By Kenric Ward
“Remember Sweet Briar.”
Those three words could be the campaign cry of anyone — Democrat, Republican or Libertarian — who challenges Attorney General Mark Herring in the 2017 election.
Herring is a front-runner for the Democratic nomination to succeed Gov. Terry McAuliffe, but the state’s top lawyer stumbled into a Sweet Briar patch this month. It could cost him votes.
Alumnae at the women’s liberal arts college are outraged that Herring, who ran in 2013 on a pledge to protect women’s rights, has intervened against them in a legal wrangle over the school’s future.
As Watchdog.org reported, Amherst County attorney Ellen Bowyer went to court to block plans to shut down the 114-year-old college. Herring filed a brief siding with the school president and chairman of the board (both males), asserting that Bowyer had no standing.
“This is their school and this was their decision,” Herring spokesman Michael Kelly said of Sweet Briar leaders’ abrupt announcement to shutter the campus. “This is not a story about the attorney general’s office.”
Yet Herring thrust himself into the center of the controversy, invoking the ire of alumnae and others who see the AG as greasing the skids for Sweet Briar’s demise.
“He refuses to investigate (the activities of school leaders), despite the alums’ pleas and letters,” said Kathy Bell, an independent business consultant based in Alexandria.
Bell has no ties to the school, but is every bit as peeved at Herring as Sweet Briar graduates, many of whom voted for him two years ago.
Alums characterize Herring’s “form letter response” to their concerns as “condescending.” Now Freedom of Information requests are being filed, while a grassroots fund-raising drive gathers millions of dollars in pledges via social media to #SaveSweetBriar.
School leaders’ plans have immediate economic repercussions. Sweet Briar is one of rural Amherst County’s top employers, with 350 workers and instructors.
Politically, the AG is in damage-control mode.
Whether Sweet Briar lives on, or is cannibalized by developers coveting the 3,290-acre campus, Herring has alienated — and mobilized — thousands of SBC women who will neither forgive nor forget what they see as a backroom betrayal of their beloved campus.
Kenric Ward is Virginia bureau chief of Watchdog.org, where this article originally appeared. Reprinted with permission.
