Just Good Politics: The Life of Raymond Chafin, Appalachian Boss. - book reviews

Washington Monthly, Dec, 1994 by Joe Savage

Raymond Chafin and Topper Sherwood University of Pittsburgh Press, $24.95

After the 1960 primary in West Virginia, John Kennedy joked that he'd received a telegram from his father pleading: "Don't buy another vote. I won't pay for a landslide."

While it is true that JFK confronted the "Catholic issue" in Bible-belt West Virginia and put it to rest by defeating Hubert Humphrey in the Democratic primary there, it is also clear from this autobiography of Chafin, the longtime Democratic boss of Logan County in southern West Virginia, that this act of ecumenical voting was aided by a long-established system of voter bribery in the boss-dominated coal fields. This intersection of Camelot with a part of the country riddled with illiteracy, teenage pregnancy, substandard housing, poverty, and isolation provides an opening for some insights on corrupt political systems everywhere.

Although Humphrey spread some campaign money around West Virginia, too, when it came to serious cash "he'd never come through with anything," Chafin says. Chafin attributes his personal support for Kennedy exclusively to his assessment of who would be best for West Virginia, his admiration for Jacqueline Kennedy after meeting her during the campaign, and his own wife and daughter's growing excitement about JFK. It is portrayed as simply coincidental that after receiving $2,000 from Humphrey, he pledged his support to the Minnesota senator but switched to Kennedy when he received $35,000 cash in two briefcases at the Logan County airport from Kennedy operatives the week before the primary. While he says the amount was "a mistake"--he'd only asked for $3,500--Chafin reassures his readers that he spent it all on election activity, including illegal vote-buying, and did not pocket any of the cash himself.

Chafin describes how the mechanics of vote-buying requires the cooperation of both Republicans and Democrats at the polling places. Voters willing to sell their ballot ask a poll watcher for "assistance." By law, these poll watchers are from both parties. They "assist" the voter by casting the ballot for the slate he's going to be paid to vote for and then signal outside the "house" that the vote had been cast, allowing campaign workers in the yard to make the promised payment.

Then and now, in exchange for playing along with the corrupt system, the heavily outnumbered Republicans in southern West Virginia receive token government positions (today it is usually a seat on the school board). Ultimately there's just one party: the bosses.

Chafin acknowledges that he's not pure--"no halo over [my] head"--but he's convinced he's better than the alternative. Electing candidates based on TV ads, Chafin laments, depersonalizes politics while allowing wholesale corruption through false and misleading political advertising. He prefers his corruption retail and, in his view at least, he delivered for his people.

His achievements after more than 40 years of "public service" were getting a handful of roads and bridges constructed, a couple of schools repaired or replaced, a courthouse built, and, naturally, jobs for some friends and family members.

Unfortunately, parts of this book are so parochial that for some people it will reinforce the comfortable notion that Appalachia is not like the rest of the country. This will be seen as a book about "them," the quirky mountaineers whose idiosyncrasies make them distinct from the rest of us. That would be a mistake. The underlying causes of corruption are universal.

Take Chelsea, Massachusetts, the state's smallest city. While it sits just across the harbor from the cradle of democracy, since the 1940s each Chelsea generation has witnessed revelations of criminal activity by the last four mayors, six police officers, a state representative, business leaders, and others, much of it having to do with illegal cash in elections. At the sentencings, some sought to emphasize that they did not invent the system and were themselves, in some sense, victims of it. This view is similar to that of the defendant in West Virginia who told a federal judge at his guilty pleading that he "knowed it was wrong but didn't know it was prison wrong."

Isolation and "colonial" economics would seem to be the two biggest factors in creating a climate for corruption. While patronage and politics matter at all economic levels, systemic political corruption has not flourished in upwardly mobile, middle-class America. There, change and diversity are common; people move in; new ideas come with them; opportunity exists despite high levels of cynicism and most people believe that if the political system operates fairly, they will be better off even when particular government decisions may not be to their liking.

But in Appalachia, or Chelsea, or other places that have little left of a middle class, people move in only one direction: out. They commonly say in the coal fields of West Virginia that the three "R"s taught at school are reading, 'riting, and Route 23 to Columbus, Ohio. Chelsea, too, has watched many of its best and most productive citizens leave. For those left behind, isolation--geographic and sometimes ethnic and economic--is the fact of life: You may be "up the Hollow" in Appalachia or under the Tobin Bridge in Chelsea, but in either case you are out of sight and out of mind. This is the perfect breeding ground for corrupt behavior.