This week, Michael is joined by John Milliken, co-editor of The New Dominion and Senior Fellow-In-Residence at George Mason University's Schar School, to illustrate the history of the Byrd Machine with the help of archival audio from the LIbrary of Virginia. 

Episode Transcript

Michael Pope  

I'm Michael Pope. This is Pod Virginia, a Podcast that’s digging deep into the archives with vintage radio clips to help explain the Rosetta Stone of Virginia politics, the Bryd machine. Now I know what you're thinking. Haven't we already talked about the Bryd machine before? Well, let me guarantee you, listeners, you've never heard anything like this before because we've got a ton of archive audio from the 40s, the 50s, and the 60s that we're gonna play today that you'll hear for yourselves; thanks to our friends at the Virginia Library. We are joined by the best guest to help explain it all. He is the Co-editor of a great book titled The New Dominion, which includes an excellent chapter on the Bryd machine titled Prelude to Revolution. He is a former chairman of the Arlington County Board and a Senior Fellow in residence at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. John Milliken, thanks for joining us. 

John Milliken  

You're certainly welcome, Michael. I always enjoy talking with you, and I can't think of a more fun topic to talk about Virginia and its politics.

Michael Pope  

I totally agree. I'm glad that you agreed to return to Pod Virginia. Okay, so the New Dominion is an excellent read. I recommend it to all of our readers. Stop what you're doing right now and go out and buy a cop; it's so awesome of a book. We've already done a couple of podcasts about it, including one with you on the chapter that you wrote about the 1966 Senate election. We also recorded a separate episode with a friend of the show, Stephen Farnsworth, about his chapter in the book, which is about the 1981 election for governor. The book is organized into chapters that are about specific elections that shaped modern Virginia. But there's one chapter that is not about a pivotal election. Instead, it's about an era, the era of the Byrd machine, a chapter, the first chapter of the book written by the late Ron Heineman. So John Milliken, tell us why you chose. You're the editor of this book, the Co-editor of the book. Tell us why you chose to begin this book about pivotal elections with a chapter about the Bryd machine.

John Milliken  

Well, the theme of the book is the transformation that Virginia has been through in the last several decades, going from politically a ruby red state and, before that, a highly conservative state, in the hands of the old-line Democratic Party to the purple-verging onto blue state that it is today. The book tries to explain how we got there, and it can't do that unless it explains first where we were. The first chapter is what was Virginia's politics in the 20s, 30s, and 40s, before World War Two. And that's what the first chapter tries to explain.

Michael Pope  

So that chapter, the first chapter in the book, begins by tracing the history of the Byrd machine all the way back to the conservative Democrats who emerged at the end of Reconstruction. They were battling the Readjusters and the Republicans during an era when the myth of the Lost Cause created a phenomenon that Ron Heineman calls the Confederate cult. Considering Harry Byrd wasn't even born until 1887, why is it necessary to start this narrative with the politics of the 1870s?

John Milliken  

Well, Harry Bryd, like a lot of his contemporaries, lived in the comfortable cradle of the old Virginia. Talking about the Lost Cause and defending the historical culture of Virginia was a part of his upbringing and shaped his politics through the end of his life.

Michael Pope

So Ron Heineman, in his chapter, points out that the man most responsible for consolidating the Democrat's new authority was this guy Thomas Staples Martin, whom he describes as a modest, dignified lawyer from Scottsville who had an amazing facility for organizing. So that includes organizing supporters to help him win a US Senate seat against former Virginia Governor Fitzhugh Lee. That's the nephew of Robert Elizabeth Lee. So this is a Lee of the Lee family here that we're talking about. So Martin beating Lee was one of the greatest upsets in Virginia history. And to give us a sense of what it must have been like, we're going take a listen to Captain Jack Pettis of the Virginia Capitol Police in a 1957 interview with WRVA – this is what he said about that upset election from 1893

Jack Pettis

Well, the fight between Tom Martin and Fitzhugh Lee for the United States Senate was one of the greatest uproars that we ever had in the Capitol in all the time I was there. Now, several of our Richmond Delegates had told the people in Richmond, yeah, you’re going to vote for Fitzhugh Lee, but when their names were called, they voted for Tom Martin. Well, this man, extra Billy Smith, met Mr. Austin in the rotunda and challenged him to a fight. Right then, we had to take hold and get everyone moving.

Michael Pope  

A fistfight right there at the statue of George Washington in the capitol rotunda of the Virginia capitol. John Milliken explained why this was such an upset victory, this 1893 US Senate election, and what was the lasting significance here for Thomas Staples Martin seizing control of the Democratic Party?

John Milliken  

Well, if you think of Fitzhugh Lee as the symbol of the Virginia that went into and then emerged out of the Civil War, and Thomas Martin as more the symbol of the Virginia of the 1870s and 80s, where the railroads were king. It was a clear expression of the power of the railroads and the business interests that relied on them over the more traditional conservative establishment that had, for so long, controlled Virginia. So when Martin took over, it was the coming of a new generation and a new group of people who then held sway, at least through the turn of the century.

Michael Pope  

And he really put together a machine in his own right, correct? I mean, like there had been the Readjusters who kind of had a political machine in the 1870s and that sort of faded away. But the emergence of Thomas Staples Martin was essentially a second political machine in Virginia, right?

John Milliken  

Yes, it was, and the Populists were a part of a national movement, and they faded as the National Movement faded. Martin was homegrown, and his organization was really a new thing on the Virginia political stage, and he was, as Ron Heineman said, a gifted organizer. What he put together then, Harry Flood Bryd, who followed him, perfected.

Michael Pope  

All right, so now is the point in the narrative when Harry Bryd enters the scene. Elected to the State Senate at the age of 28. That's very young for the Virginia State Senate. By way of contrast, the youngest member today in the State Senate is Saddam Salim, who was 33 when he was elected last year. So Bryd was a really young member of the State Senate in the 1920s. When he rocketed all the way up to the Executive Mansion as an extremely young governor, taking office at the age of 38. So that was the election of 1925 which was also the first election to be covered by WRVA on the radio. So check out this clip of a show called Around Bishop’s Cracker Barrel featuring Walter Bishop and Congressman J. Vaughn Gary reminiscing about the election of 1925.

J. Vaughn Gary 

That was the election day when Virginians elected the youngest governor; certainly during this century, young Harry Flood Bryd, who was 38 years of age, defeated S Harris Hogue of Roanoke by more than 70,000. I recall other state officials elected that day were Lieutenant Governor Junius West, and Attorney General John R Saunders. That was just before the short ballot, as I recall, that was the last election the people elected a number of officials that are appointed now. Such as the superintendent of public instruction, our old friend, Dr. Hart, was running on that and others because the Bryd short ballot came in that next administration.

Walter Bishop 

That’s correct, governor Byrd, after he came in as governor, had a survey made of the state, and we had a complete reorganization of the state government, and one of the recommendations was the shortening of the ballot.

Michael Pope  

Yeah, so that shortening of the ballot was a milestone victory for the Byrd machine. It's one that we still live with today. I mean, so as you just heard, that election of 1925 was the last time they elected a state superintendent. So now our public schools are run by the person appointed by the governor. It used to be the voters who got to choose the person who leads the public education system in Virginia. So, John Milliken, explain the short ballot; what is the short ballot all about? And what's its lasting significance?

John Milliken  

Well, think of it sort of on two levels. From a good government standpoint, the thought was that the governor ought to have a greater level of authority in order to actually accomplish what he may have promised during the campaign. The idea then of independently elected statewide officials with separate power bases was inconsistent with the then-good government notion of trying to give the governor the power actually to accomplish what he was promising to do. The short ballot was to take statewide elected officials who were previously elected on their own off of the ballot and make them department heads or division heads in a consolidated state government reporting directly to the governor. But aside from that, the political side of it is why give a batch of potential rivals their own power base in separately elected office? The organization did not want that. So Harry Byrd was smart enough to know that if he lessened the number of statewide elected officials, he would lessen the number of rivals he might have in the future.

Michael Pope  

And that's the lasting legacy, really, that we get from the Bryd machine.

John Milliken  

It’s one of the ways through which he built his organization. If you were a local official and somebody with political aspirations beyond your local office, you really only had one person that you needed to go to to talk about your dreams and plans. There weren't other rivals, typically, that you could play one off against another to further your ambition.

Michael Pope  

So one of the most important things about Bryd’s early career is that he was an opponent of Franklin Roosevelt, an opponent of the New Deal. But it did not start out that way. Check out this audio clip of Harry Byrd explaining how he evolved from being a supporter to an opponent.

Harry Bryd 

Mr. Roosevelt and I were quite good friends. When he was elected president, he was governor of New York. When I was governor of Virginia, we exchanged visits, and I supported him. The first bill I voted upon when I took my oath of office with Mr. Roosevelt the same day, on March 4, 1933, the first bill that I voted for was a bill recommended by President Roosevelt, the title of which was a bill to preserve the credit of the United States government by reducing the expenditures by 15% and then in six months, Mr. Roosevelt changed. He repealed his bill and started to spend, which we see the results of today. Now, my break with Mr. Roosevelt came in 1937 when he attempted to pack the Supreme Court of the United States. I joined with other senators in making a determined bid in the fight against that. Because that was contrary to our principles of government, and I opposed it. 

Michael Pope  

So it's interesting. If you listen to the whole speech, he goes into quite some detail about how, on the campaign trail in 1932, from his perspective, he felt like Franklin Roosevelt was going to be a fiscally responsible president and not go into a lot of debt and not do profligate spending. And, of course, that's not what the New Deal was about at all. And so there was this break here with the court-packing plan, right? John Milliken, can you explain to us the ongoing relationship and the significance of this conflict between the FDR Democrats and the Byrd Democrats.

John Milliken  

Well, I mean, in one sense, Harry Byrd was absolutely correct. Roosevelt campaigned in 1932 as a more traditional conservative balance-the-budget type candidate when he got into office, perhaps legitimately so. Then, freshly discovered or learned that it just wasn't going to be able to work that way and that additional federal spending was going to be necessary to reinvigorate the economy. And for Harry Bryd, that was anathema. If you were unbalancing the budget, if you were going into some kind of federal long-term debt – that was contrary to the fundamentals of what Harry Byrd believed, as far as the government's role. Everything beyond that, really, once he realized that Roosevelt was not going to be the conservative president he thought he was going to be. Then everything else began to look pretty bad as well, and the court-packing became a way for him to break more publicly.

Michael Pope  

Oh, interesting. So you think that the court-packing plan was, it's true that he didn't like the court-packing plan, but that it was really more, I don't want to say an excuse, but… 

John Milliken  

I think it was principally the escalating levels of spending and the debt that resulted from that. I mean, if there's anything that was a hallmark of Bryd's senior and junior service in the United States Senate, it was their queuing to the principle of a balanced budget.

Michael Pope  

So, when we talked about the short ballot a minute ago, the lasting significance here is that it consolidated power in the Executive Mansion, and it gave the governor all this patronage. Even today, the governor has really an outsized level of patronage, like the governor of Virginia is the most powerful Governor position in the country, and it's because of Harry Byrd and what he did in the 1920s to consolidate the patronage. All right, so there was one threat to that in Ron Heineman’s chapter; he points out the one threat to which was a guy by the name of James Price, who was elected governor, the only non-machine governor in that whole era. So from the election of 1925 all the way up to the election of 1965, the Byrd machine had a lock on power, and they used their organization to select every nominee and every governor for every election for governor, except one, the 1937 election, when Democrats chose anti-organization candidate James Price. Check out this audio from Governor Price talking about his opposition to the poll tax. 

James Price 

The poll tax, as we now know it in Virginia, remains, in many cases, an instrument of fraud and vicious practices. The poll tax should either be collected individually, as the law provides, or it should be repealed altogether. If retained, it should be reduced to an amount made payable for only one year, and the time at which it must be paid is brought much closer to the time of election. The tax unquestionably restricts the electorate, and an electorate unduly restricted is not in keeping with the ideals and the spirit of democracy.

Michael Pope  

Yeah, so the poll tax was one of the central organizing principles of the Bryd machine. It's really interesting to hear this audio from Governor Price, from November of 1940, saying it was an instrument of fraud. John Milliken, how did this anti-organization person get elected during the era of the Bryd machine? 

John Milliken  

Well, first on, Jim Price – he’d been a very popular member of the state legislature from the Richmond area for several terms and was lieutenant governor. When he began to float the idea of running for governor, Byrd really sought out a different candidate quietly but began to put out feelers and float trial balloons for other candidates, and there were really no takers worthy of the challenge, so Bryd sat that one out, which was really uncharacteristic, he, in a sense, allowed Price to become governor because he had determined that there was no way he could successfully fight him and that it would be better to just not be in the race at all than it would be to lose it. 

Michael Pope  

Why did they have a hard time coming up with a candidate to go up against Price?

John Milliken  

You know, I don't know the answer to that. I think they perhaps were not other alternatives widely enough acceptable who were willing to run. You know, you got to have a willing candidate. You got to have somebody who's well known that he could mount a successful challenge, and there apparently was no such person. 

Michael Pope  

Well, my favorite part of this Ron Heineman chapter on the Bryd machine was the section about the anti-Truman bill, which was an effort to keep Harry Truman's name off of the ballot in 1948. So the Bryd machine may have disliked FDR, but they really hated Harry Truman. Check out this audio from Governor Bill Tuck warning about the danger of Harry Truman's health care policy, which he called socialized medicine.

Bill Tuck  

No more will we know the tender care and love of the family physician under such a program. Even upon our bed, sick and dying, we cannot have the solace and comfort that comes from the physician of our choice. Instead of the warm and friendly hand of our family doctor, we will feel on our brow the cold hand of the Fair Deal bureaucrat who is more interested in our vote than in our health.

Michael Pope  

God, yeah, when we listen to this audio, it's really amazing to me how much this debate in the 1940s echoes the debate over Obamacare that we had, you know, after Obama was elected with some cases, the same language was employed about the family doctor and the bureaucrats who are interested more in electoral politics and health care. Ultimately, Governor Tuck aimed the Fair Deal, which he hated, and talked about it this way.

Bill Tuck  

The Fair Deal has introduced us to a new song with the words We never had it so good: don't let them take it away. I cannot join in this outburst of poverty because I know that the Truman program, if pursued, will lead us to sudden disaster. I cannot join this senseless chant. Because I recognize these dangers, I do not intend to be in the position of the lady described in the following limerick; there was a young lady from Naga who smiled as she rode on the tiger. But at the end of the ride, the lady was inside, and the smile was on the face of the tiger.

Michael Pope  

This is a different era in Virginia politics. We do not we do not have governors that do limericks these days.

John Milliken  

Bill Tucker is a unique figure in Virginia's history.

Michael Pope  

Yeah, he is, undoubtedly, no question about it, the most colorful governor of the Bryd era. Maybe even the most colorful Governor ever in Virginia history.

John Milliken  

I would vote his first place of any governor we've ever had, yeah.

Michael Pope  

Yeah. So, we talked about the tension between Bryd and FDR, which they didn't like each other. They opposed each other, but in the Truman era, things got really intense. Why did the Bryd machine Democrats really hate Harry Truman and the Fair Deal so much?

John Milliken  

Race. When Harry Truman first integrated the armed forces, then, at the same time, created a national anti-discrimination agency that was anathema, that was striking at the Bryd organization's heart. That made him completely unacceptable to the organization and the organization's leaders. The core of the organization's political strength was Southside, Virginia. 

Michael Pope  

Yeah, it's interesting that the topic of race caused this conflict. Because the rest of what we're going to talk about in this podcast is massive resistance and the downfall of the Bryd machine, which I mean, this is when things start falling apart for the Bryd machine, right? 

John Milliken  

 would argue actually, that massive resistance kept the Bryd machine alive for another decade. I think the Bryd machine was beginning to fade and crumble in the early 1950s. Even though, in the 1949 election, they ultimately won, they won it by appealing to Republicans. The 1953 was sort of a non-election. But there was a Republican Party emerging out of Western Virginia in 1953 that was going to be quite strong. Eisenhower was in the White House, and the Bryd organization would have suffered. But that suffering was postponed for a decade by the coming of massive resistance around which they could rally the faithful. 

Michael Pope  

You mentioned the 1953 election. The governor elected that year was a guy by the name of Thomas Stanley, who we're going to hear from next. He was the governor in office who had to respond to the 1954 Supreme Court decision on Brown vs. Board, which declared segregated schools unconstitutional. The Byrd machine reacted cautiously at first and then later evolved into an angry racism that kind of killed the machine. Let's hear the initial reaction from Governor Thomas Stanley.

Thomas Stanley 

I am confident the people of Virginia will receive the opinion of this Supreme Court calmly and take time to carefully and dispassionately consider the situation before coming to conclusions on steps that should be taken. I contemplate no precipitate action, but I shall call together as quickly as practicable representatives of both state and local governments to consider the matter and work toward a plan that will be acceptable to our citizens and, in keeping with the Edict of the court, views of leaders of both races will be invited in the course of these studies when this has been done, and the sound program has been formulated, we will consider the appropriate steps required to put it into effect.

Michael Pope  

Yeah, they ended up changing the Virginia Constitution. Explain how Thomas Stanley initially reacted to the Brown vs. Board decision.

John Milliken  

You have to think about who Tom Stanley was. Tom Stanley was not really a typical political figure. He was a businessman from the prominent Patrick Henry County furniture business. He had wanted to run for governor a couple of times but had been passed over. Finally, he got his turn in 1953. He happened to be the guy who was there when the Supreme Court decision was handed down. But his reaction was that of a moderate, mainstream business person saying, hey, we'll work this out. We're confident that Virginia's people will be responsible in their reaction, sort of solid reaction from a solid business guy. But then the politicians got a hold of it, so to speak, and recognized that their core constituencies in Southside Virginia were not going to accept this. They had to find a way to try to resist it.

Michael Pope  

Yeah, and well, the governor, after Thomas Stanley, was a guy from Roanoke named Lindsay Almond, who had a very different reaction. Here is some audio I'm going to play of Lindsay Almond essentially declaring war to keep schools segregated. Check out this audio of a speech, a very famous speech that he delivered to the Virginia General Assembly in 1959.

Lindsay Almond

Let me make it abundantly clear for the record now and hereafter, as governor of this state, I will not yield to that which I know to be wrong and will destroy every rational semblance of public education for thousands of the children of Virginia. I call upon the people of Virginia to stand firmly with me in this struggle.

Michael Pope  

Yeah. It’s important to point out here that Lindsay Almond later regretted the tone of that speech, and in fact, in his later years, he would call it that “damn speech” because of the disaster that happened after. Post the speech, when he went to the General Assembly and said they needed to take action to integrate the schools. John Milliken explains the whirlwind of different events in 1959. He gives the speech, and then the Virginia State Supreme Court makes a decision that changes the dynamics, and he has to go to the General Assembly. All of this happens within a matter of days.

John Milliken  

Yeah, and at the same time, because Virginia had gotten so much attention as to what was going on in the state and to its massive resistance policy and the closing of the school systems in several communities across the state. The business community went to Governor Almond in the form of half a dozen business leaders and said, this can't work. We've got to soften our position. We've got to find a way to allow this to happen, even slowing it down, if we can. But we can no longer be thought of as the state that's closing its schools; that’ll ruin Virginia's business. Plus, the state Supreme Court is saying he couldn't do what he wanted to do in trying to continue to close the schools. The federal court, at the same time, turned down Virginia's appeal to keep some of its schools segregated. All of those things for lawyer/ politician Lindsay Almond combined, and he had to change course. He changed course, and that’s what he did to Virginia's everlasting credit. But he did complete his break with the Bryc organization. 

Michael Pope  

It’s interesting to hear your theory about the massive resistance pumping new life into the Bryd machine. I never thought about it that way, but I think there's a lot to that. It might have been in danger of falling apart in the 1950s, but then it gave people something to rally around. After Lindsay Almond, we still have two more Bryd machine governors, Albertis Harrison and Mills Godwin.

John Milliken  

Absolutely. Think of it this way: there was a younger generation of people who were part of the organization called Young Turks, whose numbers were growing in the state legislature and whose attitudes toward race and the organization were evolving. They would form the core or could have formed the core of a continuation of the organization. But the split over massive resistance and education, which was their key issue, really meant that they had to silence themselves a little bit when the much more conservative, racist part of the organization reared its head and insisted that the line be drawn sharply. So that group kind of disappeared for the better part of a decade and didn't come back again until 1966.

Michael Pope  

Well, actually, that's the next topic I wanted to talk abo, which is the final Bryd machine election. When they put a governor in office in 1965, this was a fascinating election because you've got the Democratic candidate, Mills Godwin, who would later go on to be a Republican. He's the conservative Bryd machine Democrat in the race and wins the governor's race in 1965. The other candidates are also really fascinating. The Republican in the race was a guy by the name of Linwood Holton, who would later go on to be the first Republican governor and end the era of the Byrd machine. There was also a Nazi candidate in the race. An actual Nazi who was running for governor, and in addition to that, a candidate from the John Birch Society. So that's a name that might not be familiar to our listeners, but the equivalent today would be like the QANON as if QANON had a candidate. What the heck was going on in the 1965 election? 

John Milliken  

Mills Godwin had been a leader in the state legislature for the forces of massive resistance. But he was a very savvy politician, and he watched what happened in 1964, In the presidential election between Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater. He saw that his state was drifting back towards the center and even the left. He saw the coalition put together by Lyndon Johnson, which allowed him to carry Virginia. Virginia had been Republican for several elections in a row. He recognized that if he were going to carry the state as the Democratic candidate for governor in 1965, he would need to assemble the same sort of coalition. And he did that. He was the leader of the segregationist faction in the legislature during massive resistance. He had the backing of the state, AFL-CIO, and the Richmond Crusade for Voters, the largest African American voting group in the state at the time. He put together a remarkable coalition similar to what Lyndon Johnson had done the year before and held off Linwood Holton as the Republican candidate. In fact, it wasn't even close.

Michael Pope  

It was such a strange coalition because it included labor, who was, traditionally, a foe of the Bryd machine. But they got on board with Mills Godwin. Mills Godwin, famously or infamously, campaigned on the Lady Bird Express, which the Johnson administration was hated as much as Harry Truman and FDR by the conservative Bryd machine Democrats. And yet here they were, joining the Godwin coalition.

John Milliken  

One of the reasons that it turned the way it did is that the most conservative parts of the organization split off and created the Conservative Party, which ran its own slate of candidates for governor and lieutenant governor that year. They carried several of the South Side counties, which had been the heart of organization support, and that was one of the reasons that Mills Godwin was able to do as well as he did.

Michael Pope  

In 1969 Linwood Holton made a second campaign for governor. This time, he wins, and he draws a conclusion about the era of the  Byrd machine because once a Republican is in the Executive Mansion, there goes your machine. It's kind of over in 1969 with the election of Linwood Holton. Then Mills Godwin leaves the Democratic Party, and becomes a Republican. Harry Byrd Jr leaves the Democratic Party and becomes an independent. How did things fall apart so quickly for the Byrd machine? 

John Milliken  

Well, you could make the case that they didn't really fall apart. Some of the personalities changed the labels under which they operated. But you could make the case that when Mills Godwin came back to the governorship in 1973, he was able, thereby, to restore the conservative coalition that had for many years run the state through the Bryd organization. If you take the name Bryd off of it and just call it the conservative coalition, you could make the argument that it reappeared in 1973 with Mills Godwin once again as its standard bearer, running for governor.

Michael Pope  

Yeah, and for our listeners, that 1973 election is the topic of one of the chapters in your book, The New Dominion. Frank Atkinson writes a chapter called Virginia's Armageddon and its legacy of partisan competition. The 1973 gubernatorial election is one of these pivotal elections that you talk about, also, for our listeners thinking about buying this book. There's also the 1981 election with Chuck Robb, who was elected governor. The 1989 election was when Doug Wilder was elected governor. The 1993 election, when George Allen was elected governor. All of this is preceded by this chapter from Ron Heinemann on the Bryd machine. Sadly, Ron Heinemann died after writing the chapter but before the book was published, and so explain. I mean, we sort of led with this at the top, but circle back around to why it's so important to go through the Bryd machine when you're talking about why things are the way they are in Virginia politics.

John Milliken  

First of all, just the sheer fact that the Bryd machine and the Bryd family of politicos dominated the state's politics for 50 years. Suppose you think of it as more or less from 1925 through Mills Godwin's being elected as a Republican in 1973. That's a 50 Year dominance by a family Byrd senior and Byrd Jr, and the conservative politics that they espoused. That's pretty remarkable. Meanwhile, of course, Virginia itself and its demographics were changing, and that finally caught up with them; by the time Mills Godwin's term was up, Virginia's politics were going to be very different. The first sign of that was in the election of Chuck Robb in 1981.

Michael Pope  

One more thing before we go. I want to give a shout-out to the Library of Virginia, which helped me track down these audio clips that we listened to today, especially a shout-out to Roger Christman and Ben Steck. Thank you so much to the two of them and to the Library of Virginia in general. Our guest today has been the former chairman of the Arlington County Board, who is now a senior fellow in residence at the Schar School of Policy in Government at George Mason University. John Milliken, thanks for returning to Pod Virginia.

John Milliken  

Happy to do it, Michael. Always fun to talk with you.