Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 5, 1995 TAG: 9503060009
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARGARET EDDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Just after the 1992 fall elections, the Heritage Foundation - the nation's premier conservative think tank - invited members of the incoming Congress to an orientation seminar.
The banquet speaker was Kay Coles James, a conservative talk-circuit favorite. Tucked into her speech was a story about growing up in poverty in Richmond: how one day her brother brought home some chickens he'd stolen from school, how her mother proclaimed that she would starve before allowing stolen food in the house, and how she flung the chickens through the door into the back yard.
When James finished, ``I saw three newly elected members of Congress crying,'' recalled Karen Miller, the foundation's director of lectures and seminars.
In the view of some Washingtonians, the member of the Allen administration with the brightest future is not Gov. George Allen, but Kay James, his secretary of health and human resources. Allen is among an elite group of past and current GOP governors. But James is almost unique as an inspirational speaker par excellence, a woman who appears to live out the blend of conservatism and compassion that she preaches, and who - at a time when the national GOP is striving to crack the Democratic stranglehold on African-American voters - is black.
``Thank you, President James,'' quipped Douglas Holladay, a fund-raiser and executive with the One To One Partnership, a national mentoring group, after she introduced him at a state capital prayer breakfast last month. ``She's just going to vault right over that gubernatorial slot,'' he predicted.
There is a more complex side to the rags-to-riches story, however. Some who knew James as a child growing up in Richmond recall a far different circumstance than is suggested by the tag line of her 1992 autobiography, ``Never Forget ... The riveting story of one woman's journey from public housing to the corridors of power.''
``She was brought up with more than most kids, period, black or white,'' said former Gov. Douglas Wilder, a friend of the aunt and uncle who informally adopted James, moving her from public housing to a comfortable middle-class home when she was 5.
Some family members and friends were stunned when James graphically described that aunt, a schoolteacher married to a prominent insurance executive, as an abusive alcoholic. And mixed with acquaintances' stories about James' graciousness and caring are also tales of a demanding ego that, when thwarted or ignored, can turn imperious and mean.
``There'd be no stopping Kay James if that [quality] weren't there,'' said a prominent Republican who was startled to witness a crueler side. ``If people get close enough, they see it.''
Some friends and former colleagues say those reports are inconsistent with the James they know. Others say any such tendency may grow out of the uncommon mixture of being conservative, black and at the forefront of policy debates on such emotion-laden issues as welfare reform and abortion. James has been the Allen administration's point person on welfare in the General Assembly.
As a former spokeswoman for the National Right to Life Committee, former senior vice president of the conservative Family Research Council and a former holder of two sub-Cabinet posts of the Bush administration, James traveled the country, speaking to Fortune 500 executives and church conferences and to national television audiences via such shows as ``McNeil-Lehrer,'' ``Crossfire'' and ``Buchanan & Co.''
Along the way, she made headlines by blocking publication of a government document that touted condoms as an AIDS preventive, opposing the confirmation of Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the U.S. Supreme Court (``Women don't need to mutilate their bodies and kill their children in order to be equal to any man,'' James testified in response to Ginsburg's abortion-rights views) and chiding Republicans for ceding the black vote to Democrats.
In her current job, she is castigated from the left by those who accuse her of selling out the interests of black people and from the right by some who hint that she might not be loyal enough to the Allen agenda.
Amidst the firestorm, Anthony Coles, the youngest of her five brothers and a cost-control specialist with Reynolds Metals in Richmond, doesn't hesitate when asked what he admires most about his sister: ``Her resilience.''
``I'm a black conservative Republican in Virginia. Of course I'm tough. ... You have to be,'' James says.
The persona that James presents to the public is unaffected, natural and smiling. She greets acquaintances with hugs. Her oratory is often a seamless blend of conviction and next-door neighborliness. Her anecdotes feature stories about her childhood, her three children and her husband, Charles, the state's personnel director.
Speaking on a recent Sunday morning before one of Richmond's largest Baptist congregations, James opened with the question, ``Mommy, what's an abortion?''
``When my own child asked me that, it changed my life forever,'' she said. Her reply: ``Sweetie, it's when a child doesn't have an opportunity to be born.'' An evangelical Christian, James went on to urge parishioners to take young, unwed pregnant women into their homes, something she has done on several occasions.
At a lunchtime seminar in January at the Heritage Foundation, James also struck a personal note, calling subtle attention to her background. How many people, she asked, have a ``relationship'' - not an acquaintance, or an on-the-job encounter - with someone on welfare? Except for her, few did.
As the question suggests, James' cachet is bound up both in her striking abilities and her roots.
``In a Republican administration, she was an attractive woman of color, and there weren't very many of them,'' noted Cheri Hayes, former staff director of the National Commission on Children, to which James was appointed by presidents Reagan and Bush.
She is tiring, James told the Heritage crowd, of the popular sociological slogan, ``It takes a village to raise a child.'' What it takes and what policy should encourage, she said, ``are stable, intact, two-parent families.''
`A suffering test?'
James' own rearing, by contrast, was a communal affair.
Born 45 years ago in Portsmouth, she described her father in ``Never Forget'' as a ``family man, alcoholic, devoted husband, aficionado of classical music, abusive husband and father.'' She did not mention family lore, recounted in interviews by James and her brothers, suggesting that Bernard A. Coles may have descended from Thomas Jefferson, whose relationship with slave Sally Hemmings is a source of debate among scholars.
Her mother was the youngest of six daughters of a Richmond laborer and his homemaker wife. Three of James' aunts earned master's degrees; one held two. Her three uncles by marriage were a dentist, the owner of a popular pharmacy and an insurance executive. James' mother was the only daughter who married into poverty.
For a bit less than a year after her parents separated, James lived with her mother and brothers in public housing in Richmond. Then she moved into the home of Pearl and J.B. Williams, who was president of a Richmond insurance company until its merger with an Atlanta firm.
The Williamses had no children, and Kay - whom they educated at Hampton University, and who later inherited their house - was raised as an only daughter. Another aunt took two of the younger Coles boys. Although Kay spent occasional nights with her mother, she never again lived in public housing.
Prominent Richmonders such as Wilder and state Sen. Benjamin Lambert - both Democrats - were fraternity brothers of Williams' and visited in the home. Their recollection is of a likable and sociable couple and a bright, attractive niece. But in her book, James recalled her aunt as ``a vicious drunk'' who was kind while sober but whose cursings and ``tongue lashings got meaner'' as she aged.
``I'm not questioning it, but I never saw it,'' Lambert said. ``I have my opinion of the aunt and uncle, and I have a very high opinion. I think I'll keep it that way.''
Wilder also recounted the dismay caused by James' book in some circles. ``No one knows what goes on within a home setting,'' he said. But the prevailing view of those who knew the Williamses - both of whom are deceased - was that ``she had been very fortunate to be raised in a home that provided nurture and care and opportunity.''
James said her purpose in writing ``Never Forget'' was not to suggest that she had raised herself up by her own bootstraps, but to say to young women, ``I have a responsibility to go back and recreate for you the things that helped me, so you can'' make it, too.
While she understands the hostility she has encountered in writing about alcoholism, ``it makes me feel very sad for people who live through those experiences and then have them denied,'' she said. ``It tells kids, `Don't speak out, because people won't believe you.'''
James, her husband and children have made a family compact to abstain from drinking alcohol because of the negative toll it has taken on her life, she said.
Wade Horn, a child psychologist, former U.S. commissioner of children, youth and families and a James admirer, dismisses those who question whether she has a true understanding of poverty.
``Growing up in the South at a time of great civil rights injustice, born to a mother who early in her life was on welfare, having to leave her own mother to live with relatives, and this is not suffering enough?'' he asked.
``If you happen to be a black conservative Republican, there's a suffering test we give you?''
Noting that the Jameses have opened their home to a troubled foster child off and on for several years, he added, ``She doesn't just talk'' compassion and conservative values. ``She understands it and lives it.''
James' break with anonymity came in 1984, after her family had moved to Northern Virginia. Continuing her work in the anti-abortion movement, she was tapped one day to appear on a cable television call-in show. The response to her speaking skill was so overwhelming that the National Right to Life Committee offered her a job.
As director of public affairs, she toured the country, appearing on talk shows, lecturing and debating. If her public demeanor was polished and relaxed, James said, her insides were churning.
Two hours before any debate, ``I would lock myself in my hotel room with the phone off the hook and `eat rug,''' she wrote. That meant lying prone on the floor and confessing in prayer ``my inadequacies and fears.''
James said she knew she was a success when Faye Wattleton, an elegant black woman and then-president of Planned Parenthood, kept canceling out of any joint appearance. Others also saw James as the perfect foil to Wattleton because of her skill, attractiveness and race.
In a statement issued by her office, Wattleton called the portion of ``Never Forget'' dealing with her ``a total fantasy''; she did not debate James because it was her policy to debate only the heads of national organizations, she said.
`I'm an easy target'
Moving to the Department of Health and Human Services and the White House Drug Control Office, James attracted a coterie of admirers. John Littel, who followed her to Richmond to become a deputy secretary for policy, recalled her early days at the White House, where he also worked.
There were several unique messages, he said, including an emphasis on families. ``She said if we weren't able to do the job within the hours set, we needed to figure out what was wrong,'' he recalled.
Over time, James became almost a mother figure to many on the staff, helping them chart careers, developing talents, and - in his case - prodding him and his girlfriend toward marriage.
``I joke that we got married to keep her happy, we bought a house to keep her happy, and now we're having a baby to keep her happy,'' he said.
Not everyone is so enthusiastic. Four people, who have known her in three different contexts, including her current job, told remarkably similar stories about James becoming incensed when she was not treated with deference. Her response to offenders can be abusive and demeaning, said the individuals, two of whom are well-positioned Republicans. Each offered examples that they said could bring retribution if made public.
``She brings them in when she thinks there's a little loyalty problem and rips them to shreds,'' said a person who has worked with James in recent years.
``It's like there are two sides to this woman,'' said another person, who has lost the ecstasy felt on first learning of such a well-credentialed black conservative.
``That may be someone's perception,'' replied James. ``It's hard to answer without knowing the specific situation.''
But she said, ``It is not atypical for a woman, not atypical for an African-American to be perceived that way. Generally, I don't stand on a lot of pomp and circumstance. I don't stand on a lot of protocol. My validation doesn't come from situations like that.''
In Richmond, where she oversees 14 agencies and 19,000 employees in the largest of the secretariats, James has led the push for welfare reform. As chairman of Allen's 40-member Empowerment Commission, she was the key force behind a report that lambastes government solutions and recommends broad societal changes in education, family structure, community activism and public policy as the solutions to welfare.
She has drawn heat from black liberals for naming the report ``Lift Every Voice,'' a song informally known as the black national anthem, and for misidentifying the lyricist, James Weldon Johnson. She has had to defend against charges that her staff expanded at a time of major cutbacks in the state work force. And she has been accused of operating a ``Washington-style'' office, sweeping into hearings with an entourage of aides, sunnily talking ``empowerment'' philosophy and relying on others for command of details.
James has apologized for the mistake on the lyricist's name, but not for the title itself. Her work force is larger than her predecessors' because she consolidated in her office some functions previously left to lower agencies and has made some part-time positions permanent. And she hints that racism and sexism may play into the criticism of her style.
``I'm an easy target,'' she said.
At the heart of the debate, said James, are her ideas.
Howard Cullum, her Democratic predecessor, agrees. ``The thing people are concerned about is that the secretary usually has been the advocate for improved services'' for the poor, the mentally and physically disabled, and other needy Virginians, Cullum said. ``There's none of that here.''
James begs to differ. In a book due out later this year, she will argue that the answer to confronting four major issues of our time - racism, poverty, homosexuality and abortion - is to focus less on politics and more on cultural change. She will challenge conservatives to become intimately involved in personal relationships with minorities, gays and the poor.
With speculation high that she will run for state office or return to a prominent post in Washington, that book could be a springboard for the next stage of her life. Her goal, she said, is not advancing personally, but having a role ``in fundamentally changing the culture.''
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by CNB