Guys,

My use of the Orwell vs Madison construct was intended to try and make people read an article on a subject that contemporary evidences says is of lessening interest to folks: to wit, election politics, even when an important constitutional principle is being undercut by the politicians in Richmond. As a general rule, people are far more likely to read a piece on famous people they may know, as opposed to a piece on the political or social philosophy which made them famous.

I include myself in this latter group, for I don't hold myself out as anything special. Thus, over time, as a writer, I have found articles which mix in either current cultural analogies -- for example, lyrics from popular songs -- or historical personalities, are considered more interesting to both the editors who must ultimately agree to publish them and to the readers who read them.

Net, net: The use of Orwell and Madison was for this general purpose, and little more. The Orwell line is well-known and I chose it because it seemed a good way to have some fun with the gutting of the One-Person, One-Vote concept.

However, there was also the additional cross-current of my always believing the Orwell quote to be a criticism of the political/government elite, since the democratic ideal of equality is professed today by everyone running or holding high government office: but at the same time, history shows that government big shots do believe there is double standard, a special one for them and another one for the rest of us.

I see strong elements of this double standard and general elitist attitude in the current reaction to the decision to hold the election in the new 25th. There is not a shred of respectable legal or philosophical or administrative necessity for the General Assembly's decision to disenfranchise thousands of voters.

Yet I suspect - and what follows will probably step on some big toes but so be it as I have stepped on bigger ones with my being the field General in the fight that forced the Democratic Party of Virginia establishment to accept the idea of running a black man for high state office - that if Charlottesville had been the area disenfranchised by the holding of the election in the new 25th, the federal court docket in the city would already be piled high with law suits calling such an election patently unconstitutional; not to mention marches and city council resolutions to the same effect.

I expect more from us Democrats because we are supposed to believe what is happening to so many people in Green, Madison, and Orange - plus some in Albermale - is flat out wrong as a matter of constitutional principle and political fairness. The Republicans are supposed to be the one's who want to take Virginia backward, not us.

It shouldn't matter to us whether the Virginians disenfranchised are rural or city, whether they are more or less conservative, whether they are more or less inclined to vote Republican or Democrat, whether they are black or white.

There are times when you have to do the right thing and have confidence it will work out. In that regard, I am a very fortunate individual. In 1981, I filed an action pointing out that the mathematical formula used by the Democratic Party to allocate delegates to their 1981 State Convention violated the Voting Rights Act and effectively disenfranchised many urban and rural Democrats in terms of diluting the power of their vote. Democrats from around the state attacked me, and the Party leaders even got a UVA expert to try and poke holes my statistical analysis and conclusions.

I took a great deal of heat on the issue, but in the end, the Justice Department and the Party reached an agreement which effectively gave me everything I wanted in terms of the delegate allocation formula which the Party agreed to use at future Democratic Conventions. At the time, I didn't have any personal or political relationship with Doug Wilder.

Four years later, in then Senator Wilder's quest to make history, our job was made possible in good measure because of the changes I had forced the Party to make in the delegate selection formula. Back in 1981, I had not even the remotest thought that my efforts to prevent the loss of several hundred urban delegates would play a key role in giving an African-American Democrat the leverage to win a historic nomination; and that I would be the campaign manager for that candidate.

Yes, my legal action angered a lot of people associated with the Robb campaign for Governor. But in the end, the Robb campaign of 1981 hired me to help them and we all worked together for the first Democratic sweep of the modern era.

Bottom line: The 1981 legal action didn't hurt anyone -- despite what people were saying -- and, in the end, it set in motion a set of political/legal events which culminated in what some have called perhaps the most revolutionary political event in modern American politics, the breaking of the final color line in Southern State politics.

So I have learned that when your are convinced an important political principle is a stake, what you need to do is follow your gut instinct, and do what
you know is right on the law.

Democrats gave America the one-person, one-vote principle. Admittedly, on a statistical basis, the new 25th is an easier senatorial district to win. But once you start basing your core principles on statistical modeling, then -- in the words of the country song -- you stand for nothing and will fall for anything.

Paul Goldman (electronic mail, October 28, 2001).