Byrd machine

The Byrd machine, or Byrd organization, was a political machine of the Democratic Party led by former Governor and U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd (1887–1966) that dominated Virginia politics for much of the 20th century. From the 1890s until the late 1960s, the Byrd organization effectively controlled the politics of the state through a network of courthouse cliques of local constitutional officers in most of the state's counties.^[1]

"The organization" had its greatest strength in rural areas. It was never able to gain a significant foothold in the growing

When the senator resigned in 1965, he was replaced in the Senate by his son Harry F. Byrd Jr. However, the heyday of the Byrd organization was clearly in the past. With the election of a Republican governor in 1969 for the first time in the 20th century, the 80 years of domination of Virginia politics by conservative Democrats ended.

Background

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After the

The Virginia Democratic machine, since the 1890s, had rigidly stood for restricted suffrage, balanced budgets, and regressive taxation. After the Constitution of 1902 effectively disenfranchised more than half the electorate, the organization had had little trouble winning most Virginia elections.

Harry Byrd's uncle, U.S. Congressman Hal Flood, was one of the organization leaders until his death in 1921, and Byrd's father Richard Evelyn Byrd Sr. had been speaker of the House of Delegates. But Byrd's own cleverness won him the governorship in 1925 at age 38. With intelligence and attention to detail, he soon gained control of the already thirty-year-old organization. He served until 1930, then was elected to the United States Senate in 1933, serving until his retirement in 1965.^{[citation needed]}

Over forty years, Byrd built up relationships with the courthouse cliques, consisting of the constitutional officers in every county. The five (elected) constitutional officers in each county were the sheriff, Commonwealth's attorney, clerk of the court, county treasurer, and commissioner of revenue.^[4]

Perhaps contrary to first appearances, the low public profile "clerk of the court" position held the greatest power in most counties within the Byrd organization. These courthouse cliques made recommendations for suitable candidates, and Byrd only decided on candidates after careful consultation. Without Byrd's "nod," no candidate had a chance at statewide office in Virginia.

Constitutional amendments

One of Byrd's first acts upon taking office was to amend the state constitution to reduce the number of statewide elected offices to just three: governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general.

Byrd made property taxes solely a county and city responsibility. He also had a keen interest in improving roads, dramatically increasing funding for secondary roads. When that was not enough, he pushed through the Byrd Road Act of 1932, a law that created the state's Virginia Secondary Roads System and gave the state responsibility for maintaining county roads, (albeit without similar assistance for Virginia's independent cities). These measures made Byrd seem like a New South progressive at first glance.

However, Byrd's fiscal policy was principled conservatism, restructuring state government to streamline operations and use tax dollars more effectively.^[5] Byrd's primary support was among rural voters in his native Shenandoah Valley, as well as Southside. Voters in these areas had less interest in improved state services (other than roads) than in low taxes and limited government. Byrd initiated a "pay as you go" approach to spending, in which no state money was spent until enough taxes and fees were available. While this freed Virginia from having to pay off-road construction debt and kept the state as one of the few to remain solvent during the early years of the Great Depression,^[8] it also kept support for higher education and other state services at low levels.

Byrd, like many Americans who grew up before the

George Mason University professor William Grymes has noted that "Byrd's political power was based on the ability of the appointed and elected officials to restrict the number of voters, and ensure those few voters were supporters of the Byrd organization." The courthouse cliques' measures to restrict the number of voters made it possible for Byrd-supported candidates to win with as little as fifteen percent of the potential electorate actually being able to vote.^[9]

Opposing federal laws

With this structure in place, Byrd's organization practically selected every governor from 1930 until 1970, even as Virginia became friendlier to

Some Byrd Democrats, such as Governors John S. Battle and Thomas B. Stanley, were sober enough to realize that racial integration was inevitable, and were willing to take cautious steps toward rolling back Jim Crow laws. However, their efforts were short-circuited in 1954, when a little over a month after the Brown v. Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, Byrd vowed to block any attempts to integrate Virginia's public schools. While the state superintendent of education had promised "no defiance of the Supreme Court." Byrd, on the other hand, issued a statement saying Virginia faced "a crisis of the first magnitude" and calling the decision by the Warren Court the "most serious blow" ever to states' rights.^[16]

Byrd decreed a policy of "

After Virginia's school-closing law was ruled unconstitutional in January 1959, the General Assembly repealed the compulsory school attendance law and made the operation of public schools a local option for the state's counties and cities. When journalist Edward R. Murrow, presented the program "The Lost Class of '59" on the CBS television network that focused on the organization's "massive resistance" program that had caused the shuttering of the public schools in several Virginia localities it caused national indignation.

State and federal courts struck down most of the "massive resistance" laws by 1960. In response, Stanley's successor as governor, J. Lindsay Almond Jr., drafted several laws that implemented an extremely gradual desegregation process, popularly known as "passive resistance." Most members of the organization considered "passive resistance" to be rank heresy, as it abandoned

Harry F. Byrd Sr. retired from the U.S. Senate in 1965, and his eldest son, Harry Jr., a State Senator, was appointed to succeed him.

Harry Sr. died in 1966. A short time before his death, the Byrd organization showed its first cracks when two of Harry Sr.'s longtime allies were ousted in the Democratic primary by more liberal challengers. Senator Robertson, a 20-year incumbent, was defeated by State Senator