Political Organizer

And I ran for city council, I think, in '74 [1974]. That's where I'm getting, getting my--$$Okay (simultaneous).$$--(simultaneous) my dates are a little confused here.$$So, that was prior to working with the--$$Prior to the convention [1976 Democratic National Convention, New York, New York].$$Yeah.$$Yeah. Prior to the convention, I ran for city council, and I lost that by five hundred votes, and so forth. So I said, "Well, I'm not gonna run for anything else again." Spent all of my time concentrating on my work at Norfolk State [Norfolk State College; Norfolk State University, Norfolk, Virginia], and so forth. For the next two or three years, I helped to get Clarke and Owens [Hugo A. Owens, Sr.] reelected and kind of took a back seat. But then in '77 [1977] Clarke died and, and we [Chesapeake Men for Progress; New Cheesecake Men for Progress, Chesapeake, Virginia] worked to get somebody appointed to finish his term. His wife agreed to do that, so for a year or year and a half, Mrs. Clarke [Florine R. Clarke] served as the council appointed replacement for her husband, William Clarke [W.P. Clarke, Sr.]. So, in '78 [1978], she said, "I'm not gonna run again," and that's when we all looked around and said, "Well, Bill Ward [HistoryMaker William E. Ward], you gotta be the one. You gotta go for that seat. We gotta keep the two blacks on council." So I ran in 1978, had already created the model for the most part, and that is you work with your base, work with the black churches and the black neighborhood bosses, and so forth. And haven't been active in the Democratic committee over the next--over the previous seven or eight years. I had gained some white support like that. And so on election day in '78 [1978], I came in sixth, with the five, five seats, five vacancies on that--at that time. And when they counted the votes on election night, Bill Ward came in number six, and everybody said, "We thought you were gonna win." And I wasn't that far, I forgot how many votes I was behind. Two days later when they counted the votes in the official canvas, they discovered at one precinct that at one machine, votes had not been counted for Bill Ward. So, they found 123 votes at a southern city--near the southern precinct in the southern part of Chesapeake [Virginia] and moved me from the sixth place loser to a third place finisher. And so I was declared after a recount and all that, to be the winner, which knocked off one of the white winners by--and his closest competition had been about two votes or something like that. So anyway, I was finally elected to Chesapeake City Council in 1978, and served in that capacity as a councilmember until October 1990, when I became mayor. So, during the twelve years as a councilmember, I began to build up some support, you know, in the larger community working with the mayors at that time, and all the mayors were Democratic mayors and councils were primarily the Democratic council. Chesapeake didn't begin to shift until the '90s [1990s] to become a Republican city and now it's primarily Republican controlled.$The 1970s was an exciting decade where things began to stabilize. And in the, in the '80s [1980s]--here again, Chesapeake [Virginia] began to grow in the '80s [1980s], began to attract multinational businesses, residential units were come in, popping up. The population was growing at 3 and 4 and 5 percent, and then when I became mayor in 1990 for the next ten years, during my tenure, we continued to expand. I began to travel internationally and nationally to attract multinational businesses. I spent several trips into Japan, which was very lucrative for us, also in Europe and other parts of Asia, Taiwan, wherever we could--and also in this country, also I did a lot of travel. So all of this began to add to my persona as an aggressive weak mayor in a sense, and we were able to get some things done. We were able to get federal funding and approve and upgrade some of the old black neighborhoods, old traditional Chesapeake, rural Chesapeake, which was a county until '63 [1963]. Had two populations, us and them. And the us, the black people, all lived in little villages throughout the city, and so we didn't begin to integrate the city until the early '70s [1970s], and today it's much harder to determine your base if you're dependent solely on your black base, because it's no longer restricted to these, quote villages, just because it's a highly integrated city. There's 354 square miles, we have fifty-five voting precincts, black people live everywhere, all candidates, all officials are elected at large. I was always elected at large, never from a ward system, never from a precinct system. And that's the interesting part about my political life is that the demographics of Chesapeake has always remained stable, about 22 or 23 percent African American and 77, 76, 77, 78 percent majority race. So, for any candidate or any person, and any minority candidate to win, he or she must be able to build bridges, and that was one of my campaign themes, building bridges. Another one was promises made, promises kept. So, I always try to represent all the people, and in the neighborhoods, you know, I was always there. Wherever invited, I would appear; white churches, black churches, and ultimately I developed a good support base in the white churches. I had five white ministers who would meet with me on a monthly basis to pray once a month in my office. We would meet and they would pray with me, for me. And the National Day of Prayer, I had no problem in participating in that and taking on leadership in that, and, so and then I established a sister cities program, which got us into Brazil. I've been in and out of Brazil four, five, six, seven times, and we have a sister city in southern Brazil, in Joinville and Santa Catarina state. As a result of my first trip to Brazil, which was a business trip, I was able to bring Varga Brakes [TRW Brakes Brazil] to the City of Chesapeake. First trip to Japan I was able to bring Yupo [Yupo Corporation], which is a large Japanese Company. Oji-Yuka paper company [Oji-Yuka Synthetic Paper Company; Yupo Corporation], $100 million investment. So, you'll see some of the pictures I have here on the back table, the governors of Virginia, particularly George Allen. The Republican governor always came down and presented me a big check, a state incentive, a state investment check to bring a business here. So these are the kinds of exciting things that we were able to do during, during my tenure.