized the following,
You will be asked [at the Mass Meeting] to sign a
paper declaring your “intent” to vote Republican in the fall election. However, this pledge is absolutely nonbinding
and there are no candidates selected at this time.
Presumably, Ferguson means that under
his regime either no Republican candidates will be selected or that any
candidates selected would meet the approval of county and school employees. Ferguson reportedly
succeeded in electing his slate of county-employee supporters as delegates to
higher-level conventions, ousting the usual suspects of long-time Republican
volunteers.
On the surface, Ferguson makes for an
unlikely anti-Republican stalking horse.
He attended the conservative Liberty University—founded by the late
televangelist Jerry Falwell—where he served as president of the campus College Republicans. Ferguson describes
himself as “a Christian conservative Republican.”
The big test for Mr. Ferguson will come
in 2015, when the other four county supervisors are up for re-election.
Perhaps, this incident is better
described—as some have suggested—as an intra-party struggle (between Tea Partiers
and more moderate, Establishment types) in an area where the Democrat Party is
virtually non-existent. I haven’t lived
in the county for decades and am likely missing much nuance between the different
political factions intertwined with local government employee grievances.
But by using literal-busloads of public
employees and a handful of Democrats to take over a local Republican Party
unit, Mr. Ferguson may have established a precedent we will have wished he didn’t. You tend to reap what you sow.
In the Minnesota context, what would
stop, say, Education Minnesota from mobilizing members to take over any
Republican BPOU they wished, with a single email, just as Mr. Vener did in
Virginia. In Campbell County, it took a
mere 300 votes, out of a county-government-employee population of 1,500, to
take over a party nominally committed to low taxes and smaller government. What precinct, BPOU, or county-level
Republican Party group in Minnesota could turn back the tide of just 20 percent
of the local public school union members?
Politics, as practiced in America,
relies a great deal on the good faith of all involved. When pledges are considered “nonbinding” and
party labels merely a flag of convenience, something gets lost. At some point, clever politics shades into
something closer to fraud.
In November of 2015, will the good
voters of Campbell County be presented with two parties, but a single choice—a government-employee-backed
Republican slate and an Independent Conservative, Democrat-endorsed slate—both committed
to higher taxes and more spending?
Yes, the world does belong to whoever
shows up. Yes, Republicans in Campbell
County should have turned out in greater numbers to fend off the
county-employee takeover last month.
However, I believe that politics—as would
any other industry—benefits from having true competition.
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