Word: byrds
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Harry Byrd's uncle, Congressman Hal Flood, was one of the Machine's leaders till his death in 1921, and Byrd's father was speaker of the House of Delegates. But Byrd's own cleverness won him the governorship in 1925 at age 38, extraordinarily young for Virginia. With intelligence and attention to detail, he soon gained control of the already thirty-year-old Machine...
...Byrd's record as Governor is typical of Machine rule. He balanced the budget, turned a state deficit into a surplus, and levied higher taxes on persons with low incomes. He cut spending by reorganizing the state government. He had the legislature pass an anti-lynching law and sponsored a large road-building program (Byrd likes to drive: the automobile is apparently the only twentieth-century innovation he accepts...
...Byrd has dominated Virginia politics through networks of county officials entirely subservient to the Democratic organization. Men who disagreed with the Senator on any issue were simply denied public office for the rest of their lives. Dissenting candidates simply cannot win elections with the small, well-to-do electorate and incredibly low voter turnout. Few Virginia Governors have received the votes of as much as 10 per cent of the state's adult population in the decisive Democratic primary...
...Harry Byrd controlled Virginia politics from 1925 through the 1960's as much as any one man has ever controlled the political life of any one state. But lately, the Senator has been too sick and too tired to give the Machine the kind of close attention it demands. When Governor J. Lindsay Almond abandoned Massive Resistance (to integration) in 1959, he was committing apostasy. The Machine was forced, against its will, to compromise on white supremacy...
Curiously, the Governor-elect Mills Godwin has abandoned white supremacy altogether, and has even hinted that he might step-up spending for things like education and public services. Godwin's sharp turn away from the seventy-year-old Machine ideology is the most concrete sign of the end of Byrd's leadership...