After making an effort to gain clarity on the DPVA’s financial health, there is nothing to show but despair. Appropriate since Jones and his recent predecessors as Chair have all left the political party borrowing against time while concealing the bottom line. Requests for financial statements have been ignored, so the depth of the hole remains closely held. Miraculously, during six years with a Democrat in the White House and in a state with two Democratic United States Senators plus the election of Democrats to all three statewide executive offices in the past year, time has run out on the Party’s mortgage.
A big portion of the DPVA party leadership’s responsibility is to provide the hired staff with sufficient resources to run a statewide political party. But Jones, who fought through charges that he doesn’t represent the party’s principles of equality and equal rights to gain the position of Chair, has been an absentee landlord. The infrastructure, physical and fiscal, has continued to decay since his ascension to the post. He has consistently missed meetings and party conference calls. E-mails go unanswered. The excuse is always that his responsibilities as a pastor and Mayor consume his time. Those responsibilities did not preclude him from interfering in an intra-party state Senate primary race (his influence proved ineffective). Now he’s on the verge of missing the payment on the DPVA’s “digs” on Franklin Street in Richmond.
And here Republicans thought they had problems…
But all this could help explain why Mayor Jones was so keen on getting an infusion of taxpayer money to fund his minor league ball park scheme. One iteration of the plan would have had DPVA headquarters inside the construction zone — and thus, it would have to be sold to a developer for a tidy sum.
That plan fell apart. Now it appears Jones and the Democratic Party may be tossed to the curb for failing to pay the mortgage.
And the progressives, at least, are calling for Jones to get out and stay out as party chairman.
Put the lawsuit the party faces for allegedly denying African Americans their voting rights in the 74th district special election on top of all this and yeah…it makes the GOP’s infighting look positively insignificant.
