COMMENTARY: In King George, Democracy's in Short Supply
Some members of the Board of Supervisors in King George dismiss public input as an inconvenience. They know in their "core" what people want, so don't ask. This attitude is undermining public trust.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Sitting in a middle school auditorium awaiting the start of her daughter’s choral concert, a woman turned and made eye contact with the man sitting next to her.
“Hi,” she said, “I’m Abigail.”
It was election season, Rep. Spanberger told the people attending last week’s Question and Answer forum with the Fredericksburg Advance, and she was fairly sure the man recognized her face because it had been in TV ads and mailers on a near daily basis.
His response caught her off guard, and it gave her an insight into the disconnect people feel from their public officials.
“People like me,” he began, “don’t get to meet people like you.”
“I’ll remember that until the day I die,” she said, noting she was “just a mom” there to support her kid.
“What I heard in that comment,” she said, “was one of the biggest things that contributes to the lack of trust” people feel in government.
“That man clearly feels disconnected, or different, from the citizen legislature that we should have [emphasis added] where we send people off to represent their community for a time,” and then return.
Spanberger feels that disconnect because she represents a district where all three of her elections were close. “The wonderful thing about being in a toss-up district,” she said “is that you have a lot of people who vote for you, and you have a lot of people who don’t vote for you.”
Therefore, when people ask why she didn’t sign on to a piece of legislation they feel she should have, she regularly makes a point to explain to that constituent why.
“There’s a level of accountability in that,” she said.
‘Cowboy’ Mentality Rejects Accountability
Where there is no accountability — or even a belief that elected officials should be accountable — is King George County.
As the Advance reported last week, Supervisor Kenneth “Cowboy” Stroud took it upon himself to write a new vision and mission statement, and then push it through a board meeting without so much as a note on Facebook that citizens could respond to.
Out of the other four members of the Board, only one — Cathy Binder — was bothered by the blatant disdain for citizens Stroud displayed in changing the vision and mission of the entire county with no public input.
“This is a great start, but I think we need a little bit more work on this and further discussion and some citizen input,” she said. “This is a mission statement for the entire county and the five of us should not do 100% of the work.”
She continued: “Shouldn’t this be developed not among us in emails but in the public arena?”
Stroud, with all the arrogance of a cowboy sitting atop a horse and talking down to a pedestrian with muddy boots and tattered clothes, made plain he didn’t need citizen input.
“We were elected by the citizens to provide a mission and vision statement and that’s what I’m doing.”
T.C. Collins, who has already shown himself an imperious leader (see here and here and here) then revealed how deep his own contempt for countervailing opinions runs.
“Is this not what the citizens want?” Collins asked. “It appears that it is from everything I know in my core.”
Collins may know it in his “core,” but he’s oblivious to the sizeable population of people in King George who don’t share his and Stroud’s confidence.
“Yes,” Binder said in response, “we are elected by the citizens on a mandate or whatever it is, but the citizens have a right to have a say in this also, in a public process.”
Stroud, of all the Board members, should know this. He won his seat by a smaller margin than any of the other four Board members, taking 55% of the vote in his 2023 race.
Define Your Terms
In addition to the arrogance displayed in forcing a vision and mission statement on the entire county with no input from the citizens, Binder was disturbed that the document contained “terms, but no definition of those terms.”
She’s right to be concerned. The proposed vision statement reads, “To promote general welfare by maintaining a rural county where all citizens can enjoy freedom and prosperity with limited government intrusion.”
The proposed mission statement is “to create and maintain a responsive local government that promotes rural life, civic engagement, fiscal responsibility, and economic vitality.”
It continues, “We aim to protect our community, preserve our heritage, and anticipate future needs, as well as opportunities to make King George, Virginia, the best place to live, raise a family, and own a business.”
What does Stroud mean by “limited government intrusion”? A worrying phrase when this Board has denied FOIA requests related to complaints against Collins, overseen an exodus of county employees, and displayed questionable judgment in data center negotiations and budgeting.
And how does that square with a “responsive government” that doesn’t appear to be interested in being responsive to its citizens?
And what does “civic engagement” look like when Stroud and Collins tell citizens, as they have with the vision and mission statements, we don’t need to hear from you?
Particularly disturbing is this statement: “preserve our heritage.”
Whose heritage, exactly?
In a county that is overwhelmingly white — 76% according to the Census Bureau — it can be easy to conveniently forget that King George County was in 1860 a major player in the enslavement of Black Americans.
According to a map drawn in 1861 based on the 1860 Census, 59% of King George’s people were enslaved. That’s more than in Culpeper, Orange, Spotsylvania, Stafford, and Westmoreland.
Southern “heritage” is rightly a controversial topic. As T.R.C. Hutton has pointed out:
‘Heritage’ suggests that the past not only did not go anywhere but it has also worked to the present’s benefit even when the present does not acknowledge it.
Such language spins up Gov. Glenn Youngkin who sees “critical race theory” in this idea — an idea he decidedly wants to shut down.
Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that Stroud ended his mission statement with “make King George, Virginia, the best place to live, raise a family, and own a business.” It’s a direct rip-off of Youngkin’s signature statement expressing his goal to make Virginia the “best place to live, work, and raise a family.”
One suspects his reference to heritage is also a rip-off of Youngkin’s effort to terminate any serious discussion of race in Virginia.
So, Binder is correct, the Cowboy has a lot of explaining to do. After all, this mission statement reads like it was written at the last minute, of the last hour, of the last day by a student who hasn’t been paying attention all year.
And rather than listen to people who may have good ideas to improve upon what’s been done, the Cowboy runs to his flunkies to tell him how right they think he is.
It’s Not About Politics, but Understanding the Body Politic
At the close of Spanberger’s Q&A session, I noted that she has something in common with another politician I got to know while living in South Carolina — Strom Thurmond.
The joke in South Carolina was that you weren’t officially a state citizen until you were on his Christmas card list. Thurmond and I agreed on just about nothing politically, but I could admire his efforts to at least hear from everyone in the Palmetto State, whether they voted for him or not.
Spanberger is the same kind of politician. There are many conservatives who roundly disagree with her policies, but they respect that she listens to them and delivers an explanation for her answers. In short, she’s accountable.
That’s a lesson that the Cowboy needs to learn, and soon.
But to learn it, he first needs to learn why he was elected. And he wasn’t elected to do whatever he wants.
He was elected to represent his constituents, and to listen to them. And to then be accountable to them.
At least 45% of his constituents aren’t happy with his politics, based on the most recent election. Agreeing with Stroud’s politics, however, is far less important to those who didn’t vote for him than his learning to listen to those he doesn’t agree with.
It’s not about politics, Cowboy, but the body politic.
You don’t need to be a scholar to know this, though reading the Federalist Papers wouldn’t hurt, nor would learning basic American political history.
You do, however, need to believe in democracy.
When you don’t, accountability suffers, and people lose trust in their government.
Cowboy’s bucking accountability — trust in him and the government board he sits on won’t be far behind.
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Lots of mudslinging and little else, other than the usual election hosannas for Spamberger. But, that's what I have come to expect from Marty. I notice he rips apart the KG BOS recommendation, yet has none of his own. Surely a muckraking writer like him can come up with something worthy of "democracy" (even if we are a Republic). Perhaps a few lines from Karl Marx?
This is horrific. "Preserve our heritage." Cowboy hats and knowing in the core. Seems like a lot of 'Yellowstone' beef jerky propaganda script, and not in a good way. The flip around from the despair the psychologists Case and Deaton described in 2015 as responsible for an intense increase in mortality in communities like King George (and Spotsy, and Orange, etc), -- "white, working-class people ages 45 to 54, who were drinking themselves to death with alcohol, accidentally overdosing on opioids and other drugs, and killing themselves, often by sooting or hanging" -- is being powered by something even more dangerous, one worries. Folks, anger is worse than despair, easily mis-directed at the vulnerable, and guaranteed to produce evil and destruction -- of the angry. Gotta resist the anger and the propaganda. We have a common "heritage" called humanity. Let's focus. . .