THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 1, 1994 TAG: 9407010581
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY FRANCIE LATOUR, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: Long : 110 lines
Is this city on an inevitable march toward ward elections for its City Council and School Board?
Two actions taken by the Justice Department during the past week seem to point in that direction.
And the attorney for Norfolk plaintiffs who forced that city to adopt a ward system in 1991 believes it is only a matter of time before Chesapeake will be made to follow.
The first signal came last week, when the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division denied Chesapeake's request to hold its first School Board elections using an at-large system.
Citing a pattern of ``severe polarization along racial lines'' in the past decade of council elections, the federal agency warned that a School Board elected by the same method would deny black voters an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.
Faced with a similar rejection last year, Newport News adopted a modified ward system for electing its School Board that earned Justice Department approval.
But the Newport News City Council learned this week that it still had not gone far enough.
On Tuesday, the Justice Department threatened to sue Newport News if it did not abandon its at-large council elections as well.
Deval L. Patrick, assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division, charged that voting in Newport News has been racially polarized - the same charge leveled against Chesapeake when the department denied its request for at-large school elections.
Also, Patrick wrote that the Newport News council had held on to the at-large method even though itwas ``well aware of the . . . discriminatory impact at-large elections have.''
The Justice Department had pointed out that impact when it originally blocked Newport News' request for an at-large School Board. It did much the same thing when it rejected Chesapeake's application last week.
The Justice Department, however, refused to draw any parallels between the pending suit in Newport News and any future actions it might take against Chesapeake.
Department spokesman Myron Marlin said that the decision to threaten suit against Newport News was not prompted by an individual complaint. It grew out of the department's review of at-large council voting patterns studied as part of the city's School Board submission, he said.
The department already has indicated it has analyzed a decade of Chesapeake council elections and found them wanting.
Frank R. Parker, the attorney who litigated the case that dismantled Norfolk's at-large council elections, said Chesapeake has had ample warning of the Justice Department's interpretation of the law.
``The result in the Norfolk case should have sent a signal to cities in Tidewater that at-large elections are no longer tenable under the Voting Rights Act,'' said Parker, a law professor at the District of Columbia Law School.
Norfolk's at-large City Council elections were abolished in favor of a ward system on June 24, 1991, after an eight-year court battle. The city was carved into five wards and two ``super wards.'' Three of the seven wards were designed to have black majorities.
But Parker called Virginia a hold-out state, characterizing the recent events in Chesapeake as a symbol of Virginia's reluctance to follow a national trend.
``At-large elections are obsolete from a national perspective,'' Parker said. ``The (Chesapeake) City Council will have to deal with it, because eventually they'll get a letter like the one Newport News got.''
Parker added that it was ``obvious'' that if council members were elected by districts in accordance with voting rights laws, up to two more blacks would sit on the council. Although blacks make up 27 percent of the population in Chesapeake, the city now has one black representative, Mayor William E. Ward, on its nine-member council.
Although Ward wants the council to implement a district system to elect the city's School Board, he has said he supports the at-large method for electing council members.
Ward was out of town this week when the Justice Department issued its ward-system ultimatum to Newport News, and he could not be reached to comment on the potential influence of that development on Chesapeake.
One major difference between the two cities is the racial climate. In its letter to Newport News, the Justice Department cited years of criticism of the at-large system by minority leaders.
But black organizations in Chesapeake have resisted the notion of their city as racially polarized.
March Cromuel, who heads the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, would not comment on the events in Newport News or what they might mean for Chesapeake. Though Cromuel personally favors election districts, his organization has twice voted to support at-large School Board elections.
Katherine I. Butler, a law professor at the University of Southern California who has represented a number of cities in voting-rights litigation, called Chesapeake a prime candidate for a Justice Department suit.
``A city around a 100,000 population with at-large elections in the south is a pretty good target for a . . . suit,'' Butler said. ``Many cities have already capitulated to this demand.''
Chesapeake City Attorney Ronald Hallman said any speculation on the future of Chesapeake's council elections based on the developments in Newport News was like ``comparing apples and oranges.''
Hallman said he is carefully weighing options before recommending how the council should respond to the Justice Department's letter.
But some black residents who favor a ward system say the time for deliberations has come and gone.
``It is my hope that Chesapeake will have enough foresight to filter all this in without we here having to resort to legal means,'' said Earl Robinson, president of Chesapeake Men for Progress, an umbrella group of black-majority political organizations that 25 years ago helped elect the first two blacks to council. by CNB