L. Douglas Wilder is a man of firsts. He was the first
elected black governor in the nation and now he is the
first popularly elected mayor of Richmond. His success
– both in getting elected and reinventing local
politics, in the capital, got us thinking about Virginia’s
mayors in general.
The Old Dominion has big city mayors with national reputations
like Wilder and Virginia Beach’s Meyera E. Oberndorf.
In fact, Oberndorf was named one of the nation’s
top 25 mayors to watch by Newsweek in 1996. Right
now, you can see her in streaming video on the U.S.
Conference of Mayors Web site, answering a question
on how public-private partnerships and initiatives have
improved the services and quality of life in her city.
We also have mayors of smaller municipalities, such as
Grottoes chief, Doug Shifflett, who updates his 2,000-plus
Shenandoah Valley constituents regularly with an online
“Mayor’s Corner” column. Last summer,
he used his online platform to report that plans for bathrooms
in the town park had been completed and to ask for comments
on paving the road into the new baseball field.
Virginia has an odd patchwork of municipal governments.
According to Mary Jo Fields, director of research at the
Virginia Municipal League, there were 39 city and 190
town mayors throughout the state as of May 1, 2004. The
largest city with a mayor is Virginia Beach, with a population
of more than 440,000. The smallest city, at close to 4,000,
is Norton. Blacksburg, population 41,000, is the largest
town with a mayor and Columbia (pop. 58) and Duffield
(pop. 54) are the smallest.
The city/town distinction is a unique in Virginia. Size
is not always what separates one from the other. We're
the only state in the nation that treats cities as political
entities completely separate from counties. Residents
of towns, such as Farmville or Tazewell, vote for both
town and county officials (and pay both town and county
taxes). Residents of cities such as Charlottesville in
Albemarle County and Manassas in Prince William County
are not able to vote for their respective county boards,
despite being surrounded by those jurisdictions.
This has made for some odd reconfigurations, depending
on whether municipalities are trying to fight annexation
or get services from larger jurisdictions. According to
Charlie Grymes, who teaches the geography of Virginia
at George Mason University, five counties have merged
with their cities since World War II, while two have given
up their charters and become towns.
For example, Warwick County became Warwick City in 1952.
Six years later it merged with the City of Newport News.
On the other hand, South Boston reverted to a town in
Halifax County in 1995, and Clifton Forge gave up its
city status, joining Alleghany County in 2001.
According to the VML, slightly fewer than half of Virginia’s
cities select their mayors by direct election. In the
remainder, the mayor is chosen from among council members.
Three-quarters of the Commonwealth’s towns directly
elect their mayors.
Virginia’s mayors preside over city or town councils,
which are the governing bodies of their municipalities.
In their roles in cities and towns, mayors act as the
official, ceremonial and military head of their localities.
In small towns, they also may have administrative duties.
Many, however, have city manager forms of government,
limiting the mayor’s authority.
Rob Bennett is the mayor of Covington, which has such
a form of municipal government. "The biggest drawback,"
he says, "is that sometimes people forget that I
do not run the city ? the city manager does. I cannot
hire and fire people that work for the city, but only
hire and fire our city manager and city attorney.”
But there are some positive aspects to his role. He runs
the city council meetings. “I can basically direct
how I want the conversations to go,” Bennett says.
He also adds that he enjoys some of the ceremonial duties,
as well as shepherding other dignitaries around the city.
“Interacting with the people is the best part of
the job."
Virginia’s mayors represent an array of backgrounds.
Portsmouth’s Dr. James W. Holley III, a World War
II veteran, has been a dental surgeon for 45 years. He
was a civil rights activist in the early 1960s, instrumental
in desegregating the local library, hospital, city golf
course and area restaurants.
Staunton’s John Avoli was a high school principal
before becoming mayor. His family moved from Italy to
the U.S. in 1960; he is now executive director of the
Staunton’s Frontier Culture Museum, while still
serving as mayor.
In addition to the distinction of leading Virginia’s
largest city for almost 20 years, Oberndorf was also the
first woman mayor in Virginia Beach’s history. In
fact, back in 1976, when she was first elected to the
city council, she was the first woman elected to public
office in the city. But it's her style that gained her
national attention. In 1996, Newsweek dubbed
her one of 25 mayors to watch because she went public
with a diagnosis of breast cancer during her campaign
for a third term in office. This, in turn, led her to
establishing an initiative, “Adopt-A-M.O.M.M-- Making
Opportunities for Mammograms a Must” --to help indigent
women get mammograms.
At the other end of the spectrum, Norton’s B. Robert
Raines started his career in the Marines maintaining aircraft
for Pentagon staff. The mayor of our smallest city went
on to get an undergraduate degree in mathematics and a
graduate degree in industrial education, and served as
principal of a local vocational-technical center when
first elected mayor in 1990.
And then there is Mayor Wilder. We all know his credentials:
The grandson of slaves, the new Richmond mayor won a Bronze
Star in the Korean War. He served as a state senator and
lieutenant governor before he became the nation’s
first black elected governor. A teacher at Virginia Commonwealth
University in his post-governor years, he initiated a
campaign to change the Richmond City Charter and became
the city’s first directly elected mayor in more
than 50 years. Some political scientists consider it a
watershed change in both Richmond and Virginia politics.
A California state legislator, according to Newsweek,
once referred to mayoring as “street lights, dog-doo
and parking meters.” We suspect Wilder, Oberndorf
and the Commonwealth’s other 227 municipal CEOs
would disagree.
March 14, 2005
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Nice & Curious
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Last Modified:
Friday, June 27, 2008
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