George,

Here at the Law School they frown on students doing anything other than reading our beautifully bound law books -- but every once in a while a local Democrat needs to take a break to get up to speed on all the goings-on. So this morning I took a bit of time to do that.

Admittedly, the amount of time I have spent reviewing the messages by and to Camille Cooper and Lloyd Snook is probably insufficient to form the basis of a full review of the controversy, but I only have so many hours.

It seems to me that Camille's main objection is that Lloyd announced his preferences in the Council race. There is also some mention of childcare, but her objection there seems to miss his point -- she suggests he opposed having childcare at all, but he was clear in saying that his concern was about feasibility (given quite reasonable concerns about safety and liability).

My first question is why does she object to public endorsements by party leaders? The most obvious response, it seems to me, is a fear that party leaders hold considerable influence over party members and it is unfair for that influence to be exercised during the nomination phase. This might be a reasonable fear in a theoretical sense, but I doubt it is in the reality of Charlottesville politics.

As I mentioned above, I have been a bit out of the loop. But I doubt that over the past 9 months or so Lloyd, Rus, or Will have risen to a level of stardom sufficient to support this fear.

Furthermore, as far as I can tell, Lloyd's endorsements were announced solely through your webpage. While loper.org has reached impressive numbers of party loyalists, I doubt (no offense) that it is an effective means of reaching great numbers of voters who are so impressionable as to be persuaded by a statement of preference from the party chair (does everyone know that he's the party chair?). It would be a different matter if he launched a campaign of support. Here, however, we seem to have only one statement, which I assume was not the lead story in the Daily Progress, or on our beloved dateline 29 news.

I think the real concern we ought to have is recruiting and retaining effect party leadership. From what I've seen, this has been a difficult thing for the City party to accomplish. While my exposure has been limited, it seems to me that we have such leadership in Lloyd and Rus. If I'm wrong, I hope there's someone more qualified who's ready to take the job.

Michael Diz (electronic mail, March 25, 2002)