by James A. Bacon
Times-Dispatch columnist Michael Paul Williams nailed it this morning when writing about Henrico County’s election results: Once reliably Republican, the suburban county north of Richmond is turning blue — and the strong African-American voting bloc in the eastern precincts has a lot to do with it. “Most certainly, the 4 percent meals tax approved by voters Tuesday for county schools would never have won approval if eastern Henrico had not supported it en masse,” Williams wrote.
Barack Obama won the county in two presidential elections, as did Tim Kaine two gubernatorial elections ago. Republican Bob McDonnell prevailed four years ago, but Democratic Terry McAuliffe trounced Republican Ken Cuccinelli in the governor’s race by 52% to 40% (and 7% for Libertarian Robert Sarvis). The victory of Democrat Shannon Attorney in the commonwealth attorney’s race two years ago — an affront to the local Republican Party machine — was no fluke, suggested Williams.
“This race basically shows that Henrico’s at the forefront of what’s happening in Virginia,” [veteran political analyst Bob] Holsworth said. “It used to be that Republicans owned the suburbs and Democrats the inner city. But as suburbs have changed demographically, Democrats have done very well in metropolitan areas.” …
Henrico, he said, is looking more like some places in Northern Virginia, with its ethnic diversity. And he foresees a day when the county — which already has a majority-minority school district — will have a larger black population than Richmond’s.
That’s all very true. The irony, of course, is that poor African-Americans voted against their own self-interest on the meals tax. The alternative was not cutting school spending but raising the real estate property tax rate by 6 cents per dollar. That would have effected affluent, white West End voters way more than than the poor, African-American voters in eastern Henrico.
But cynical supporters of the meals tax, backed primarily by the real estate lobby, appealed to racial grievances by framing the issue as one of addressing the disparities between East End and West End schools. In truth, half the meals tax revenue will be used for operations (paying teacher pensions) and the other half for rehabbing school buildings (with no specific projects identified). I hope it’s not too much to ask that Williams follows up one day to see where that tax money ends up.
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