Fissures form in council bloc

The News Virginian
Published: December 1, 2008

Conservatism everywhere has been bloodied, at the hands of a president who wore the label but lacked its spirit and lawmakers complicit in his ideological wanderings, proving a truth that blows aimed at one’s own chin are bound eventually to land, crushingly. Flawed pugilism is apparently a plague. At least one local official of ostensible right mind has laced up gloves and begun swinging hard for a target he can’t miss: himself. And a faction wobbles.

Some observers perceived months ago the formation of fissures in the conservative bloc that last spring swept into majority control of the Waynesboro City Council. Whether the fractures were real or the mere product of foes’ hopes, the crumbling in the alliance led by Vice Mayor Frank Lucente now is visible. Mayor Tim Williams recently ventured into the wilderness, proposing a pay raise for himself and the council. Lucente and conservative ally Bruce Allen watched Williams stray; both say they oppose raises. Here, the so-called Three Amigos are one and two.

Letters continue to flow into The News Virginian in response to Williams’ proposal. None are favorable. Voters have been stricken by a sense of betrayal. Williams ran uncontested for the council last spring with Lucente and Allen. That group won resoundingly on the strength of their fiscal conservatism, and on their depiction of their opponents as tax-and-spenders. After backing budget cuts and a hiring freeze while pointing to the floundering economy, Williams came out swinging, and so he staggers.

Digging a hole into which he would later dive, Williams declared less than two weeks before pressing for raises that the hiring freeze would be “ ‘prudent’ to show the city’s concern for the current state of the economy,” according to a Nov. 10 story in The News Virginian. Earlier this year, while joining Lucente in pressing for $600,000 in budget cuts, Williams called it “a cleaning time for the government, cleaning up some dead wood and doing away with some waste.”

This did not include doing away with full-coverage health care for the council. In addition to the $6,100 paid to the mayor and the $5,100 in individual council salaries, the city offers health benefits to each member at a cost of about $7,000 each. But Williams omits the cost of benefits as part of the higher compensation he seeks — $13,000 in annual salary for himself and $12,000 for the others. The actual compensation would be $20,000 for the mayor and $19,000 for the rest.

As well as President Bush, though on a tiny scale relative to him, Williams typifies that which haunts the conservative movement, presently on the verge of turning to specter. Many Americans, like the droves of voters who pushed Williams, Lucente and Allen into office, concur with a premise delineated during the spring campaign. “His principles are grounded in the belief that empowering people means trusting them with the money they earned,” Williams said in his endorsement of Allen.

What has provoked Americans’ flagging support of conservatives, so-called, is not the ideology but its perversion, the twists molded by those who championed it as candidates then abandoned it once in office. Making out modern conservative thinking, as it has been shaped by office holders, is akin to trying to discern the original form of lava – it is no longer what it once was.

Lucente’s coup in capturing control of the council provided him and his allies with an opportunity to demonstrate conservatism’s enduring strengths. Instead, conservatives’ most persistent flaw – that of capitulation – has emerged, again. Luring Williams back from the wilderness will be a test of Lucente’s political acumen, and whether the vice mayor’s conservative ambitions will languish for want of support.

We will know the direction in which Lucente’s faction heads when Williams steps forward to reverse course on pay raises. We suspect Lucente prefers silence on the subject for now. We prefer the ringing sound of renewed resolve.