Democrats want to send a message to VMI but haven’t said what it will be

After the Virginia Military Institute Board of Visitors voted not to renew the contract of its first Black superintendent, state Sen. Louise Lucas posted a four-letter response on Twitter/X: “FAFO.”

If you know what that stands for, then I don’t need to explain it.

If you don’t, I’ll discreetly skip over the first two letters and simply say that the last two stand for “Find Out.”

When Lucas posts a warning like that, it might be best to pay attention. She is no ordinary legislator; she’s chair of the Senate committee that deals with state spending. The 81-year-old Portsmouth Democrat grew up in an era where Senate Finance chairs presided like feudal lords over their fiefdom — think of such feared legislators as Ed Willey and Hunter Andrews who could kill bills with just a cold stare — and she seems determined to replicate their iron grip on whatever portions of state government she can grab hold of.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin learned this the hard way when Lucas refused to even consider the bill necessary to move forward his proposal for a sports arena in Alexandria that would have lured Washington’s National Basketball Association and National Hockey League teams across the Potomac.

Now the VMI Board of Visitors has set itself up to learn that same lesson, to the detriment of the military college in Lexington.

VMI has been a center of turmoil for some years now. Former Gov. Ralph Northam, a VMI grad, wanted to root out what he saw as racism and sexism at the institution. He pushed out the previous superintendent, making way for retired Army Maj. Gen. Cedric Wins, who came in with a mission to modernize the institution. Those efforts produced a conservative backlash over the hot-button concepts of diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI. In declining to renew Wins’ contract, the board (now dominated by Youngkin appointees) cited none of that. It simply thanked him for his service. Last week, Wins fired back with an extraordinary public statement that declared: “My tenure will end because bias, emotion and ideology rather than sound judgment swayed the board.” Wins warned that rather than finding “worth in cadets from diverse background … we risk returning to an obsessive focus on our distant past.”

It’s no secret that Democrats in the General Assembly are unhappy with the board’s decision to part ways with Wins. What isn’t as well known is that the legislature’s Democratic leaders are actively looking at how they can respond to VMI in ways that the board of visitors wouldn’t like. Whether they can find such a way is unclear. The two-year state budget has been passed (last year). The amendments to that budget have been passed (this year). Had the board acted earlier, the Democratic majority in the legislature might have found ways to hold up appropriations to VMI, but the board waited (perhaps intentionally, perhaps not) until the budget amendments were out of the legislature’s control and on their way to the governor’s desk.

Nonetheless, we have what might be an unprecedented rupture between the majority party in the state legislature and the fourth-oldest state college. I certainly cannot remember a time when a state school has gotten so cross-wise with the majority party in the General Assembly. Every other state-supported school can count on bipartisan support, so it doesn’t much matter which party is in control in Richmond; VMI is now at a point where it cannot count on a friendly reception before a Democratic-controlled General Assembly.

We got a preview of that in this past session when Democratic legislators blocked two of Youngkin’s appointees to the VMI board. That wasn’t VMI-specific, though, because Democrats also blocked some of the governor’s appointments to other boards. 

We’ll get a better sense of how things stand when the legislature reconvenes April 2 for the so-called “veto session.” The General Assembly will have a chance to block two more Youngkin appointees to the VMI board. Based on the previous legislative action, it seems pretty clear that the two recent appointees won’t be confirmed, either. 

The General Assembly may also be in a position to block funding for a proposed Center for Leadership and Ethics at VMI. The school had asked for funding in the most recent session but didn’t get it. Legislators told the Richmond Times-Dispatch then that that wasn’t unusual; other colleges asked for things they didn’t get, either. However, Youngkin questioned whether Democrats were holding the funding hostage as leverage to force the board to renew Wins’ contract. State Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, says he expects the governor to propose anew that the center be funded. “That will take a budget amendment, which will have to be approved by the GA,” he said by text message. If the legislature didn’t include this funding when the political temperature over VMI was lower, it would seem unlikely to approve the funding now when the temperature is higher.

The question is whether that’s all the Democratic majority can and will do. If it is, then having some appointees blocked and a capital project that didn’t get funded initially still not get funded seems a pretty small political price for the Youngkin appointees on the VMI board to pay. 

The danger for VMI is if Democrats find other, more substantive, ways they can punish the school this year or if Democrats retain a majority in Richmond after November’s elections and these strained feelings persist. 

Math is not on VMI’s side: While VMI looms large in history and large in the state consciousness, it’s a small school. With 1,527 students, it’s by far the smallest of the 15 state-supported colleges. It also has the smallest percentage of in-state students of any of those schools (61.2%), which means that in terms of its role in educating Virginia students, it’s even smaller. Relatively few VMI graduates stay in Virginia — 44% are still here after five years, compared to an average of 55% for all schools. That’s not necessarily the best measure of VMI’s value (the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is a VMI grad; so is President Trump’s national security adviser), but it is one that a state commission nearly a century ago used to conclude that the school was simply too expensive for Virginia to operate on a return-on-investment scale. 

Mind you, I’m not endorsing any of this; I’m simply pointng out how VMI might vulnerable in today’s political environment. The politics of the 1920s quickly scuttled that proposal to shut down the school as an expensive duplication of other educational programs more economically delivered elsewhere. But the politics of the 2020s are much different, and a lot less favorable to VMI.

Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax County, fired a metaphorical cannon shot across VMI’s ramparts with a post on Twitter/X that suggested the time has come to look at whether Virginia even needs a state-supported military college. 

That’s not the option being discussed, according to the legislative leaders I’ve talked to, but this is also not the first time that the notion of defunding or drastically reducing funding for VMI has been raised. Two prominent legislators — both Democrats from Northern Virginia — raised the idea in 2021. Those legislators are now out of office, but the political risk for VMI supporters is that such feelings grow.

Fortunately for VMI, that’s not happening yet.

“Many people are upset,” Del. Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke and chair of the House Education Committee, said by text. “Defunding language is not being used.”

When I followed up with a phone conversation, Rasoul didn’t have much more to say other than to confirm that Democratic leaders are trying to plot a response. “As far as next steps right now, there are conversations being had in a variety of circles in leadership to determine what the best course of action is at this point.”

His Senate counterpart, state Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Chesterfield County and chair of the Senate Education and Health Committee, said much the same in a prepared statement she sent to Cardinal: “By declining to extend the contract of VMI Superintendent Major General Cedric Wins, the institution’s Board of Visitors has made a serious mistake and has surrendered its own authority simply to support the goals of Governor Youngkin. Superintendent Wins has worked effectively and collaboratively to address the issues and challenges that have long faced VMI. As a public institution of higher education funded by Virginia taxpayers, VMI has the responsibility to serve the Commonwealth and not the narrow partisan concerns of the governor. The Board’s decision now demands a response from the General Assembly, and the discussions are ongoing.” 

I asked Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County, what was up and got this reply: “We’re discussing.”

I asked if he could say what was being discussed. “Nope.”

I contacted other key Democrats and got similar responses, or less, so let’s circle back to Helmer, who dared to float the idea of defunding VMI. He’s a West Point grad who went on to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan and says he sees “deep value” in a military-style education. He also says that closing VMI certainly isn’t his preference. However, he says, “if that’s the direction the board wants to go, to turn back the clock on racism, sexism and the Lost Cause ideology which permeates VMI, I think it’s a real question.”

I’m sure that’s not how the board would characterize its action in declining to renew Wins’ contract but that’s the perception some Democrats have, and in politics, perceptions often are the same as reality. What we have here is a classic example of a culture clash that goes beyond whether Wins should or should not be the superintendent. “His removal is hard to see as anything else other than devotion to a vision of VMI that harkens to our worst angels,” Helmer said. “This is a stunning development. This is one that requires deeper investigation. I think all options are on the table.”

And by “all options,” yes, he means that one option is for Virginia to stop funding VMI. (The school is state property so exactly what would happen after that is yet another question.)

“I hope that’s not where we go,” Helmer said, “but it now merits a real conversation.”

Unlike others, he’s not particularly focused on what may or may not happen in the upcoming veto session. “I think this is a longer conversation than a single budget cycle,” he said.

So just what did the chair of the Senate’s budget committee mean when she cryptically said VMI would “find out”? We don’t know because she’s not talking.