This week's column: Mr. Robinson's neighborhood
Vernon Robinson gently sifted through a box of model airplane parts, cradling tiny plastic and metal pieces in his palms, then pinching them between his fingers with the tender care of a jeweler.
Among the teeny triumphs he pointed out was a miniature pilot's seat shaped and molded from a scrap piece of a soda can.
Another was an instrument panel for a World War II fighter, its gauges hand-inserted into pinhead-sized holes he punched into a sheet of plastic.
And yet another a wire antenna on another model fashioned from a strand of one his daughter's hair.
Once completed, every model features a signature splash of red paint on its tail, in homage to the Tuskegee airmen, the heroic black pilots of World War II whose bomber escorts bore that distinction
Robinson's father was a Tuskegee airman, his mother a Democrat. But he loved her anyway.
As Robinson sorted through those pieces of little airplanes at his suburban Winston-Salem home one recent Saturday morning, he also sorted through the pieces of his political career.
Anointed a rising star in the Republican Party by The Wall Street Journal and adopted as a protege by GOP stalwart Jack Kemp, Robinson seemed destined for the national stage. Now here he was, having just lost a City Council election to a relatively unknown newcomer in Winston-Salem.
After two tumultuous terms on the council, Robinson will surrender his seat this month to an upstart Democrat, Molly Leight, a self-described 60-year-old "tree-hugger" who beat Robinson solidly on Nov. 8, 1,665 votes to 922.
In assessing how and why he had lost, Robinson was, as usual, clinical but direct: The Democrats wanted him gone, and they did what they had to do to get rid of him.
"The Democratic Party really wanted this seat," Robinson said. "They came after me last time, but last time it was just local. This time it was the state Democratic Party, and they had a better candidate."
Now Winston-Salem's City Council, which unlike Greensboro's is a partisan board, holds a commanding, 7-1 Democratic majority. "There's a hard-core left majority now," Robinson said. "I don't think people understand how perilously Winston-Salem is sitting right now."
Robinson's political career may be in peril as well. The 50-year-old U.S. Air Force Academy graduate led the field in the Republican primary for the 5th District congressional seat but fell to eventual winner Virginia Foxx in a bloody runoff that attracted national attention. In May he made a bid for the state GOP chairmanship. He lost that one, too.
Jack Kemp eventually distanced himself in light of Robinson's commando campaign tactics. And even Jesse Helms, on whose legacy and beliefs Robinson has hung his hat, endorsed another Republican, Ed Broyhill, in the 5th District primary.
Robinson shrugged. "The senator stretched senatorial courtesy to the breaking point in endorsing Broyhill," Robinson said. "But even he couldn't bring himself in the ads to say Broyhill was conservative."
As for Broyhill's surprise defeat, Robinson said: "The woods are filled with millionaire walk-ons who thought they were going to Congress. A lot of those guys have never taken a punch."
Robinson certainly has. He's delivered a few, too. In his campaign against Leight, Robinson mailed fliers with a photo of two young men who appeared to be Hispanic and who carried assault weapons and sawed-off shotguns. The message: Leight would not protect voters from these men; Robinson would.
Then there were his congressional campaign ads, which pressed similar emotional and cultural panic buttons, including immigration, gay marriage and, of course, the Ten Commandments.
In a stunt that won him national attention, he plopped a granite monument to the Ten Commandments outside of Winston-Salem's City Hall.
(Thou shalt not pass up opportunities for "Today Show" coverage.)
One Robinson mailing called his opponents "limp-wristed."
As for his council tenure, Robinson proudly points to his staunch opposition to an $18.9 million city Dell incentives package. He also flatly opposes city funding of any nonprofit organization. "Charity is not a government function," he said. "You're supposed to be cutting taxes and letting citizens be charitable."
But the voters weren't very charitable. So he'll ride off into the sunset, for now, at least. Will he run again?
"I don't know," he said. "I'm still very concerned about public policy issues. I'm still concerned about social issues ... the defense of marriage. One could argue that America is taking a final exam now, and there won't be a retest."
As extreme as some of them are, Robinson seems truly committed to his beliefs, even when it costs him personally. When I lived in Winston-Salem several years ago, some members of a weekly discussion group in which we both took part would purposely not tell him the site of some meetings in hopes that he wouldn't show up.
Yet the foundation he runs funds scholarships to private schools for poor students. He is a committed family man. He and his wife, Helene, have three children, two of whom they adopted after their mother, his wife's cousin, died of lung cancer.
Robinson and I part amiably, as we usually do. We agree to disagree, as we usually do.And we acknowledge that we've made some progress over the year at least finding some tiny grains of common ground.
Comments (1)
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Interesting comments.. :D
Posted on April 15, 2007 1:57 AM