by James A. Bacon
The election of John Vihstadt to the Arlington County Board in the general election last week, which has gotten very little play downstate, is rocking the Democratic political establishment in Virginia’s most liberal jurisdiction. Electorally speaking, Arlington is bluer than the sky on a clear October day — Obama won 69% of the vote in 2012, Romney 29% — yet citizens have had it up to their eyeballs with gold-plated spending schemes.
Arlington has done a superb job in managing transportation and land use, with the result that it enjoys the best of both worlds: a relatively low tax rate and a bountiful flow of tax dollars into the treasury. The county’s liberal Democratic majority deserve credit for having stuck consistently to their Smart Growth development strategy for decades and for doing an excellent job on execution.
But liberal Democrats do love to spend money, and a series of controversies over $1 million bus stops, an $80 million aquatics center, a $1.6 million dog park and a $350 million streetcar project has a lot of citizens up in arms.
Vihstadt, a Republican-turned-independent, won a special election in April, campaigning against the streetcar project as his signature issue. He won re-election last week with nearly 56% of the vote, making him the first non-Democrat to win a general election since 1983. It’s not as if the Dems didn’t turn out for the election — Arlington voters backed Senator Mark Warner with more than 70% of the vote.
County Board member Libby Garvey, a Democrat, has joined Vihstadt in opposing the controversial project in the five-person board. Now some observers are saying that the three pro-streetcar board members, two of whom stand for re-election next year, are on the hot spot.
The punditocracy has devoted considerable ink to the divining the extent to which the 2014 elections were a genuine Republican “wave” or a reflection of the fact that core Democratic constituencies don’t turn out in off-year elections. Vihstadt’s victory is indicative that something deeper than voter turnout or a new-found love of Republicans lies at the root of the election results. Democratic turnout was not an issue in Arlington’s local election — almost everyone’s a Democrat to begin with. But it seems clear that even some Democrats are uneasy with what is perceived to be runaway spending.
Not everyone sees it the way I do. Robert Parry, a former investigative reporter for the Associated Press and Newsweek, sees the vote as a triumph of the liberals’ all-purpose bogeyman — racism! As Parry observes in a recent column, white Arlingtonians don’t think of themselves as racist. But how else does one explain voter rejection of a streetcar that would provide transportation services to the county’s black community, which has been victimized by slavery… Jim Crow… residential discrimination… income disparities, etc., etc.
“Tea Party-style politicians have learned that — whatever the reality — they can exploit the Old Confederacy’s subterranean racial divisions for political gain,” writes Parry. “As we’ve seen in Arlington County, the strategy works not only in the rural Deep South but in relatively sophisticated communities in Northern Virginia.”
Talk about denial — Arlingtonians may be the most affluent, educated and liberal electorate in Virginia but they are closet racists who were duped by the Tea Party!
Sometimes opposition to big spending is simply… opposition to big spending. Republicans and independents may be greed-heads who selfishly want to spend their own money themselves rather than handing it over to politicians to spend it for them. But even some idealistic Democrats realize that if the United States is to preserve the welfare state, the country, the state and the county can’t afford to run out of money because they frittered it away on wasteful projects.
Other politicians with big spending plans should pay heed. Republican Virginia Beach Mayor Will Sessoms — are you paying attention? Democratic Richmond Mayor Dwight Jones — how about you?