Doug Wilder always says the loud part louder.
In a little-noticed speech this past weekend, the former governor and ex-Richmond mayor artfully laid into the president of Virginia Commonwealth University, Michael Rao, and Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who appoints the overseers of VCU and more than a dozen other taxpayer-financed colleges and universities.
Wilder has attacked both men before. His speech wasn’t necessarily more of the same, though, because Wilder had a different audience. He spoke to newly minted, politically focused university graduates who, he implied, should not follow Rao’s and Youngkin’s examples.
Alluding to Rao as an example of “milquetoast leadership,” Wilder chided anew the 14-year president for the collapse of that money-losing redevelopment scheme for the medical campus on which a new dental school was supposed to rise on city-owned land. Depending whose arithmetic one believes, it cost VCU $100 million.
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And it could cost Rao and VCU more — in the way of reputation — depending on the findings of an examination of the university’s operations by the General Assembly’s investigative arm, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission. In recent months, commission staffers have conducted interviews and reviewed records.
Wilder also criticized Rao for the police battle with student protesters who had erected a pro-Palestine encampment on the academic campus in late April. Wilder laid blame for the melee with Youngkin, too.
“Students have rights and the proper exercising of those rights should not be met with pepper spray and police dogs,” said Wilder. “Rao, the (VCU governing board) and the governor had the responsibility to direct the proper course of action.”
As for Youngkin, Wilder said the Republican — no fan of DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion — is wrong to meddle, through the screening of course outlines, class offerings by VCU and other schools that focus on race and culture: “What qualifies this governor to be an expert and to end board-approved courses to be taught?”
Wilder also referred to the Youngkin administration’s right-leaning rewrite of history standards for elementary school students, which initially eliminated references to the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights martyr, and Juneteenth, the now-federal holiday observing the announced end of Black slavery in June 1865.
“The removal of any aspect of Dr. King’s tortuous journey from our history books, as directed by Gov. Youngkin, is not only insulting but unforgivable,” said Wilder, the nation’s first elected Black governor and who, as a state senator from Richmond, won — after an eight-year struggle — legislation creating Virginia’s King holiday in 1984.
And it’s difficult to imagine Wilder didn’t have in mind Youngkin, a newcomer to government from business whose record in Richmond can charitably be described as mixed, when he spoke of politicians who don’t always back their words with actions.
“Not a day passes that someone is not asking for our support and your vote,” said Wilder. “Too often what is expected is not met with fulfillment. Much too often those asking show little, if any, record of accomplishment in serving the people.”
This is not the first time that Wilder has berated Rao and Youngkin.
And that may be why neither Rao nor Youngkin — through their respective flacks, with whom the Richmond Times-Dispatch shared a video of Wilder’s remarks — responded to Wilder’s fresh fusillade. Besides, getting in a hissing match with Wilder can be a losing proposition, strengthening him at others’ expense.
It was the venue and the audience that elevated the significance of Wilder’s pointed remarks.
He spoke at the commencement of VCU’s public policy school — it’s named for Wilder, never mind that four decades ago, then a member of the Senate leadership, he objected to naming public facilities for living Virginians, lest they bring shame to the state.
To those aspiring public servants and policy wonks, Wilder, in effect, cited Rao and Youngkin as models of how public servants and policy wonks shouldn’t conduct themselves.
It should be stipulated that Wilder, having been in politics and government continuously for 55 of his 93 years, has said and done many things deemed irresponsible, irrational, inappropriate, and inappreciative. In numerous instances, this brought on Wilder unshirted hell, making enemies of friends and affirming his reputation for putting himself first.
This, however, does not disguise — rather, it confirms — one of Wilder’s clear and enduring talents: an almost-theatrical ability, magnified by a keen sense of timing and a knack for reading the room, to fearlessly spotlight discomfiting truths, often on matters of race, the delivery of basic services and the dollars and sense of disputed or outdated programs.
Maybe that’s why Wilder’s speech Saturday was interrupted by applause.
In contrast, Youngkin’s speech — he addressed VCU’s main commencement the same day — was interrupted by a walkout in protest of his selection as speaker and his support of police tactics against Gaza demonstrators. Between 100 and 200 students streamed from the ceremony, as the governor’s host — Mike Rao — sat stone-faced behind him.
“This milquetoast leadership we see at this university cannot be accepted,” said Wilder, exercising the free-speech rights he depicted as on full display in the anti-Israel protests. “It might not come soon enough for some, myself included, but as surely as the seasons trail each other, it will come.”
Not to be overlooked in Wilder’s mannerly rant: For him, politics is strictly personal.
Wilder has rarely concealed his distaste for Rao, whose presidency got off to a rough start with questions about the role of his wife in university management.
Nor has Wilder passed on an opportunity to undercut Rao, releasing a disputed survey by VCU’s pollsters that showed 9 in 10 respondents troubled by the failed health campus project. That Wilder was embarrassed some five years ago by allegations by a young student of sexual harassment — he would claim he was cleared by VCU — compounded the wariness with which Wilder and Rao view each other.
As for Youngkin, Wilder seemingly had high hopes for the Republican; that their relationship would be mutually beneficial. In 2021, Wilder refused to endorse fellow Democrat Terry McAuliffe for a second, nonconsecutive term as governor — a reminder of their long-difficult relationship. Wilder’s silence on McAuliffe was taken as a sign that Wilder was open to an alliance with Youngkin.
And the two initiated a bromance, of sorts, with Youngkin speaking favorably of a Wilder cause: more public funding for state-run historically Black colleges and universities. Wilder, once described by Youngkin as his mentor, was enlisted as a transition adviser, ensuring him access to Youngkin that not even Republicans had. But soon the relationship went south.
Youngkin’s hostility to DEI enraged Wilder, who, it’s said by allies, was also expecting heftier investments in HBCUs. The men’s relationship also wasn’t helped by what the former governor apparently perceived as an endorsement of Rao by the current governor.
For Wilder, that may be the loudest part.