The End of Byrd-Land

Seventeen years ago V.O. Key wrote that Virginia was a "political museum piece." It has changed. But things haven't changed as much as the prophets of the total collapse of the Byrd Machine would like to think.

The usual comments about the demise of the Byrd Organization in Virginia were heard once again after the Democratic primary last summer and the general election this fall. The two symbols of the old order, Rep. Howard W. Smith, the House Rules Committee chairman, and Senator A. Willis Robertson lost their seats in Congress in close primary fights, and the Republican Party picked up two more seats in Virginia's delegation to the House on November 8. They now control four out of 10.

But the Byrd Machine (its supporters refer to it as The Organization) has shown remarkable durability over the past 40 years. It has changed a little bit--maybe more--but it keeps on winning. The success of the Machine was predicated on a low voter turnout. That meant not only discouraging Negroes from voting, but also many poor whites. There have never been any outright bars to the ballot in Virginia, but intricate laws concerning residence requirements and an ingeniously devised web of poll taxes accomplished the same objective in a more sutble way. The electorate was kept within manageably limits. For instance, prior to 1945, only about, 12 per cent of all eligible Virginians voted in gubernatorial election. It was pleasant.

The small, but effective coalition had three factions. There was the so-called Richmond Establishment in the state capital. Here the bankers and the editorial pages of the Richmond newspapers lent powerful support to the Byrds. The Machine, in return for keeping corporate taxes and public welfare spending very low, received staunch backing from business and industry. The Organization was also able to pile up phenomenal margins in rural Southside Virginia by maintaining a gentlemanly but firm stance against integration. Southside, along the North Carolina border, is a lot like Alabama's Black belt.

During the mid-1950s, the power of the Byrd Machine and the forces and policies it represented, was suddenly jeopardized. In 1954, a large group of liberal-to-moderate delegates were elected to the General Assembly in Richmond. These "Young Turks," as they were called, vociferously questioned the whole range of conservative ideas imbedded in Virginia's political life. This in itself was an almost unprecedented situation for the Old Dominion, but when federal courts ordered school integration, the conflict was brought to a head.

After a dramatic battle in the Assembly, the Byrd people managed to pass a series of laws which had the effect of closing down any Virginia public school which integrated. It was a sad maneuver--some schools remained closed for over hall a decade--but it saved the Organization. In plotting this course, the Machine branded the young Turks as the integrationists. Yet after the storm dies down, the Machine embraced the tokenism that gradually spread across the nation. This slow change was demonstrated by Mills E. Godwin, who was elected Governor last year, but who only ten years ago played the role of chief hatchet man for Massive Resistance.

During the last two years, however, certain social forces have been at work to undermine the traditional political power blocs. With the abolition of the poll tax in federal elections, registration surged and people began to vote in unprecedented numbers. Not only Negroes, but many whites. Young Harry Byrd, campaigning last summer to fill out the unexpired Senate term of his late father, even had to appeal to his audiences for a large voter turnout to offset the power of "pressure groups"--that is, Negroes.

Rural areas, always strong for the Machine, no longer have the strength they used to. Now, most of Virginia's voters live in cities and suburbs--before 1960 most voters were rural. 65 per cent of the Old Dominion's population lives in the urban corridor which slashes diagonally across the state from the suburbs of Washington, D.C., on south through Fredericksburg to Richmond, and then down into the densely-populated complex around the Navy installations at Norfolk. At the same time that the Byrd Organization has trouble in this area, its traditional margins in Southside have been severely cut by the two-year old Virginia Conservative Party, a fringe group which seems to feel that ultra-conservatism is not ultra enough.

The man who best reflects the more moderate trends in the electorate is William S. Spong, Jr., of Portsmouth, who knocked off Robertson in the Democratic primary (by 611 votes), and went on to defeat his Goldwater-Republican opponent in the November election by almost two-to-one. In what the press labeled "The Big Race," Spong outran his running-mate Senator Harry F. Byrd, Jr., by 56,000 votes. It was a striking display of how far Virginia has come in the past few years.

It is now likely that power within the Democratic Party will shift more and more toward the moderates, and its leaders will be more in line with the national Party. Spong's impressive victory could also dampen a potentially explosive split among Virginia's Democrats. His candidacy against Robertson in the Primary was closely watched by the "extreme" liberal wing of the Party. Should he have failed, strident anti-Machine candidates would have been in a much stronger position to demand a crack at statewide offices in 1969. If this polarization ever occurs, it will seriously impair Democratic chances in Virginia for many years to come.

The Republicans? Yes, Virginia, there is a Republican Party. The G.O.P. picked up two House seats, one in the Ninth District (Appalachia), and one in the Eighth, Howard W. Smith's old district, and probably could have taken another in the Third District (Richmond and surrounding counties) had they run a candidate against the incumbent Democrat this fall. Nevertheless the Republicans face serious problems. They have not been able to build up an effective statewide organizations; local offices have largely been left to the Democratic Party in return for the late Sen. Harry Byrd's "golden silence"--his refusal to support Democratic nominees for President. As a result, Virginia went Republican in 1952, 1956 and 1960. But the outcome of this trade-off with the Byrds has meant a Republican Party far weaker than the voting patterns of the state would indicate it ought to be.

The Democratic Party should control the state's politics for some time to come--as long as certain conditions are met. The Democrats must avoid a disastrous ideological split during the next four years; they must make sure they keep control of vital local offices; old line Byrd Machine leaders must be persuaded to step down for younger candidates and move closer to the increasingly powerful moderates who will make a play for the urban, labor and Negro vote.