Outside the Party Lines
Black Legislators' GOP Alliances Upset Va. Democrats
By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 1, 1998; Page B01
Last year, state Sens. L. Louise Lucas and Stephen D. Newman were the unlikely duo behind a successful effort to pass a bill retiring Virginia's state song, whose lyrics were criticized as racist.
This year, they're together again, this time with a bill to ban a procedure used in late-term abortions.
And on another issue dear to social conservatives' hearts -- strengthening "parental rights" -- yet another unlikely pair has emerged: black Democratic Del. A. Donald McEachin and white, conservative Republican Sen. Stephen H. Martin.
The unusual recent alliances between black Democrats and conservative Republicans are alarming to many other Virginia Democrats who are struggling to fend off a GOP takeover of the legislature.
"Some of my Democratic colleagues are having a fit," said Lucas, who has represented Portsmouth in the Senate for six years. "They're giving me the silent treatment, saying, 'I don't believe you did that.' "
Such cooperation indicates that although black Democrats and conservative, white Republicans may not agree on much, they do see eye to eye on a number of issues that touch on family, religion and social policies.
African American voters tend to be socially conservative, with strong moral values nurtured in the church, political analysts say.
"They may identify much more with the Democratic Party than the Republican Party, to be sure," said Mark Rozell, an American University political scientist. "But there is some convergence of values on the social issues between what we call the religious right and black voters."
In Virginia's increasingly Republican legislature, such marriages of convenience also play into the GOP's effort to broaden its appeal to minorities and could lead to new divisions among Democrats in the General Assembly, analysts say.
"It portends possible rifts, additional rifts, within the [Democratic] Party," said Toni-Michelle Travis, a George Mason University political scientist. She recalled how Republican Gov. James S. Gilmore III drafted two Democratic lawmakers to join his administration, which led to the GOP winning outright control of the Senate for the first time and forcing a power-sharing agreement in the House.
"Gilmore started one rift," Travis said. "This could be a second major one."
Last week, McEachin, a Richmond Democrat, and Martin, a Chesterfield Republican, filed virtually identical bills drafted with the aid of Michael P. Farris, a home-schooling advocate.
Their plan calls for a law that would give enforcement power to a state appellate court decision establishing the fundamental right of a parent to "autonomy in child-rearing." Critics say that although it may sound harmless and even attractive, it could expose schools and agencies to a flood of litigation by parents upset with decisions by teachers, coaches or social workers.
"Oh my God! He's lost his head!" Sen. Joseph V. Gartlan Jr. (D-Fairfax) gasped when told of McEachin's bill, which contains language identical to a proposed constitutional amendment that narrowly failed last year in a highly partisan Senate floor battle.
Gartlan said that if the plan were passed, it could deter a social worker who wishes to remove a child from an abusive home for fear of a lawsuit. "That's going to freeze them in their tracks," he said.
"I have a great deal of respect for Don McEachin," added Gartlan, an old-line liberal. "I'm not questioning his motives or examining the whys of his reasoning. But I think it's bad politics."
McEachin said his bill merely would allow plaintiffs to recover lawyers' fees if they successfully sue local or state agencies for violating civil rights, including "the fundamental right of a parent to direct the upbringing and education of the parent's child." But Farris acknowledges that such a law would codify parental rights and become "a big deterrent to governments."
McEachin said that there are many issues on which he and conservative Republicans clash, but parental rights is not among them. "There's a general misconception about the African American community," he said. "It's a lot more conservative than people give it credit for being."
McEachin, who also is sponsoring legislation to preserve "religious freedom" -- a church's ability to sponsor a soup kitchen, for example -- and to recognize the graves of slaves in Confederate cemeteries, said that making "common cause" with social conservatives does not mean he is forgetting his Democratic roots.
"I am not a Republican because, at least in this state, in my view, they are where the old Byrd [segregationist] machine ended up," he said. "Their views on racial issues, I'd stress to you, are backwards."
Lucas cast the deciding vote last year to kill a bill banning certain late-term abortions, in which a fetus is partially delivered and then aborted. She said that she still favors abortion rights but that after learning more about the "partial-birth" procedure, she decided that it should be banned.
"To understand that the cervix is dilated, the baby is four-fifths born, is really what turned my position on the issue," she said. "I'm a mother of three children and grandmother of four. Just to know that baby is within seconds of being born, if you're a parent, that just cannot rest well with you."
Some Democrats suggest privately that political ambition is motivating black lawmakers such as Lucas and McEachin to align with conservative Republicans, but Lucas bristled at such speculation.
"That is absolutely bizarre!" she said. "Yes, I have aspirations for higher office. But it is not linked to legislation to ban partial-birth abortion."
Newman, who has represented the conservative Lynchburg district since 1996, agreed. "That's just sour grapes by people who are upset they no longer have the majority," he said. "Mind you, Louise, in her party, will pay a price on this. I will pay a price for working with Louise instead of just conservatives. . . . But if you do find issues of common ground, and you have the right and the left covered reasonably well, the middle normally comes along."
McEachin is mum on his political future but said he would never offer legislation he did not believe in. What's more, he said: "It's foolhardy for Democrats to let Republicans cut into their base and do nothing about it. Good old-fashioned electoral politics dictates that we ought to solidify our base and make inroads into theirs."
"We're not going to make inroads into the far right's base, ever," Senate Democratic Leader Richard L. Saslaw (Fairfax) said. "The parental rights legislation is opposed by every group except them. . . . Whether he wants to do it or not, he's jumped in bed with the kingpin of that movement, Mike Farris."
The Rev. Benjamin W. Robertson, pastor of Cedar Street Baptist Church of God in Richmond's Church Hill, said the alliance between black Democrats and white Republicans isn't unexpected. Black churches, he said, have always been "liberal-conservative" groups.
"We are liberal in the sense of fighting for civil rights and social justice but conservative in our ideas of morality," Robertson said. "There was a time we were so conservative that going to a movie on Sunday . . . was considered sinful."
Farris and other Republicans welcome the new political arrangements.
"It's thrilling that it's shaking up some of the traditional alliances," he said. "It gives social conservatives, who are sometimes taken for granted by the Republican elite, and African Americans, who are sometimes taken for granted by the Democratic elite, the chance to work together and to make our own way together."
Analysts say black lawmakers, like all other politicians, are looking out for their own -- and their districts' -- interests. With the legislature potentially under long-term Republican control, African Americans are learning how to "fit in that new arrangement," GMU's Travis said.
"They will have to work with the new majority to get benefits, to get their legislation through, whatever they want," she said.
She said the new coalitions could breathe fresh air into the legislature. "This will be an opportunity for African Americans and other longtime Democrats to look for commonalities with the new majority -- for political survival and to avoid stalemate," Travis said.
Robert Holsworth, a political scientist at Virginia Commonwealth University, went further. "In many ways it's the kind of experimentation the Democratic Party needs to engage in more broadly," he said.
Del. Lionell Spruill Sr. (D-Chesapeake), a black caucus member who has endorsed McEachin's parental-rights bill, said that the party for too long has taken blacks for granted and that it's only natural that some black Democrats might want to shop around.
"We're Democrats by nature," he said. "But several of us are saying, 'Wait a minute, what are you doing for us? Now let's look at what the best choice is.' "
But Spruill said that despite the realignment on some social issues, "On the political issues, the distrust for Republicans is still out there."
© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
