For many months, my Washington Post writing partner Paul Goldman has been doing what bloggers have always aspired to, and what old-line reports once did with regularity: his writing has changed the course of politics.
For those who do not know Paul, he’s the former chairman of Virginia’s Democratic party. He also has a knack for getting Democrats elected to statewide office. Working with him has been an education — not just in the history of Virginia politics, but in gaining insight into the motivations and calculations that generate each day’s headlines.
But it’s his most recent work — this time in what was essentially a one-man crusade to stop Richmond’s baseball stadium — that has taught me a lot about the relevance, and potential, of blogging.
Richmond’s leading political and business lights were behind the concept. Led by Mayor Dwight Jones, the new state Democratic party chairman, they intended to build a minor league baseball stadium in the city’s Shockoe Bottom area. For those unfamiliar with the ugliest pages in Richmond’s history, Shockoe Bottom was once home to the eastern seaboard’s most active, lucrative and infamous slave markets. Within sight of Mr. Jefferson’s capitol, depravity and misery were sold alongside the corn and tobacco. Needless to say, generations of Richmonders were content to let this history be paved over and forgotten.
Twenty years ago, then-Del. Dwight Jones joined Paul and others in saying that discovering this area’s history, preserving it and sharing it, should take precedence over any and all attempts at development. It was long overdue.
But something changed Mr. Jones’s mind once he became Richmond’s Mayor: money
Mr. Jones and the area’s Democratic political machine, backed by Sen. Henry Marsh and Del. Delores McQuinn, twisted arms and threatened political futures in order to exploit a flaw in a state law that would allow potentially millions of taxpayer dollars to be diverted into secretive, no-bid contracts benefiting a select few.
The stadium issue flew under the statewide political radar for months as Paul, blogging for Richmond’s CBS affiliate, WTVR, doggedly pursued the stadium story…that got juicier as time went on.
A majority of city council members appeared to have made secret pledges of support to Jones and his backers. Even Terry McAuliffe made an unprecedented appearance before the council to tell the all Democratic body: I got your back on this one.
This all made Paul a pariah in local Democratic circles. But he not only kept writing, he also launched a petition drive to put an advisory referendum on the ballot to give Richmond residents a say on the matter. He wasn’t alone. Many local activists and organizations were fighting the stadium deal, too. As Paul has said, they deserve enormous credit for what has happened.
But their fight was essentially on moral and historical grounds. Jones and his backers would not be swayed by such concerns because he had co-opted many of their former preservationist allies, even getting the Governor to pledge millions in state money to the overall project.
You got to love liberals in that regard. They think Democratic politicians actually give a damn about them. Good luck with that folks — all they want is your vote on election day.
What all these unsuspecting activists lacked was Paul’s experience in how to beat the political class at its own game.
So day after day, he used his WTVR column to build the political case against the stadium proposal.
Paul exposed what was easily one of the biggest cases of local political corruption in state history. He showed how Mayor Jones and his allies were manipulating a little known flaw in the state’s Economic Development Authority law to bypass the City Charter restrictions on financing, the city code’s competitive bidding law, the state’s competitive bid law and Section 9 of Article VII of the State Constitution to legitimize this corruption. And he exposed the secretive side-deals required to get the city’s top political and business leadership to look the other way as the site Mr. Jones once demanded be protected from developers was turned into a real estate bonanza.
Paul’s online columns did what bloggers have long-known: our work has the potential to change the course of politics.
He didn’t invent it and frankly I can think of other examples where bloggers have done a damn good job over the years in shaping the political landscape.
The first column Paul and I wrote about the matter for the Washington Post didn’t actually appear until two weeks ago under the title “Virginia’s 2017 gubernatorial race gets its first issue.” We wrote:
[Richmond Mayor and Virginia Democratic Party Chair] Jones’s handling of the issue has done what seemed impossible: align liberal Democrats in the city with conservative Republicans in the surrounding counties against his proposal. On its current path, we believe the issue will go statewide.
I like to feel it is at least part of the reason several state delegates began speaking out against the matter the following week and House Appropriations committee chairman Chris Jones promised renewed scrutiny for the state money promised Jones.
But for Paul using a blogging site like the crusading journalists of old, there is every reason to believe Richmond’s city council would have voted in favor of Jones’s Shockoe boondoggle.
Can I prove it? Of course not. But let’s remember: it was a blogger who first exposed the shenanigans behind this story. It was a blogger who first wrote about the set asides for what were then secret partners in the deal. It was a blogger who first exposed the Mayor’s intention to try and skirt the state constitution. It was a blogger who first exposed how the deal couldn’t be done as the Mayor claimed and predicted that the Mayor would be forced to try an end run around the local laws to get the project approved by the city council. And it was a blogger who first called out the key council members believed to have given the Mayor private assurances of their support.
This use to be called journalism.
Now it is called blogging. It has a distinctly Richmond flavor right now, but it’s also the next step in what we do. It’s no longer just writing from a safe perch or playing at state conventions or with local activist groups. This is blogging on the front lines, filling the gap left by the mainstream media (which in this case was an early, eager drinker of the establishment’s Kool Aid) and using the digital perch to give readers the latest inside analysis, so they can understand the politics behind the fight.
It’s very likely Mayor Jones will try one more time to force his plan down Richmonders’ throats.
But this time, the press, and both the Democratic and Republican political establishments will have to contend with the new realities in political journalism…
…because a blogger has shown how an online perch gives the public a greater say in the debate.
Some of them already know this, having been stung, and worse, online before (chiefly by my Bearing Drift colleagues).
But I can’t think of any of us who, like Paul, has struck such a blow on a statewide issue, challenging the sitting Governor, the state’s most powerful Mayor and the entire political establishment…and knocking them all back on their heels.
If his side ultimately prevails, then blogging has, indeed, gone to the next level.
And the Virginia Press Association is going to have acknowledge that new reality when it gives its annual awards.
