STATELINE -- online news service of the Pew Charitable Trusts July 1, 2019

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Progress Stalls for Minor Parties to Get on State Ballots

STATELINE ARTICLEJuly 1, 2019

By: Marsha Mercer

The first man to the microphone wore a Trump 2020 cap and a scowl.

“I want to vote for Donald P. Trump for president!” he roared, misstating the president’s middle initial, and stepped aside.

“Thank you, sir. I’ll take that as a ‘no’ on the bill,” California state Assemblyman Marc Berman, a Democrat and chairman of the state Assembly Elections and Redistricting Committee, said without missing a beat.

Senate Bill 27 was “the hot bill of the day” at the committee’s June 19 public hearing, Berman said. The bill would require all presidential and gubernatorial candidates to release five years of income tax returns to the California secretary of state as a condition for appearing on California’s primary ballot starting in 2020.

California is among 18 states that have considered tax return disclosure requirements this year for presidential candidates, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), after 27 states considered such legislation last year.

So far, the presidential ballot bills are mostly political talking points for both sides. None has been enacted. But bills to require presidential tax return disclosure are alive in eight states — California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island — and will be carried over to the next legislative session in four states — Hawaii, Minnesota, Vermont and Washington, according to NCSL.

“It’s kind of surprising no state has taken the plunge yet,” said Richard L. Hasen, professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine and author of the Election Law Blog. “I’m still waiting for something to happen.”

California is poised to become the first — and perhaps only — state ever to possibly ban a president running for re-election from its presidential primary ballot. But several states this year — including Arkansas, Colorado and Texas — have made it harder for lesser-known minor parties and independent candidates for state office to get on the ballot.

“I think it’s the worst year for hostility to minor parties and independent candidates since 1971,” said Richard Winger, a Libertarian who is editor of San Francisco-based Ballot Access News.

That year, Winger said, states were reacting to the 1968 presidential campaign of former Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who ran on the American Independent Party ticket. Wallace, a segregationist, received 13.5% of the popular vote and 46 electoral votes, and carried Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi.

This year, polarized politics is to blame, he said.

“Partisanship is getting more and more intense,” Winger said. “You think it can’t get any worse and it does. Each side feels it can’t stand what the other side is doing.”

Efforts to make it easier for independents and minor parties to run failed this year in at least seven states, he said — Alabama, Alaska, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota and Montana.

“Normally when we have that many bills improving things we expect about a third of them to pass, but they all failed,” Winger said.

Texas Two-Step

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed a bill in early June that Winger called “half good and half bad.”

It requires candidates from parties that nominate by convention to pay a filing fee (bad because minor candidates may not have the money). But it also sets a new threshold of 2% of the vote in one of the last five general elections to ensure a party’s spot on the next ballot (good because it makes it easier for a minor party to stay on the ballot, Winger said).

Previously in Texas, a minor party candidate had to win 5% of the vote in a statewide contest during the last election.

Texas state Sen. Bryan Hughes, a Republican and the bill’s sponsor, said in floor debate in May that the new rules would give voters “more parties to choose from,” according to his office. Hughes did not respond to a request for an interview from Stateline.

“Different parties were paying different fees, and this equalizes the amount,” said Drew Tedford, general counsel in Hughes’ office, adding that in some cases minor parties paid no fee at all.

Democrats countered that the new rules would make it easier for the Green Party to qualify but more difficult for the Libertarian Party. It’s thought the Green Party typically takes votes from Democrats while the Libertarians take votes from Republicans.

The measure passed on a party-line vote.

Colorado makes it easier than almost any other state to get on the presidential ballot. A record 22 presidential candidates appeared on the state’s 2016 ballot.

“The concern we have is voter confusion. With this threshold, voters have way too many choices,” said Joel Albin, Colorado ballot access manager in the Secretary of State’s office. “I don’t think having 20 candidates for office is good for voters.”

But when the Colorado legislature rewrote the ballot access law earlier this year, it left unchanged the rules for presidential candidates to qualify for the general election ballot: Pay a $1,000 filing fee, and you’re in.

The new law makes it more difficult for minor parties to qualify for state office ballots by requiring more signatures. Last year, a minor party candidate for Colorado state Senate had to collect either 600 signatures or 2% of the total vote in the most recent election for the seat, whichever was less. In 2020, a minor party candidate will need either 1,000 signatures or 3.3%.

For minor party candidates seeking seats in the Colorado state House, the number of signatures went from 400 signatures or 2%, to 1,000 signatures or 5%.

The idea was to match the requirements for state offices with requirements for major parties to make them more equal, Albin said.

In Indiana, one of the toughest ballot access states, a candidate for statewide office from a minor party must collect 26,699 signatures.

James C. Linger, an attorney in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who has litigated ballot access cases for 39 years, said while state laws for third parties have much improved over the past 20 to 30 years, a new trend of earlier primaries and filing deadlines is worrisome.

“The major parties want to get their infighting over early, but many voters don’t get interested in third parties until the major parties have chosen their candidates,” he said. By then it may be too late for minor parties to qualify.

“Most voters want more choice,” Linger said. “Third-party candidates will bring up issues the major party candidates want to avoid.”

The Libertarian Party qualified for the presidential ballot in all 50 states in 2016 and is working to do so again in 2020. The Green Party qualified for the presidential ballot in 44 states and the Constitution Party in 24 states in 2016, according to Ballotpedia.

Linger represents the Libertarian Party of Arkansas in fighting a law Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, signed in February, changing the way a new political party is recognized. Previously, a new party needed petitions signed by 10,000 registered voters.

The new law requires at least 3% of the total votes cast in the last gubernatorial election. In 2018, just under 892,000 people voted in the gubernatorial election, so a new party now would need nearly 27,000 signatures to be recognized.

The Libertarian Party of Arkansas has asked a federal judge to block enforcement of the new law until she decides whether it is constitutional.

Linger also criticized the state for setting an earlier deadline for submitting the signatures — 14 months before the election.

In a court hearing June 4, state Solicitor General Nicholas Bronni said the state’s duty is to ensure elections run smoothly by regulating them and requiring minor parties to demonstrate some “reasonable quantum of voter support” to appear on the ballot, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette reported.

“Circumstantial evidence is strong they [Republicans] had a political motivation,” Linger said in an interview. “They can deny it.”

“It’s not about Democrats or Republicans or anyone else,” Republican state Sen. Trent Garner, who sponsored the bill, told Stateline. “It’s not about politics. It’s about the people of Arkansas who go to vote knowing the parties on the ballot have a minimum amount of support.”

Trump’s Tax Returns

Politics is undeniably front and center in the battle for Trump’s tax returns. The California and New Jersey legislatures passed tax return requirements in 2017, but then-governors vetoed them.

Trying again this year, the California Senate passed the measure on a party-line vote in May. Democrats on the Assembly elections committee sent the bill — which now has an added requirement for returns from gubernatorial candidates — to the Assembly Appropriations Committee, which passed it June 26 on a party-line vote. No date for floor debate has been set.

Winger expects the California Assembly to pass the bill, but he's uncertain the governor, who has not commented on the bill publicly, will go along.

"Governors are more responsive to their constituents. Most governors, I've found, work quite hard at making a rational decision," Winger said.

If Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, does veto the measure, the legislature is unlikely to override it. But if Trump is not on the primary ballot, all is not lost for Trump voters in California. 

"This bill does not prevent any candidate from filing as a write-in," Winger said. 

“It’s clear there are issues and opposition,” said California state Sen. Mike McGuire, a Democrat and the bill’s sponsor. “But two-thirds of Americans want the president — and not just President Trump — to release his or her tax returns,” he said.

California Assemblyman James Gallagher, a Republican and vice chairman of the elections committee, said at the June 19 hearing that the measure looks “very political.” If Trump is not on the primary ballot in March, he said, “There’s no reason for Republicans to turn out, and that affects all the down-ballot races.”

Gallagher also cited privacy issues.

“We don’t give up all sense of privacy when we run for office ... to me, my tax returns are nobody’s business,” he said.

McGuire countered at the June 19 hearing that Trump is “the biggest organizer for the Democratic Party,” spurring Democratic turnout. “We’d have Donald Trump on every flippin’ ballot in California if we could.”

Trump says voters elected him in 2016 even though he did not release his tax returns and they don’t care about the issue now. A Quinnipiac University poll in March found 64% of voters thought Trump should release his tax returns, and other polls have found about half of Americans think he should.

Newsom has not said whether he will sign the measure, which critics say may violate the California Constitution’s mandate that “recognized” candidates be listed on the ballot. Newsom released six years of his own tax returns in 2017 during his campaign.

In his 2017 veto message, then-Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat who had not released his returns, called the ballot access requirement a “slippery slope.”

“Today we require tax returns but what would be next?” Brown asked at the time. “Five years of health records? A certified birth certificate? High school report cards? And will these requirements vary depending on which political party is in power?”

Government shouldn't shun our generosity -- June 27, 2019 column

By MARSHA MERCER

The Independence Day fireworks display on the National Mall will last about 35 minutes this year, twice the length of the typical show.

The bigger and better display is thanks to donations by two private fireworks companies of equipment and personnel worth $750,000 to the National Park Service.

“We wanted to do this as a gift to America,” the president of one of the companies told The Washington Post.

It probably didn’t hurt that President Donald Trump is personally orchestrating 4^th of July festivities, and the fireworks industry wants an exemption from the next round of 

Trump tariffs on Chinese goods, which includes fireworks.

Be that as it may, it’s baffling the government can accept donations of fireworks but not of diapers.

As the administration planned the July 4^th  extravaganza, we learned hundreds of migrant children were being held in dirty, overcrowded conditions at a Customs and Border Protection facility in Clint, Texas.

“`There Is a Stench'” The New York Times headline read on a June 21 story that detailed how attorneys who visited Clint said babies lacked diapers and children of various ages had inadequate food and water and no access to baths, soap, toothbrushes or toothpaste.

The facility built for about 100 adults temporarily had been stretched to house hundreds more children for weeks.

Then we saw the heart-breaking photo of the young father and daughter who drowned trying to cross the Rio Grande for a better life.  

The administration says it has been overwhelmed by an influx of migrants at the border. The Border Patrol transferred some of the children at Clint out and then back as other facilities became overcrowded.

The White House and Congress couldn’t get their act together to provide humanitarian relief -- so Texans did.  

Last Sunday, Austin Savage and five friends went to a Target in El Paso and spent $340 on diapers, wipes, soap and toys, the Texas Tribune reported. But when they tried to deliver the goods, the detention center lobby was closed and no one would come to the door.

Border Patrol agents in the parking lot saw, but ignored, them, Savage said.

Then the friends realized they weren’t the first to try to help. A plastic bag near the lobby door held toothpaste and soap and a note: “I heard y’all need soap + toothpaste for kids.”

Savage returned on Monday to deliver the items and again was ignored, NPR reported.

State Rep. Terry Canales, a Democrat from South Texas, asked the government for a list of acceptable donations. “They do not accept donations,” he tweeted. “How ridiculous is this?”

Why no donations? One weak, but possible explanation cited is the Antideficiency Act of 1870, which says the government can’t spend beyond the funds Congress appropriates and cannot accept donations of personal services that have not been approved by Congress.

When I took a look at the law, though, I found no references to goods, just to services.

And a 2008 Department of Homeland Security directive says: “DHS may accept gifts to carry out program functions regardless of whether or not appropriated funds are available for that purpose, provided such expenditures are not barred by law or regulation.”

Companies and wealthy individuals have long opened their wallets to help the government. People have donated millions of dollars to the Treasury to help pay down the national debt.

After an earthquake shook the Washington Monument in 2012, billionaire philanthropist David Rubenstein donated $7.5 million to match the federal funds Congress had allocated for repairs.

Rubenstein has also donated $4.5 million to the National Zoo for the giant panda program and $13.5 million to the National Archives, among other projects.

Few can make such grand gifts, but ordinary Americans are generous, too.

The good news is conditions in Clint reportedly have improved. Journalists who visited Wednesday said monitors were watching the kids, and officials say they have enough supplies. They’re studying whether they can legally accept donations.

That our government would have a double standard allowing it to accept donations of fireworks and not of diapers is absurd. Worse, it’s obscene.

The policy must change quickly.

©2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

30

Then there were six -- women hit presidential trail -- June 20, 2019 column

By MARSHA MERCER

It’s fitting, if long overdue, that in the centennial celebration of women’s suffrage, six women are running for a major party’s presidential nomination.

One hundred years after women got the right to vote, voters in 2020 conceivably could do what they did not in 2016 — deliver the United States its first woman president. 

So far, polls suggest two septuagenarian men — Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Donald Trump — may duke it out in November 2020. But it’s still very early, and polls are just polls. 

President Trump, who never stopped campaigning, officially launched his re-election campaign Tuesday with a rally in Florida, and Democratic presidential hopefuls will take the stage next week in Florida for the first candidates’ debates. 

Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Tulsi Gabbard will be among the 10 candidates onstage Wednesday night, and Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris and Marianne Williamson will be among 10 onstage Thursday night. Both events will last two hours.

Voters will begin making their choices known in a little more than seven months — at the Iowa caucuses Feb. 3 and the New Hampshire primary Feb. 11. Super Tuesday, when 13 states, including Virginia, will hold contests, will be March 3.

Even at this nascent moment, though, the 2020 campaign has accomplished something we’ve not seen before: It has made the idea of women running for president mainstream and almost unexceptional.

In 2008 and 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton was a trailblazer. She naturally played up her historic role last time as the first woman to become a major party’s presidential nominee.

On the Republican side, Carly Fiorina made a brief run for her party’s nomination in 2016. After she left the race in March, Ted Cruz named her his running mate in April but then quit the race a week later. 

And perennial candidate Jill Stein was the Green Party’s presidential nominee in 2012 and 2016. 

An all-time high of 84 percent of Americans say women are just as suited emotionally for politics as men — up 6 percent since 2016 and 14 points since Clinton lost to Barrack Obama in the 2008 primaries, the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Chicago reported in March after their analysis of 2018 General Social Survey data.

Today’s pundits seem obsessed by how many Democrats are running for president — 23! 

Yes, it’s the most ever, but is it mind-blowing in a country of 327 million people, and after what happened in 2016, that a couple dozen people might have the guts to run for president? Or, if we’re being uncharitable, that some just want the publicity? Many people still believe publicity — not the White House — was Trump’s goal last time.

Come to think of it — only six women in a field of about two dozen candidates is a paltry showing. 

And if one of the qualified women does become the front-runner, she likely will have to endure thinly veiled — if veiled at all — sexist jibes about her looks, her clothes, her hormones and her background.

Until Trump’s pollsters told him Biden was beating him in key states, Trump liked to insult Elizabeth Warren. Then he switched to insulting Biden. 

The centennial of women’s suffrage gives the next election an historical reference point. 

Congress passed the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote on June 4, 1919, and sent it to the states for ratification. Tennessee put the measure over the top Aug. 24, 1920. 

All women then had the right to vote, but Virginia was among nine Southern states that dragged their feet on the amendment. The Virginia General Assembly finally ratified the 19th Amendment in 1952. That’s not a typo. 1952.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton made history by winning nearly 3 million more votes than Trump, before losing in the Electoral College. In Virginia, Clinton beat Trump 49.8 percent to 44.4 percent or by 212,030 votes.

Democrats may not nominate a woman for president this year, but it’s no longer just wishful thinking that they could. And it’s no longer just wishful thinking that a woman could win. 

(C)2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Americana: Seeing Winslow Homer's inspiration -- June 13, 2019 column

Winslow Homer Studio -- Portland Museum of Art

By MARSHA MERCER

Long before people over-shared their lives online, practically begging for fame, one of America’s greatest artists walked alone on the rocky Atlantic coast.

Winslow Homer lived from 1836 to 1910 and spent most of the last quarter-century of his life in a rustic studio on Prouts Neck, a point that juts into the ocean in southern Maine.

There, with the tempestuous ocean as his muse, he created some of his most dramatic seascapes.

We can see his paintings in museums around the world, but, thanks to the Portland Museum of Art, we can see his inspiration at Prouts Neck.

The museum bought Homer’s studio in 2006 and did a major renovation, restoring it in 2012 to the way it looked when Homer lived there in the 1890s.

On a private road with spacious old vacation homes, the Homer Studio is open to the public only through small-group tours from the museum, about 12 miles away. I’d wanted to see the studio for years and last week finally did.  

The spectacular vistas alone are worth the trip, but the studio also shows how genius can thrive with solitude, a little space and few amenities.

Homer’s studio was a former stable of about 1,500 square feet he had moved closer to the water and remodeled. It has two simple, pine-paneled rooms downstairs, one with a large fireplace for cooking, and a loft above with a long porch balcony overlooking the sea. The little house had neither electricity nor central heat.

The story has it Homer would stay until his water bucket froze solid, then reluctantly move to warmer climes until spring.

A guide displays laminated prints of “Weatherbeaten,” “Cannon Rock” and several other Homer seacoast paintings and shows photos of the locations before leading visitors on the Cliff Walk to see the views that inspired the magnificent art. This being the 21^st century, visitors must sign a form releasing the museum from responsibility in case of a mishap.

You walk the narrow, rocky path, avoiding the poison ivy, and watch waves crash white against the rocks and clouds hang in a crystal blue sky – just as Homer did, with his dog Sam. The light and air are invigorating.

“The sun will not rise, or set, without my notice, and thanks,” he once wrote about this place. How many of us can say that about where we live and work?

Homer never married, stayed close to his family – and desperately sought privacy. Villagers in the fishing community left him alone, but people who “summered” in the small hotels then in the area wanted to meet the famous artist.

He cultivated a reputation as “the hermit of Prouts Neck,” building a tall wood fence around his property and putting up signs that read, “Mr. Homer is not at home” and “SNAKES SNAKES MICE!”

He refused interviews and instructed his two brothers to knock in certain ways, so he knew who was at the door.

And that brings us to his family – whose support was noteworthy.

His mother was an accomplished watercolorist, and young Winslow liked to draw, so his parents bought him art supplies and books of sketches from Europe, biographers tell us.

When Winslow wouldn’t consider college, his father arranged an apprenticeship with a lithographer, where Winslow learned to copy and draw. His independent spirit rebelled, though, and when his apprenticeship ended, he vowed at 21 never to work for anyone again.

He became a freelance illustrator and Civil War artist-correspondent for Harper’s Weekly and didn’t start painting seriously until he was about 27.

Two of his first oil paintings were based on his Civil War experience. He placed them in an exhibition and wrote his older brother Charles: If they don’t sell, I’ll give up painting and take a steady job.

The paintings did sell, Homer kept painting and became successful.

Only several years later, when he visited Charles’s home and saw one of the pictures, did Winslow realize his brother had secretly bought them. Furious, Winslow wouldn’t speak to Charles for weeks.

One hates to think what would have become of Winslow had Charles not bought those paintings.

We can be grateful and walk where Homer did at Prouts Neck, where he found his inspiration and we might find our own.    

© 2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Impeachment -- a bad idea for Democrats -- June 6, 2019 column

Here's my column of June 6, 2019. Posting belatedly as I was out of town.

By MARSHA MERCER

California Democrats at a state party convention Saturday chanted “Impeach! Impeach!” while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was making a speech. 

“We will go where the facts lead us,” Pelosi said, trying to reassure the crowd. “President Trump will be held accountable for his actions – in the Congress, in the courts, and in the court of public opinion.”

But when?

“We can’t wait,” a coalition of progressive groups declared Tuesday. The groups wrote Pelosi to express “deep disappointment and concern” she hasn’t gotten on with impeachment.

“In the very near future, the Trump era will be one that evokes the question – what did you do? We urge you to use your power to lead and to stop asking us to wait,” the letter from CREDO Action and about two dozen other groups said.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 did not exonerate Trump, as he and his allies claim.

“If we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that,” Mueller said last month in his only public remarks on the report.

But Mueller’s team also did not recommend the Justice Department make a case against Trump.

“Under long-standing department policy, a president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office . . . Charging the president with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider,” Mueller explained.

To many Democrats, it seemed Mueller was inviting Congress to hold Trump accountable.

The Constitution says the president may be impeached for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors,” but leaves what constitutes an impeachable offense to the House.

Impeachment starts in the House, but removing a president from office then requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate. That, as Pelosi has said, will require a compelling case -- with facts.

It’s a heavy lift. No president has ever been removed from office.

For his part, Trump calls impeachment “dirty, filthy, disgusting” and is stonewalling House requests for testimony or documents by White House aides.

Meanwhile, 11 of the more than 20 Democratic presidential candidates have expressed “full-throated support” for immediate impeachment proceedings, according to HuffPost, which keeps a running list.

Joe Biden has not jumped on the impeachment bandwagon, but after Mueller spoke, 

Biden’s campaign said impeachment “may be unavoidable.”

Nearly 60 House Democrats from true-blue districts support opening an impeachment inquiry.

But even 60 members are less than one quarter of the 235 Democrats in the House. 

Many centrist Democratic representatives from swing districts either haven’t decided or won’t say whether they support impeachment.   

They and Pelosi recognize something many on the left ignore: Democrats could impeach Trump and make liberals feel good – and the Republican-controlled Senate likely would leave Trump in office.

Were he to remain in office, as Bill Clinton did after his impeachment, Trump likely would emerge stronger for 2020, his followers more motivated to re-elect him.

A stickier problem for Democrats is most Americans oppose Trump’s impeachment and removal, according to polls.

Among registered voters overall, 54 percent oppose while only 41 percent favor impeachment and removal, the latest CNN poll reported Sunday.

While 76 percent Democrats say yes, only 35 percent of independents and 6 percent of Republicans want to see Trump impeached and removed.   

House Democratic leaders may be moving too slowly for the party’s liberal base, but they risk alienating the 65 percent of voters who say Trump already has faced more investigations than any previous president.

On Monday, Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, will open a series of hearings into the Mueller report. These are not impeachment hearings but could lead to them.

So far, only one Republican supports impeachment -- Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, a libertarian.

We don’t know what facts Democratic investigations may turn up that could change minds. But here are two more numbers from the CNN poll to keep in mind: While 93 percent of Republicans oppose Trump’s impeachment and removal, so do 59 percent of independents.

Without the latter on board, impeachment and removal don’t stand a chance.

©2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

30

Cooperstown -- Americana home run -- May 30, 2019 column

By MARSHA MERCER

When Eppa Rixey visited Cooperstown, N.Y., in retirement in 1959, he wrote a postcard home: “I finally made it!”

It was a joke, but Rixey later achieved the high honor of becoming the first Virginian elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. I didn’t know of him or his poignant story until I visited Cooperstown last week.

If you make it to Cooperstown, a village of nearly 2,000 people and one stoplight on beautiful Lake Otsego, you too likely will learn something about Americana, baseball and yourself.

I expected plaques of the baseball greats at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum but never imagined I’d get teary watching a film there. More on that in a minute.

Let’s pause with Rixey, “an atypical ball player,” as “The Baseball Hall of Fame Almanac” for 2019 says.

Born in Culpeper in 1891, Rixey went straight to the big leagues after graduating from the University of Virginia in 1912 with a degree in, of all things, chemistry.

In the off season, he earned a master’s in chemistry and studied Latin and math at U.Va. Few players went to college then, and, the almanac says, Rixey “fought off the resentment the other players had for his education by engaging in their hazing.”

Playing 21 seasons, he set the record for the most victories by a left-handed pitcher. And when Warren Spahn broke Rixey’s record in 1959, Rixey graciously said he was glad -- because people would remember he had set it earlier.

Elected to the Hall of Fame in 1963, Rixey sadly had a heart attack and died before his induction.

Four other Virginians also made it to the Hall of Fame. All were born before 1916 and played in the Negro Leagues: Ray Dandridge of Richmond, Leon Day of Alexandria, Pete Hill of Culpeper and Jud Wilson of Remington.

Cooperstown, the hometown of 19^th century author James Fenimore Cooper, has a large teaching hospital and an excellent art museum. 

But its main draw – for about 300,000 tourists a year – is the Hall of Fame. I wonder how many visitors underestimate, as I did, the emotional pull of the national pastime.

“Generations of the Game” – the museum’s introductory film, new last year – tugs at heartstrings with shots of crazy home runs, impossible catches and ecstatic fans. The fans’ hairdos and clothes speak of the past, but their joy is timeless.

There’s heartbreak too – in the grainy, black-and-white footage of legendary Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig’s farewell on July 4, 1939.

Gehrig, nicknamed the “Iron Horse” for his streak of playing in 2,130 consecutive games, had just been diagnosed at 36 with a little-known fatal disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS. We know it as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Yet he courageously stands before more than 60,000 fans at Yankee Stadium and says, “Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

Gehrig’s record lasted until Cal Ripken Jr., broke it in 1995. In an interview for the film, a damp-eyed Ripken recalls from memory Gehrig’s farewell, pausing, as Gehrig had, for the echoes caused by the loudspeakers. It’s enough to make you cry.

But there’s no crying in baseball.

The Hall of Fame casts baseball in rosy light but doesn’t ignore its problems, including race.

One exhibit quotes a letter from Richmond in 1883 to the manager of an integrated, minor league team in Toledo, warning him not to play Moses Fleetwood Walker, a black catcher, in Richmond “as we could mention the names of 75 determined men who have sworn to mob Walker if he comes on the ground . . . We only write this to prevent much bloodshed, as you alone can prevent.”

Walker didn’t go to Richmond; he was released from the team before the trip due to injuries.

Soon, Jim Crow would halt integrated baseball until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier on April 15, 1947.

“A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives,” Robinson once said.

As the first black player inducted into the Hall of Fame, Robinson opened the door to other deserving black players – including the four Virginians. Dandridge was inducted in 1987, Day in 1995 and Hill and Wilson in 2009.

©2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Monuments to Union generals tell stories we need to hear -- May 23, 2019 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Last Saturday, 17 people gathered at hectic Thomas Circle, where Massachusetts Avenue, 14^th Street and M Street intersect in Northwest Washington.

It wasn’t a protest or a line for concert tickets. We were doing something most people don’t – looking past the bumper-cars traffic to the equestrian statue smack in the middle of the traffic circle.

With journalist and history enthusiast Keith White, who leads walking tours for friends, as our guide, we looked closely at about a dozen monuments to Union generals in the nation’s capital, answering the 21^st Century question: “Who ARE those guys?”

Until controversy engulfed Confederate monuments across the South, many people knew only the big names -- Lee, Jackson and Davis. The Confederate statues have made us rethink who and what we should honor and why.

Similarly, in Washington, people flock to the monuments to Lincoln, Washington and Jefferson, while hardly noticing many others. But the uncontentious monuments to victorious Union generals who helped preserve the Union also tell compelling stories.

Two monuments we saw honored Civil War generals from Virginia who made the agonizing decision to stay loyal to the United States -- when doing so meant an irreparable split from friends and family.

(It’s worth noting some Northerners also fought for the South; New Yorker Samuel Cooper and Pennsylvanian John Pemberton became generals in the Confederate Army.)  

Thomas Circle is named for the best Union general you’ve never heard of.

George Henry Thomas was born in 1815 into a slave-holding family on a plantation in Southampton County, Virginia, near the North Carolina line.

A West Point grad, he served with distinction in Florida and Mexico, and his proud hometown presented him with an engraved silver sword for his bravery in the Mexican war.

He became an artillery and cavalry instructor at the military academy under Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee, who was superintendent. Yet when Lee and other Southerners resigned from the U.S. Army to join the Confederacy, Thomas remained.

His sisters, avid secessionists, were so distraught, the story goes, they turned his picture to the wall, denied they had a brother named George, returned his letters unopened, and refused to send him the sword he’d left with them for safe-keeping.

Thomas was a brilliant military strategist. He managed to hold his position and avoid a rout during the 1863 Battle of Chickamauga, earning the valiant nickname, the “Rock of Chickamauga.”

When his statue in Washington was dedicated in 1879, 14 years after the Civil War ended and nine years after Thomas died of a stroke at 53, the federal government shut down for the day and former soldiers flooded the city.

But Thomas never reconciled with his sisters. Near the end of their long lives, they gave his sword to the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond.

Another Virginian who stayed loyal to the Union army was Major General Winfield Scott, born in Dinwiddie County in 1786.

A hero of the Mexican War, Scott was known as “Old Fuss and Feathers” for his love of discipline and pomp.

By 1861, when the Civil War started, Scott was the army’s top general, but he was in poor health and couldn’t even mount his horse. He recommended President Lincoln name his fellow Virginian Lee to lead the Army.

When Lee refused, Scott is said to have told him: “Lee, you have made the greatest mistake of your life, but I feared it would be so.”

Scott resigned, wrote a two-volume autobiography and died in 1866.

The sculptor of Scott’s monument put him on a small mare, his favorite mount. But Scott’s family insisted a great military man should be shown on a stallion. The sculptor made an adjustment. Today, most people don’t notice, but in 1874, the statue was widely ridiculed.

The Scott monument is in busy Scott Circle, where Massachusetts and Rhode Island avenues and 16^th Street NW meet. 

On Memorial Day, we honor those who gave their lives in military service.

We owe respect and a deep debt of gratitude to all who serve and sacrifice, and especially to Virginians Thomas and Scott who made the wrenching decision to fight to preserve the United States.

©2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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