ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 7, 1995 TAG: 9512070099
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-14 EDITION: METRO
MICHAEL Thomas wants to serve as the next chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia. He also wants to stay on as Gov. George Allen's secretary of administration.
He shouldn't do both.
Virginia already has suffered more than enough from Allen's evident fondness for politicizing every nook and cranny of state government. For Thomas to become a party chairman, the epitome of a political job, while retaining his post as an unelected state administrator would be to deal yet another blow to the commonwealth's reputation for nonpartisan good government.
To be sure, a governor is both a political and an administrative official, the de facto leader of his or her political party as well as the state's chief executive. Allen deserves to have an ally at the state GOP helm.
Indeed, two years ago (as we said at the time), GOP Chairman Pat McSweeney should have honored Allen's post-election request (delivered via Thomas) to step aside. Leaving aside McSweeney's questionable performance in the job, it is only reasonable that the party chairman serve at the pleasure of a sitting governor of his own party.
But this time McSweeney, who isn't seeking another term as party chief, is correct in saying that neither Thomas nor another Cabinet member should be his successor. Thomas' bid, says McSweeney, could hurt Republicans' effort to be seen as a governing party. (Actually, McSweeney put it more colorfully: "I would first cut his heart out with a rusty can top" before allowing Allen to take over the party.)
Our concern is less with what the Thomas scenario would do to the GOP than with how it would further erode the good-government ethic in Virginia. It would constitute another in a series of steps - each in itself perhaps not so consequential but, taken together, amounting to a discernible backtracking from the ideal - by which Allen has interjected politics where it doesn't belong.
Early in his administration, for example, the governor summarily axed the heads of 14 state agencies, heretofore thought nonpolitical; in some cases, the fired agency heads had originally been appointed by Republican governors and had been kept on through Democratic administrations. Various state boards and agencies also have seen employees purged and replaced as if their posts were merely political patronage.
Then there were the attempts to muzzle state workers and centralize public information in an attempt to control political spin. This year, Allen's failed attempt to win a GOP assembly majority dominated legislative maneuvering. And, during the recent campaign, an unseemly odor arose from the distribution of 324 surplus computers to school divisions that just happened to lie in General Assembly districts represented by Republican lawmakers in tough re-election fights.
Serving simultaneously as a state party leader and in state government is not unprecedented. Alan Diamonstein did so during the '80s when he was state Democratic chairman. But Diamonstein's role in state government was as an elected member of the House of Delegates, a clearly and properly political position; he did not oversee state agencies as an administrator in the executive branch.
The closer parallel is with Lawrence H. Framme III. When named state secretary of economic development by then-Gov. Douglas Wilder, Framme appropriately quit as state Democratic chairman.
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