What the . . .? Dems laud GOP governor at J-J dinner

Monday, July 21, 2008

(The Voice)
In what is probably a first in almost 200 years of Jefferson-Jackson dinners all across the country, Arlington’s Democrats gave a standing ovation at the county J-J dinner to a former Republican governor, Linwood Holton, the first GOP governor of Virginia since reconstruction.

Gov. Holton, not incidentally, is the father-in-law of Gov. Tim Kaine, who was the J-J keynote speaker.

Rep. Jim Moran welcomed Holton to the banquet and said that Holton was one of two Republicans Moran has voted for in his life. (He did not name the other one.)

Moran also commented that there were undoubtedly some other Republicans in the room: “After all, we’ve made some money on this dinner, so there must be some Republicans here.”

Gov. Kaine explained Moran’s vote by describing his father-in-law as more of a Democrat than most Virginia Democrats when he won election in 1969, as the man who built the two-party system in Virginia and as the governor who buried segregation in the commonwealth before the state GOP was taken over by conservatives defecting from the Democratic party.

The sold-out J-J crowd rose spontaneously in a standing ovation for Holton, now 85 years old.

But Holton was the only Republican to get that euphoric recognition at the J-J. The rest of the party was treated as a large bull’s eye punctured by one well-deserved arrow after another.

“We are the ones who established Social Security—over the objections of the Republican party,” said Moran. “We are the ones who established Medicare—over the objections of the Republican party. We are the ones who established unemployment compensation—over the objections of the Republican party.”

Kaine noted that Virginia had made a point of excluding party labels from the ballot. But in the 1990s, when the GOP was feeling its oats, it changed the law and put party labels next to candidates for state office. “They rue that vote now, folks,” Kaine said with a pixieish smile.

Kaine then lifted the microphone out of its cradle and shifted into high gear, praising Arlington Dems for all they have done to bring a Democratic majority to the State Senate and to shave the GOP majority in the House of Delegates. Arlington has four delegates, all Democrats. “You couldn’t elect any more Democratic delegates in Arlington—unless you created some sort of Chicago thing,” Kaine said—and you could almost see the wheels turning at the thought of that.

Kaine then ginned up the crowd to work for the election of Mark Warner to the U.S. Senate, noting it would be the first time since 1970 that Virginia would have two Democrats in the Senate—“although, in the interests of full disclosure, we wouldn’t recognize some of those Democrats in 1970,” he said with a nod to his father-in-law.

Next Kaine called for a huge effort to “break the jinx that has lasted 44 years” and put Virginia in the Democratic presidential column. He said he had been on the phone that very day with Senator Barack Obama as one of his national co-chairs. “There were lots of them,” on the conference call he noted. Then he recalled a year ago when he became the first governor to endorse Obama and had his first conference call of national co-chairs. “It was three guys from Chicago and me.”

Kaine described the 2008 election as “transformative.” Some elections, he said, you want to stay the course, and that is what John McCain is offering. “But I don’t want to stay the course; I want to change direction.” And if Democrats can convince the rest of the country of that need, “we can exorcise some demons.”

The J-J is also known for recognizing those who excelled at electing Dems over the past year. The prestigious MM (Mary Marshall) Award for Outstanding Democrat went to another MM—Mary Margaret Whipple. The complete list of award winners appears in the box at the left.

Bree Raum and Gabe Snow served as co-chairs of the event which, for the third year in a row, was held at the Westin Arlington Gateway hotel on Glebe Road near Wilson Blvd.

The Jefferson-Jackson Dinner is the oldest of Democratic traditions. It began in the early 1800s as the Jefferson Day Dinner held in Washington on Thomas Jefferson’s birthday. In the 1840s, it became the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner. Now J-J dinners are held annually by many hundreds of city, county, district and state Democratic parties all across the country. Some are major banquet affairs like Arlington’s. But some are small affairs like the Falls Church tradition of a pot luck supper.

Historical footnote: Anne Holton Kaine is not the first Virginia governor’s daughter to be a Virginia governor’s wife. Martha Jefferson, daughter of Gov. Thomas Jefferson (1779-1781) married Thomas Randolph in 1790, and Randolph served as governor from 1819 to 1922.