In today’s Virginian-Pilot editorial, they consider what the 33 Democrats are going to do with their $750,000 settlement from the state Republicans. The paper suggests that the party use it, logically enough, for the party, and I couldn’t agree more.
Currently, the state party intends to donate the bulk of the money to charitable causes. This is nice. But what would be much nicer would be if the bulk of the money were used to found a Democratic leadership foundation for Virginia, a partisan Sorensen Institute. There is no formalized training process for candidates — we need a weekend program to get new candidates up to speed, and we need a year-long training program to teach people how to be political leaders. We need a campaign staffing training program. We need some cash available to give out as grants for small projects to promote Democratic values in the commonwealth. All of this, ultimately, will prove far more beneficial to charitable organizations, since Democrats can fix the financial mess that Republicans (Gilmore and Bush) have gotten us into.
It sounds nice to give the money to charity, but we are all best served by using it to improve the party.