Va. Delegates Question 'Right-to-Work' Views

Nominee's '20-Year-Old Quotes' Resurrected

RICHMOND, Feb. 7 -- Republican lawmakers in Virginia's House of Delegates assailed one of Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's Cabinet nominees Tuesday, questioning his stance on state "right-to-work" laws and criticizing comments he made as the state's top labor leader over the past two decades.

In December, Kaine appointed his longtime friend and former AFL-CIO director Daniel G. LeBlanc to be the state's next secretary of the commonwealth, a job that oversees political patronage and the more than 4,000 gubernatorial appointments to boards and commissions.

Some Republican lawmakers in the House have been simmering since then. On Tuesday, that boiled over during a confirmation hearing as conservatives on the General Laws Committee used newspaper quotes from 10 and 20 years ago to question LeBlanc's fitness for the job.

Lawmakers must vote on whether to confirm LeBlanc and Kaine's other Cabinet choices before the end of the 2006 General Assembly session. GOP leaders said they did not know when the vote would be scheduled.

Del. Terrie Lynne Suit (R-Virginia Beach) led the questioning, citing an article in an online publication, the People's Weekly World, which she said quoted LeBlanc as saying that white executives of Newport News Shipbuilding ran the shipyard and its black workers like "a plantation."

She said the site, which bills itself as "a progressive, leftist, socialist and communist weekly," quoted LeBlanc as comparing "right-to-work" lawmakers with segregationists.

"How will you reach out to Newport News Shipbuilding and work with them . . . given that you have no respect for that corporation?" Suit asked.

"Where did you get that quote from? I don't read that kind of newspaper," LeBlanc said, prompting the GOP chairman of the committee to produce a similar quote from the Richmond Times-Dispatch newspaper.

LeBlanc later acknowledged saying "something similar to that" but insisted several times that "I have a good relationship, but more importantly, the working men and women have a great relationship with the shipyard."

In the 75-minute session, lawmakers queried LeBlanc about being arrested during a United Mine Workers strike in the 1980s. LeBlanc said he was arrested along with about 5,000 other people.

"You affirmatively disobeyed a lawful order. That's what you are telling me?" asked Del. David B. Albo (R-Fairfax).

"That's correct," LeBlanc said and added that it was an act of civil disobedience.