On June 9, 2009, Democrats across Virginia will chose our nominee for Governor. It is no secret that I will be casting my vote for Brian J. Moran.
I actually made my decision a long time ago. Moran is the candidate whose views most closely match my own. No, we don’t agree on everything, but I accept that finding a candidate whose views are the same as mine is an impossibility. I recall how I felt after he and I spent some time getting to know each other a few years ago: here was a candidate I could enthusiastically support. Nothing has happened in the interim to change my mind. If anything, the passage of time has reinforced my decision.
I think a person’s background is a pretty good indicator of what they will do in the future. Moran grew up in a large family and is the youngest of seven. He played football, which no doubt taught him the value of teamwork. He worked his way through college and law school, which no doubt taught him the value of the dollar. He was a prosecutor, which no doubt taught him the value of law and order. He is a small business owner, so he knows about making payroll and paying bills. And I’ll bet he knows – as Mark Warner often says – how to read a balance sheet.
Of course, he was a member of the legislature for twelve years, from 1996 until last week. He and his wife, Karyn, are the parents of two young children, both of whom attend public school. He has worked tirelessly on behalf of other candidates, as a cheerleader, as a fundraiser, and as a mentor. He has been recognized by his peers, the business community, law enforcement and others as a leader.
But none of this is what is most impressive about Moran.
What impresses me the most is that Brian cares: he cares about the people, he cares about the environment and he cares about our Commonwealth. Not in that shallow way that many politicians “care” but in the truest sense of the way a public servant cares. It is why he sponsored Alicia’s Law, supported an increase in the minimum wage, and purchased carbon credits for the VA delegation to the national convention. It is also why he believes in law and order and supports the death penalty.
In other words, he wants what is best for all of Virginia.
That is what I want in a governor. That is why I support Brian Moran.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
“It is also why he believes in law and order and supports the death penalty.”
I do not support this kind of wannbe Republican tough-guy boilerplate being tossed around in support of Democratic candidates. If Moran supports state-sponsored execution (no doubt “in the worst cases”), let him say so, by all means. Ideally, in doing so he will acknowledge the views of his opponents, and express some openness to sentencing alternatives.
But either way, let’s not go out of our way to promote anyone for the Democratic candidacy by simpering that he supports the death penalty because he cares and because it’s best for all of Virginia. It’s an ugly cliche and a slap in the face to principled opponents of capital punishment.
As a note on his political skills, on election night I hadn’t seen Brian for about two months. Nonetheless, he remembered exactly where we were the last time I saw him and the conversation we were having. He picked up right where we had left off.
I have heard of him doing similar things with other people. These sort of small connections he’s able to form with people will help him gain support, especially as people are beginning to pay more attention to the campaign.
DGJ – I said Brian and I didn’t agree on everything. And one of the points that I disagree with him on is the death penalty: he supports it, I do not. But his reason for supporting it is in keeping in line with what I said (not he said) is his concern for people. We can disagree on what form that concern takes but it in no way diminishes that Brian wants to do what he thinks is best for all of Virginia.
Glad you clarified your position on the use of capital punishment Vivian. I happen to agree with you…and I have met and like Brian Moran!
Vivian, thanks for an interesting conversation on Cathy Lewis’s TV show tonight. What follows below is not brief, so I hope you don’t end up regretting that you inspired me to go check your blog! (I hope it’s not one of those blogs that truncate postings.)
I’ll bet you’re right that Mr. Moran is a worthy candidate overall. But as you might recall from the politics originally surrounding the state senate seat that Sen. John Miller now holds, I’ve been asking an important question for a couple of years now: When are Democrats going to start acting like Democrats when it comes to the question of post-Army Fort Monroe? This week I had especially discouraging experiences on that score with Governor Kaine on Tuesday and candidate Moran on Wednesday.
Some others and I work hard at the grass-roots level for a better Fort Monroe outcome than Governor Kaine’s envisioned giveaway of that national treasure to a powerful handful of people in Hampton. Our organization is Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park. We advocate not a traditional national park at Fort Monroe, but an innovatively structured, revenue-generating, self-sustaining national park akin to the one at San Francisco’s Presidio. We believe that any development at Fort Monroe should enhance it as a self-sustaining Grand Public Place for all. That’s unlike the envisioned development just for the sake of development that’s in the tentative plan that the governor has approved. That financially unnecessary development would diminish the treasure — and ironically, would also diminish Fort Monroe’s overall enrichment, including financial enrichment, of Hampton and the region. Anyone interested can learn more at our Web site, CFMNP.org.
Anyway, because I do that grass-roots stuff, I’m lucky that Cathy Lewis occasionally involves me on her noontime 89.5 FM talk show “HearSay.” On Tuesday and Wednesday, she let me ask one good Fort Monroe question apiece of both the governor and the candidate. Their answers both failed disappointingly.
Now, in my view, their positions are unwise, anti-democratic, and also anti-Democratic, with a capital D. But their positions are at least tenable, sort of, and in any case they have a right to hold them. However, it’s one thing to have their positions, and quite another thing that these two leaders don’t even know centrally important facts. Unfortunately, though, the system of things in the call-in world makes them immune to follow-ups from mere citizens, even when they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Here’s the question I asked candidate Moran: “Del. Moran, you might be governor when the Army leaves Fort Monroe in 2011. So I’d like to ask you about Governor Kaine’s statement yesterday on HearSay that he doesn’t want to _give_ Fort Monroe to the National Park Service. No one’s even asking for that. Just like the Virginian-Pilot, people are instead asking for a self-sustaining national park structured innovatively by Virginians. In Hampton, over two thousand voters are conducting a citizens initiative under the city charter, calling for a Grand Public Place that could well become such a hybrid national park. (And by the way, anyone interested should attend Hampton city council tonight.) Meanwhile, I’d be grateful to hear your views about a self-sustaining, hybrid national park at Fort Monroe. Thanks.”
Mr. Moran answered that the National Park Service doesn’t even want Fort Monroe.
Sheesh.
The rest of this posting, below the dashed line, is what I wrote to info@brianmoran.com later that same day. I don’t know any real e-addresses in his organization, and I haven’t heard anything back from that one. If you know anybody on the campaign staff, and if you display this present posting that I’m submitting, maybe you’ll be kind enough to alert them to what I’m asking.
Vivian, I hate it that Democrats don’t act like Democrats when it comes to Fort Monroe. In Hampton, as I say, politicians of all parties, and politicians of no party, are starting to find out that citizens aren’t going to stand for what is happening. But meanwhile, facts are facts, and when it comes to Fort Monroe, Democrats just don’t act like Democrats.
And Vivian, your candidate has just become a leading example of that fact.
Below is what I wrote to your candidate. Thanks.
Steve Corneliussen
(Off-line comments? Contact@CFMNP.org)
– – – – – – – – –
Mr. Moran, if citizens were allowed to follow up on the unchallenged pronouncements of politicians, I would have followed up on your claim that the National Park Service doesn’t want Fort Monroe. I would have
* noted that Bill Armbruster, executive director of
the Fort Monroe Authority, is busy seeking some
sort of serious involvement of the NPS at Fort
Monroe, and
* noted that that’s why at the authority’s November
meeting, Terrence Moore himself visited and spoke
from the NPS on the range of options Virginia has for
structuring not a traditional national park — which
apparently is the only kind you’re thinking of — but
a self-sustaining, revenue-generating hybrid, possibly
akin to San Francisco’s Presidio, and
* noted that the decision to start a national park of
any kind is not in the hands of the NPS anyway.
That can only come from a state’s leadership — just
as the Pilot editorials have been saying.
I’ve been working on the Fort Monroe question for over three years. I’ve also been a Democrat since 1968, when I volunteered in the Humphrey campaign. But I will report to you that I’m totally baffled at the behavior of Democrats concerning Fort Monroe. I most strongly recommend, just for your own benefit if nothing else, that you let a few of us brief you sometime when you’re in Tidewater. Maybe we’re wrong, but thousands of people are joining our cause, and I believe everyone would win if we got an hour with you. Three of us saw Mr. Nye in April, and we’re to be slated to see him again in early January, I’m told by Angela Kouters.
For some quick background, you might want to see one of the two op-eds I’ve published in the Washington Post about Fort Monroe’s post-Army future: http://www.cfmnp.org/WashPost_oped_25Nov07.htm . The Pilot’s most recent editorial, crucial to read, appears at http://www.cfmnp.org/vp_editorial.htm . And if you really want to understand the stakes, please watch the 27-minute masterpiece film — way too moving just to be called a documentary — at http://wmstreaming.whro.org/whro/ftmonroe/ftmonroe.asf . It begins with an introduction by Cathy Lewis.
Steve – the multiple links in your post caused it to end up in my spam filter.
Steve,
I think the question of what to do with Fort Monroe (within limits) should be left up to the citizens of Hampton. I suggest that it be put up to referendum.
There are arguments that could be made for allowing development of some portions of what is now Fort Monroe. Developed property would indeed be highly assessed and add to Hampton’s tax base. A national park might also contribute to economic activity, however it would not contribute to the tax rolls.
I say let the citizens of Hampton decide. Both sides of the argument will be free to argue the pros and cons of their positions to the citizens.
It baffles me as well in term sof Ft. Monroe. As a lifelong Virginian, I wonder if alot of these issues have a bit of identity taint to them in that there are so many new (and welcome) residents who do not really identify with alot of the rich history here in Virginia. Afterall, Ft. Monroe is a National Historic designee even though it was has a modern facility. From a political perspective it must have been a “this or that” given BRAC offered up Oceana naval for closing as well but was removed but Ft. Monroe could not be saved from the chopping block. I realize that the Dept. of Historic Preservation has to have alot of interest in the future but in term Virginia its the equivalent to Ft. McHenry in its history.
Thanks, LittleDavid. I was glad to learn, by following the links from your name, that you’re an old Navy guy. I am too.
FWIW, I myself like the idea of a referendum, and FWIW, I myself especially like your obvious belief that the actual owners of Fort Monroe should decide its future. That’s actual owners as opposed to the powerful handful who are deftly exploiting the BRAC law so that they can decide without any real — key word, real — respect for what citizens overwhelmingly actually want. From three years of working on this, and from countless indicators, I can report to you that what people want is some sort of Grand Public Place at Fort Monroe. They do not want a gated neighborhood without the gate, which is what Hampton was originally planning — and to some extent still is.
But I respectfully request that you consider two disagreements. One is about who Fort Monroe’s actual owners actually are. The other is about financial enrichment from a wisely planned post-Army Fort Monroe.
1. As to who the actual owners actually are, please consider an analogy. On the online, 27-minute film for which I gave the link in my original posting, an official of the National Trust for Historic Preservation says that Fort Monroe ranks with Monticello and Mount Vernon. Well, please imagine that somehow the Commonwealth of Virginia came into possession of Monticello and Mount Vernon, just as it is coming into possession of Fort Monroe. I ask you, would anybody — even the droolingest, most salivating developer — suggest that the commonwealth simply donate those national treasures to Charlottesville and Alexandria for “redevelopment” to benefit those cities and those cities only?
That word “redevelopment” is written into the BRAC law, by the way. The BRAC law unfortunately presumes that any military base is the equivalent of a Fort Drab or a Camp Swampy. That’s great for an actual Fort Drab or an actual Camp Swampy and the cities nearby them. But that’s not what Fort Monroe is. For a half-century, Fort Monroe — all of it, not just the moated fortress — has been a National Historic Landmark. And for four centuries, it has been in public ownership. Everything on it was put there by the nation, not by Hampton. Only a few decades ago did Hampton even happen to expand so that Fort Monroe fell within the city’s boundaries.
Moreover, citizens in Hampton not only want a Grand Public Place at Fort Monroe — a place befitting the land and the green space and the history there — but they do _not_ want to be saddled with the risk of extra city taxes for the costs of transitioning Fort Monroe to its post-Army years. They do not want to open their pocketbooks and wallets to subsidize developers’ dreams of riches from “redeveloping” a national treasure — a national treasure that really belongs to all of us in the first place.
Charlottesville could never own Monticello. Alexandria could never own Mount Vernon. And Hampton’s powerful handful of Fort Monroe “redevelopers” need to be stopped from using a flawed BRAC law to do what Hampton’s citizens don’t actually want anyway. Fort Monroe does not belong to Hampton.
I’d add that in Hampton Roads we are a region with international aspirations. We compete with major seacoast metropolises all over the world. Our name, Hampton Roads, has to do with water. Our traditional name, Tidewater, has to do with water. Yet we are quickly deleting the shoreline charm of our region, making the shoreline from Langley Air Force Base all the way around the bay and down the Atlantic coast of Virginia into a reflection of Military Highway and Mercury Boulevard — the two parts of our region least likely to make the region seem attractive. Yet at Fort Monroe, where the James River converges with the Chesapeake Bay, within sight of the Atlantic, on this piece of low-lying ground that has been precious to the nation for four centuries, our leaders are trying to extend the sprawl, which means harming the quality of life. Instead of having a signature Grand Public Place, they want an upscale version of suburban sprawl — not strip malls, but financially unnecessary “development” all the same.
And it started with Governor (soon to be Senator) Warner and Lt. Governor Kaine, both Democrats. It continued with Democratic Governor Kaine, and then with Democratic Senator Webb (who ironically is a major Civil War preservationist). It now appears that Vivian’s Democratic candidate for governor wants to continue it too.
A deep irony for Democrats is that the politician who acts the most like an actual Democrat about this is a conservative Republican, Del. Tom Gear. (He says he just wants what the people want. And he is right.) (By the way, plenty of Republicans get Fort Monroe wrong as well, so don’t get me wrong about that part. They kowtow to the powerful handful in Hampton.)
I ask again: When are Democrats going to start acting like Democrats when it comes to Fort Monroe?
2. As to financial enrichment from a wisely planned post-Army Fort Monroe: To me, the deep irony is that even if these Democrats’ civic and patriotic imaginations are so impoverished that they don’t understand the harm that they’re trying to inflict on this national treasure, even if all they want is money for Hampton, the Grand Public Place approach is better anyway!
And the best approach for money for Hampton is a Grand Public Place that is a national park of some sort — one that generates its own revenue. National parks of all kinds generate local business at a 4 to 1 ratio of investment to return. If our Democratic leaders get their imagination-impoverished way, if they’re allowed to give away Fort Monroe to a small handful of people who want it for narrowly envisioned upscale development, we will lose the various kinds of enrichment that we could get if, instead, we thought strategically about Fort Monroe.
Those kinds of enrichment start with financial enrichment for Hampton, and extend into financial enrichment for the region. The Historic Triangle, for instance, could become a Historic Quadrangle, with a new corner anchored by Fort Monroe and involving the Monitor Center. Then we’d add the Civil War to the American story told on Virginia’s Peninsula. (Please see the link Historic Quadrangle on the CFMNP home page at the bottom.)
Thanks for the chance to discuss this. I’m sorry I’m not clever enough to be brief about it.
Save Fort Monroe,
Steve Corneliussen
Steve,
I support allowing the citizens of Hampton to decide and will be willing to back their decision.
However if some of the land is developed that does not mean we lose the national treasure.
Personally I would like (at a minimum) the treasure of the structure of the fort preserved with at least a buffer zone to protect it from ridiculous encroachment.
Thanks, LittleDavid. To what extent, if any, would you support what you call “ridiculous encroachment” — good phrase, in my view — if the development is for purposes other than making Fort Monroe self-sustaining? That is, to what extent do you support development that’s just for the sake of development?
I’ve been way too long-winded, but I’ll note again that
* all of Old Point Comfort is the national treasure, not just the moated fortress, because its history goes back 400 years, but the fortress less than 200,
* all of it was designated a National Historic Landmark a half-century ago,
* even if the land weren’t historic at all, it’s some of the last remaining potential waterfront green space for the increasingly congested region,
* you say you’re for giving it to Hampton even though it belongs to all of us, but you don’t actually explain why you’re willing to make that donation,
* you don’t explain whether you also want Hampton citizens to accept the potential tax liabilities of the transition to the post-Army years, and
* even if your donation course is wise, we never actually had the democratic civic discussion in Virginia to make that choice; capital-D Democratic leaders forced the donation on us — or are trying to, anyway.
Also: in any case, Hampton’s citizens themselves are speaking up with their citizens’ initiative. Please see the brief Mike Gooding video clip linked from near the top of the “What’s New” page at CFMNP.org, the Web site of Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park.
Thanks, and merry Christmas.
I’m willing to make that donation because the citizens of Hampton are forced to deal with the loss of economic revenue brought about by the base’s closure as the result of BRAC.
As for what is ridiculous? I knew that question was going to come up. Chuckle. I didn’t define it because I would prefer to hear from the citizens of Hampton. Personally I’d suggest most of the distance from the main gate to the historical fort structure and an equal distance north. Unless I am mistaken that would allow for some development north with perhaps more limited development right at the main gate area.
I’m not supporting development just for the sake of development. I’m just saying Hampton might realize some replacement of what they lost through the base closure by expanding the tax base. Limiting the amount of space allowed for development will only increase the value of the small portion allowed to be developed. Just think, a community bordered on all sides by either water or a national park. Talk about prime real estate.
I’m glad that earlier generations have had the wisdom to save the Yorktown Battlefield, and Mount Vernon plantation, and Jamestown Island, and Monticello mountain. These national treasures were not limited to a small buffer around the central structure, but were preserved in their entirety for the Nation. If Little David has his way, each would have most of its property devoted to development to produce tax income for the local government.
Fort Monroe has provided jobs from TRADOC, which is moving to Fort Eustis, but Fort Monroe has never been taxed so Hampton is losing no taxes.Our challenge today is to save Fort Monroe, all 570 acres, for future generations, as we benefitted from those who saved Mount Vernon, Jamestown Island, Monticello and the Yorktown Battlefield. If we save only part of it, we will be sorry.
Louis Guy