According to The Virginian Pilot, Virginia Beach councilman Bill DeSteph tried to hold a meeting of “Republican city, state and federal elected officials.”
…most of the seven invited city council members declined to attend. One cited a scheduling conflict, when reached by The Virginian-Pilot Monday.
Most said they didn’t want to take part in a partisan event and worried that the gathering could be interpreted as a secret meeting because neither the public nor the press had been notified.
Council is nonpartisan, but DeSteph invited those members that he thought were Republican, leaving out Mayor Meyera Oberndorf, Barbara Henley and John Uhrin. One problem, though:
State law allows three or more council members to gather for social and political reasons without public notice as long as they don’t discuss city business, said Les Lilley, Virginia Beach’s city attorney.
[…]
“The fact that a majority of the council would be meeting behind closed doors is something that would likely be perceived negatively by the average citizen, whether legal or not,” Councilman Jim Wood wrote to DeSteph in an e-mail on Sunday afternoon.
Good for Councilman Wood for recognizing what could have turned into a political faux pas. Of course, that doesn’t seem to stop DeSteph:
DeSteph said he is sorry for the confusion and will reschedule it.
One of the reasons so many localities have resisted moving municipal elections to November is because of the fear that partisan politics will creep in. Due to financial considerations, I support the moving of such elections. This particular case demonstrates that partisan politics are already a part of local elections. Since that is the case, there really is no reason not to move the elections – except to maintain the power of those already elected.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
I disagree with the logic that this event demonstrates the desireability to move municipal elections to November, although I don’t think it demonstrates the necessity for keeping elections in the spring, either. To me, it simply demonstrates that Bill DeSteph is an ignorant jackass. I can understand being out of touch with your constituents, but for pete’s sake, how can he be so out of touch with the rest of the city council?!
Ultimately, the lesson is that just because a politcal neophyte can buy a seat on the city council doesn’t necessarily mean that he should.
I believe moving elections to November will only magnify the worst problems with Virginia Beach’s evil at-large voting system. They should have implemented a ward system first, then moved to November if turnout continued to lag.
As for DeSteph’s meeting, advertise it and have it open for public observers. I can’t imagine what would be covered that would need to stay secret. That’s my problem with it: I don’t see how you discuss applying Republican principles to local government without taking up specific issues, which they can’t do in private under Virginia law.
You know I looked at this very carefully and it doesn’t add up. Reba Mcclanan was invited, whose husband use to be a democratic state delegate and she herself has remained friendly to the democratic party. Harry Diezel was on Phil Kellam’s steering committee. John Uhrin is also a republican, and he wasn’t invited. I think the meeting may have been more of a lets ganged up on Meyera and help plan her demise.
Geoff,
I agree about Diezel: his PAC was a contributor to the challenges by Peter Schmidt and Delceno Miles in 2005. I wouldn’t have invited him.
John Uhrin is part-and-parcel of what one observer calls “the Oceanfront cartel”, so you wouldn’t want him around if planning a conservative fiscal overhaul.
HMR – I agree that VB should have a ward system. At-large voting in November will be a costly affair.
Interesting points on who was invited versus who was not.
First, it was idiotic for VB to move the elections to November. Now, with their next election, you will have incumbents and candidates not used to raising much money (for the most part) having to raise enough money to NOT be drowned out by the presidential candidates and Mark Warner/Jim Gilmore. Lot of luck . . . that’s a lot of cabbage to get yourself heard over those noise machines.
Second, DeSteph’s actions only illustrate, once again, why so many people — Council members included — think he is such a door knob. He charges in like a monkey on crack, throwing questions and demands left and right, not stopping to think things through, pissing people off and proving himself to be out of control and out of touch. He does all this under the guise of “trying to shake things up and get things done,” but he hasn’t learned some of the basics about politics — namely, you get things accomplished in politics by building coalitions and learning how to swap and trade with others. His jumping up and down and kicking his feet and holding his breath until he gets his way has even Republicans distancing themselves from him.
For Bob Tata to gush about how this means DeSteph is “moving things” because he wants to get things done just shows how out-of-touch Bob “Coma” Tata has become. If it’s such a great thing, why didn’t Ol’ Bob ever adopt this style of legislating for himself?? And “Fireball Bob” wants to accuse City Hall of being “fat and sassy???” I guess his volcanic presence and legislative record are the example elected officials should aspire to????
I suppose the upside of all this is that DeSteph will eventually self-destruct and immolate his career and no one will have to take him down — he will do that himself.
Third, there seems to be some discussions going around City Hall that says DeSteph has been complaining that Bob Purkey will “never move his butt out” (his words) so that DeSteph can run for Purkey’s GA seat. So now he is considering jumping into the mayor’s race for next year — Virginia Beach’s version of Don Knotts as our mayor.
There could be something to that and would explain why he invited Rebaaaaaa and not Urhin. Reba would have no problem seeing anyone try to take out the Mayor and Urhin is a known supporter of Will Sessoms — so why have him at a meeting and take the chance of having him go back to Will with the ol’ “insider’s info?”
There does seem to be a groundswell for DeSteph to run for mayor — of ANCHORAGE, Alaska. If he were to get elected mayor of VB, you would see so many employees, citizens and fellow Council members flinging themselves off the roof of City Hall, it would look like a storm of locusts had taken over the skies of VB. It would resemble the flying monkeys scene from the “Wizard of Oz.”
DeSteph as mayor . . . now that will get you waking up in the middle of the night screaming, won’t it?
Geoff et al,
I agree with the points about who was invited and who wasn’t. The specific selection of which council members to invite or not invite perplexed me, too, for mostly the same reasons. I let it slide in my initial comments because I have one fundamental operating assumption about DeSteph:
He’s too politically ignorant to be able to discern who on the council is a republican, who isn’t, and why. The why, especially, is important.
Sometimes I feel like many of the council members in Virginia Beach wouldn’t be the smartest man in the room if he was standing in a phone booth, but I will say this for them: they’re relatively non-partisan compared to some Northern Virginia municipalities (Fairfax, Loudoun, the P-Dub). They might care about some partisan issues, but they care more about keeping their jobs, and they don’t care what party you are as long as you’ll vote for them. Even the ones who are involved in Republican politics are mainly doing so because they want to keep their options open in case they have an opportunity to run for a General Assembly seat, and being a Republican instead of a Democrat is politically convenient in Virginia Beach. Or at least it was more convenient before now. (case study: Peter Schmidt)
I expect in the future that we’ll start seeing a few of the supposedly Republican council members taking a more active interest in what’s going on with local Democrats now that it’s politically expedient to reach out to them to garner support in the parts of the city where the electorate has been voting for Dems. But apparently Bill DeSteph didn’t get the same memo that Jim Woods did.