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.Brent Tarter, "Byrd Organization." Encyclopedia Virginia (Virginia Humanities 2017)
"The organization" had its greatest strength in rural areas. It was never able to gain a significant foothold in the growing urban areas of Virginia's many independent cities, which are not located within counties, nor with the emerging suburban middle-class of Virginians after World War II. Byrd's vehement opposition to racial integration of the state's public schools, including a policy of massive resistance, which ultimately failed in 1960 after it was ruled unconstitutional by both state and federal courts, could be described as the organization's "last stand", although the remnants of it continued to wield power for a few years longer.
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
After the American Civil War, Virginia's politics were chaotic. Initially, former Confederates were not allowed to vote, and factions of newly enfranchised black voters joined the electorate. In the late 1870s, a coalition of blacks, Republicans, and populist Democrats formed the Readjuster Party. Readjusters aspired "to break the power of wealth and established privilege" of the planter class elites who had controlled Virginia politics since the colonial era and to promote public education. It was led by Harrison H. Riddleberger (1844–1890) of Woodstock, an attorney, and William Mahone (1827–1895), of Petersburg, a former Confederate general who was president of several railroads.
The Readjuster Party's power was overturned in the late 1880s, when John S. Barbour Jr. (1820–1892) led the first Conservative Democrat political machine in Virginia, known as the Martin organization, aided by a poll tax enacted in 1902 that effectively disenfranchised blacks and poor whites.Peaslee, Liliokanaio and Swartz, Nicholas J; Virginia Government: Institutions and Policy; p. 46 U.S. Senator Thomas Staples Martin (1847–1919) took over after Barbour died, but Senator Martin's political control was thin by the time he died in office in 1919. By this time, a young state senator from Winchester, Harry F. Byrd, was a rising star in state politics and the Democratic Party. He had served the Wilson Administration during World War I helping with gasoline rationing as a volunteer.
In 1922, with seven years of experience in the Virginia State Senate, Byrd gained statewide prominence by confronting Virginia's powerful lobby of highway builders. Byrd had gained a lot of related experience when earlier managing the Valley Turnpike. In the Virginia General Assembly, he led a fight against using bonded indebtedness as a method to pay for new roads. He feared the state would sacrifice future flexibility by committing too many resources to paying off construction debt.
In 1923, Byrd was sued for libel by the Virginia Highway Contractors Association because he said their activities "by combination and agreements may be very detrimental" to the State. The court dismissed the suit, stating the criticism was legal, imposing all costs upon the association. The publicity figuratively paved the way for the election of Harry Byrd to statewide office.
Structure 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.
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.Virginia Places; The Byrd Organization
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. Another amendment required the legislature to reapportion itself every decade – a demand made without any details of apportionment. This move not only centralized power in the governor's hands but also eliminated potential bases for opposition. Several measures that had been in place well before Byrd's time also ensured his dominance, especially the poll tax. This not only effectively stripped blacks and poor whites of the vote, but made the electorate the smallest relative to population in the postbellum United States.Key, Valdmir Orlando; Southern Politics in State and Nation; p. 19 The courthouse cliques of the Byrd machine strove to ensure that "reliable" voters' poll taxes were paid on time, often as early as three years before an election. The General Assembly, through circuit court judges, controlled the electoral commissions that ruled on voter eligibility. While the organization never was able to establish a foothold in urban areas, blatant and deliberate malapportionment in favor of rural Southside Virginia and against the strongly Republican southwestern mountains, Democratic western coalfields, as well as the cities ensured statewide dominance.Smith, J. Douglas; On Democracy's Doorstep: The Inside Story of How the Supreme Court Brought "One Person, One Vote" to the United States; pp. 140-144
Fiscally conservative 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.Hawkes, Robert T. Jr.; The Emergence of a Leader: Harry Flood Byrd, Governor of Virginia, 1926-1930; The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 82, No. 3, ‘Harry Flood Byrd and the Democratic Organization in Virginia' (July 1974), pp. 259-281 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,Tarter, Brett; A Flier on the National Scene: Harry F. Byrd's Favorite-Son Presidential Candidacy of 1932; The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 82, No. 3, ‘Harry Flood Byrd and the Democratic Organization in Virginia' (July 1974), pp. 282-305 it also kept support for higher education and other state services at low levels.
Byrd, like many Americans who grew up before the high school movement, never graduated from high school. He recognized that his rural constituency where most students left school after eighth grade to go to work on the family farm were less interested in state-supplied services like public education than in lower taxes.Virginia Places; "From a 'Museum of Democracy' to a Two-Party System in Virginia: the End of the Byrd Machine" Rural areas were heavily over-represented in the General Assembly, ensuring that Virginia's per capita expenditures on education and social welfare remained among the lowest in the nation for decades.
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.
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 Republicans. Many Virginia Democrats began drifting away from the national party due to Franklin D. Roosevelt's support for organized labor during the New Deal. This only accelerated during the Civil Rights Movement, when Byrd drafted the Southern Manifesto in opposition to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Consequently, many Byrd Democrats began splitting their tickets in national elections as early as the 1930s, well before ticket-splitting became a trend across the South in the 1960s.
This trend was especially pronounced in western Virginia, Byrd's home region. Several counties in that region have not supported a Democrat for president since Roosevelt. For instance, HighlandThe Political Graveyard; Highland County, Virginia and Shenandoah CountiesThe Political Graveyard; Shenandoah County, Virginia last supported a Democrat for President in 1932, Page CountyThe Political Graveyard; Page County, Virginia last supported a Democrat in 1936, while AugustaThe Political Graveyard; Augusta County, Virginia and Roanoke CountiesThe Political Graveyard; Roanoke County, Virginia both last supported a Democrat in the 1944 election.
Byrd was vehemently opposed to racial desegregation even early in the New Deal, and later opposed Presidents Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy despite their also being Democrats (as well as losing Democratic Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson) because they opposed racial segregation within the U.S. military and federal workforce. Meanwhile, conservative Democrats controlled the General Assembly until the mid 1990s.