Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 14, 1995 TAG: 9505150007
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: WARREN FISKE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
There comes a time in some politicians' lives when a principle becomes so dear that - public reaction be damned - it's time to speak out.
For Patrick McSweeney, chairman of the state Republican Party, the clarion call came this spring when he was invited to speak at the dedication of a Danville monument to the Confederate flag.
Never mind that display of the flag is offensive to many blacks. Never mind that the state GOP was on the verge of announcing a major effort to recruit minorities. Never mind that McSweeney himself has been jarred by accusations of racial insensitivity.
In McSweeney's eyes, Southern culture was under siege. And that meant he had to act.
"What I will not do," McSweeney declared in his speech, "is bow either to white bigots who would appropriate the symbols of the Virginia tradition ... or to black racists who would accomplish the same by insisting everyone who attends such an event as this or finds something valuable in the Virginia tradition is filled with hatred for black people."
McSweeney's hard-line beliefs and unwillingness to compromise have become a symbol for the deep divisions within the state GOP. While leaders of the party's Christian conservative wing hail him as a man of principle, moderates say his demands for ideological purity are increasingly isolating the party from mainstream voters.
Virginia's two highest-ranking Republican office holders - Gov. George Allen and U.S. Sen. John Warner - refuse to associate with the chairman. McSweeney is openly sympathetic to efforts to deny Warner renomination in 1996 because of the senator's refusal to support two recent party nominees. He is considering running against Warner himself.
Allen has accused McSweeney of trying to undermine his 1993 campaign, and tried unsuccessfully to impeach the chairman shortly after being elected governor. Despite the lack of confidence, McSweeney has refused to resign. Allen, in protest, refuses to help the state party raise money.
The tensions take on a special meaning this year as Republicans need to gain only three seats in both chambers of the General Assembly to control the legislature for the first time. Few expect McSweeney can unite the party.
"Pat shows no signs of flexibility," said James Rich, Republican chairman of the 10th Congressional District in Northern Virginia. "His view of loyalty is so narrow that even Ronald Reagan couldn't meet it. If you don't agree with him, he wants to kick you out. He thinks he can build a party by subtraction."
McSweeney is unapologetic to his critics. The Republican Party is not for the squeamish, he argues.
" ... We have stark choices, and if we worry about the way the media portrays us and try to overcome that, then we'd be a party of the lowest common denominator and we'd just get lost in the mushy middle," he said.
McSweeney, 52, is a tall man with the trim build of a college quarterback - which he was, at the University of Virginia in the early 1960s. Although his hair is gray, his face retains a youthful handsomeness.
He's not one given to small talk or sound bites. During a recent three-hour interview in his Richmond law office, he never once cracked a joke. His is a world of classic books and treatises and history, which he cites constantly in a never-ending quest to bring order to a chaotic world.
"I know that this is very unpopular these days, but I believe in absolutes," he said. "This is metaphysical, but you can't tell right or wrong, truth or falsehoods, without believing in absolutes."
McSweeney's absolutes are grounded in a strict Roman Catholic upbringing. He was born and reared in Richmond, the oldest of seven children. His father and uncle owned a successful meatpacking business. As a youth, McSweeney received a classical education in private schools, played sports and basked in church discipline.
He picked up his reverence for the South through books. His ancestors are of Northern descent, boast of no Civil War heroes and settled in Virginia just before 1900.
It was at UVa in 1961 that McSweeney's infatuation began. Those were heady times at the Charlottesville campus. William Faulkner, the legendary Mississippi author who wrote that the South can never come to grips with the future until it comes to grips with its past, was a visiting professor that year. McSweeney, a second-year English major, devoured Faulkner's novels, attended his readings and routinely walked by his house, hoping to see or exchange words with the great writer.
The impact was profound. McSweeney lists Faulkner among his greatest heroes - along with his parents and Mother Theresa. And he says he embarked on a lifetime reading quest to understand civilization and Southern culture, starting with the works of Cicero and Virgil.
McSweeney says a football injury kept him out of the military when he graduated from UVa in 1964. He went on to law school at the University of Richmond and was editor of the law review his final year.
"He was an academician who seemed more interested in the theory of law than the practice of it," said Reginald Jones, a Richmond lawyer who was a classmate. "Pat was a grinder who was constantly working at being the top in our class.
"He's always been very engaging when talking about ideas," Jones added. "But he's never been the kind of guy you're going to sit down and drink a beer with and talk about your kids."
After law school, McSweeney worked on a commission that redrafted the state constitution, and he worked briefly in the Justice Department under Richard Nixon. He returned to Virginia in 1974 and spent four years heading the staff of a legislative panel that sought to reorganize state government.
In 1978, McSweeney went into private law practice. Today, his firm employs 19 lawyers. He lives on a 21-acre farm in Powhatan County with his wife and four children.
McSweeney unsuccessfully ran for the state Senate in 1983. His rise in the Republican ranks came through his longtime leadership of the party's policy committee, starting in 1985. He impressed the party's ever-growing evangelical wing with his insistence that the GOP stand pat on hard-line conservative issues and oppose abortion. With the conservatives' backing, he was elected chairman in 1992, despite warnings from Warner and other moderates that he would drive the party too far to the right.
McSweeney explains his positions - both political and legal - by calling on his unswerving devotion to heritage and tradition.
For example, he is strongly opposed to Virginia Beach's plan to build a 79-mile pipeline to take water from Lake Gaston. He is the lawyer for the Roanoke River Basin Association, a collection of Southside communities hoping to stop the project. To him, it all comes down to an argument of preserving Southern culture.
The economic vitality of the small towns around Lake Gaston, he argues, is tied to the water and its allure to industries such as power plants, paper mills and farming. "To the extent that more and more of the resources are transferred to large urban areas, the less likely it is that people will be able to remain in the rural areas," he said.
McSweeney said he insists on rigid party discipline because the future of democracy depends on it. The purpose of having two political parties, he said, is to offer voters a clear choice on the direction of government. "If we don't have people within the Republican Party who are prepared to abide with the will of the majority, then we will never have the capacity to put together a governing agenda and implement it."
That's why, in McSweeney's eyes, Warner committed an unforgivable act by refusing to back two recent Republican nominees - Oliver North for the U.S. Senate in 1994 and Mike Farris for lieutenant governor in 1993. That's why McSweeney has favored disciplining scores of other moderate Republicans who did the same.
"We set up a fair system of procedures [at Republican conventions], and it's absolutely essential that all Republicans be bound by it," he said. "If you say it is an absolute impossibility to do that, then the only conscientious choice is to leave the party."
Critics say McSweeney is so blinded by his absolute beliefs that he goes beyond good sense. And some of the discipline he demands of others, they say, he lacks himself.
"He's always standing on his own beliefs, trampling everyone else's beliefs and falling on his sword," said Donald Moseley, a Republican activist in Southside.
For example, McSweeney insists there is a stark line between his personal actions and those he takes as party chairman. His appearance in Danville on behalf of the Confederate flag - and his subsequent decision to allow the Richmond Times-Dispatch to reprint his speech - is in no way a reflection on the GOP, he says.
Many Republican activists, still scratching their heads over the incident, beg to differ. "Discretion being the better part of valor, he never should have gone," said Gary Byler, a Virginia Beach Republican.
Last fall, McSweeney made front-page news across the state by arguing that it would not be "cost-effective" for Republicans to court black voters in the U.S. Senate race. This winter, he enraged moderates by relegating Warner to a back table at a party dinner and omitting the senator's name as he introduced dozens of other GOP office holders.
Ultimately, McSweeney's tenure as chairman appears doomed by his feud with the governor. Allen insists that McSweeney discouraged businessmen from contributing to his 1993 campaign and ridiculed his chances of winning. McSweeney has denied the charge.
McSweeney's term as chairman expires in 1996, and Allen has vowed to find a replacement. McSweeney hasn't said whether he'll seek re-election, but few think he can win a popularity contest against the governor.
"I've supported Pat in the past, but in a choice between him and my governor, I've got to choose my governor," Byler said.
McSweeney sighed last week when asked if his self-righteous style has alienated people.
"I don't have any need to be loved," he said, "and I think a party chairman who does is just as bad as an elected official who does."
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