The morning after election day, I listened with interest to the local news on NPR, when Richmond Times Dispatch commentator Jeff Schapiro quoted a colleague’s comment on the prosecutor’s race as follows: “Cantor wants to run the country, but he can’t seem to run his county.”
That county is Henrico, where I lived for 25 years. The election was the victory of Shannon Taylor, a Democrat, over Cantor’s chosen candidate, Bill Janis, a former conservative member of Virginia’s House of Delegates and the selected Republican candidate. Janis resigned his post as Delegate at the behest of the Republican establishment, and was chosen by Cantor as the hand-picked successor of a string of Republican prosecutors who had held that position for over 20 years. Janis ran as an “independent,” though his media portrayed him as a Republican.
The problem was, there was already a Republican candidate, Matt Geary, who had fallen out of favor because of personal issues. Geary was the “official” Republican candidate and this title could not be taken from him - not formally, anyway.
So, instead of obeying their own rules, the Republicans, with Cantor at the helm, simply decided to buy the office with “independent” Janis. Janis had no experience as a prosecutor while Democrat Taylor has over a decade of experience. The Republicans would simply call the “independent” a Republican, and, with a well-funded campaign, subsidized by Cantor cash, ignore the other two candidates. This formula has worked for Cantor, who has never acknowledged or debated any of the 6 opponents he has faced. The plan was simple, and Janis would waltz into the prosecutor’s office in January 2012, with his buddy Cantor at the inauguration.
But there was a glitch in Cantor’s machine: democracy. In this case, the voters on Nov 8th chose the best qualified candidate, not the best funded candidate whose coronation was pre-selected by Cantor. Eric Cantor’s high school yearbook quote: “I want what I want when I want it” reveals this superiority complex started at a very young age.
Democrat Taylor shatters Henrico Republicans
Long-shot latecomer Shannon Taylor won a three-way race Tuesday to become Henrico County's next commonwealth's attorney, splitting Republican votes between her opponents in the county's western end and securing massive margins of her own in the east.
Taylor apparently is the first female commonwealth's attorney in Henrico history and will be the first Democrat to hold countywide office in generations.
"It's a great night to be a Henrico Democrat," state Sen. A. Donald McEachin, D-Henrico, told a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd at his Nine Mile Road law office, Taylor by his side.
"Eric Cantor, here's your new commonwealth's attorney," he said, singling out the House of Representatives majority leader from Henrico, who pumped thousands of dollars into the campaign of independent Bill Janis.
Many forget that it was in Virginia that English democracy arrived on the shores of the New World in 1607. Yes, right here in Virginia, and, in fact “Henricus,” for which the county was named, was one of the first English settlements after the settlers left Jamestown to move inland. Although the colony was a business venture of the Virginia Company, a corporation, it was sponsored by the English crown, a sort of “government stimulus.” The settlement brought this pesky democracy with it, you know self-rule, self-determination, all those terms that are alien to people like Cantor.
You see, with American democracy, we threw off the yoke of royalty with the American Revolution, fought a war to end the abomination of slavery, and saved the world from another form of slavery in the 1940’s. This is the America that Americans love, cherish, and the place for which many have fought and died.
Although radical elites like Cantor like to subvert what most Americans know as democracy, there is still hope, as was demonstrated by Shannon Taylor’s victory on November 8, 2011, that elections cannot be simply bought. We can clearly see what this has done on a national scale: it brought us Cantor…. But if Tip O’Neill was right, and all politics are local, then Shannon’s victory is a call to action. Those of us who look at what’s happening to our government here and say ‘enough!’ Enough of people who bring us a culture of “I, me, mine,” and a return to a country that belongs to all us again, including the poor and middle class, and not just to the wealthiest.
We need to support capable candidates like Shannon Taylor, who are the best of us, who want to represent all of us, and turn away those who seek power and wealth, and would sacrifice the well-being of the nation to get it. Cantor has lived up to his high school yearbook quote: “I want what I want when I want it…,” but his time has passed. Next year, all of us need to “occupy the voting booth” and return our democracy to whom it belongs; to the people.
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