Conscience and controversy

With firm convictions and forceful style, Bill James serves -- and stirs things up

CARRIE LEVINE

Staff Writer

 

---

 

Teddy Roosevelt - "It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat." - "Citizenship in a Republic," - Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

 

---

 

It came to this: The man both praised and reviled as one of the loudest and least politically correct talk-show hosts in the country thought Mecklenburg County commissioner Bill James was over the top.

Sean Hannity, the more conservative half of the Hannity & Colmes host duo, called James' recent remarks about urban blacks "callous, harsh, unfair and insensitive."  

James looked surprised. Hannity challenged him to apologize; James held his ground. In the days after, James said he felt he had held his own and brought national attention to his issue.

James has stirred untold controversies during his political career. But the past several weeks have been different. Since he sent a widely distributed e-mail saying urban blacks "live in a moral sewer," even members of his own party have denounced him for applying his moral framework to a web of social ills outside his own experience. Now he's starting his fifth term as an isolated member of a political minority. 

 But James -- and those who know him well -- say his political pronouncements are defined by a belief in moral absolutes, combined with an accountant's inclination to see things in black and white, with little gray.

And one friend says James -- who has a progressive liver disease and will likely eventually need a transplant -- is impatient to make a difference in the lives of those he sees as less fortunate while his health allows.

"The word that I want to communicate is, Bill grieves on a lot of levels," said Catherine Plough, a family friend. "He grieves on behalf of people." Problems in the inner city, Plough said, "is something he desperately wants to address."

James' wife, Julie, says James is a "lightning rod" because, unlike other politicians, he refuses to tailor his beliefs to what others want to hear.

"

He is always forthright and he is always honest," Julie James said, adding later, "I'd want people to know the true Bill James and not who the press and media have portrayed him to be."

James, 48, said he isn't that worried about what people think of him, or whether some call him a racist, as long as they listen when he tries to draw attention to problems he considers urgent.

"If you do the job of a politician properly, you are going to get bloodied," James said, referring to a quote by Theodore Roosevelt. "You are going to get beat up."

Devoted to family

James, a self-described conservative Republican, takes pride in his bruises. He has represented southeastern Mecklenburg on the county board since 1996.The son of an engineer and a schoolteacher, he moved often as a child. Home base, he says, was with his grandparents in Lexington, Ky., in the family home where he spent his summers.

It is those months with older relatives that James says sparked his interest in family history and genealogy, along with a curiosity about times of yore that dovetails nicely with his interest in classic cars. He frequently cites ancestors who were activists for civil rights and sprinkles discussions with bits of family history.

He and Julie James both say they view his political life as a continuation of a family tradition of public service. One difference: James says his family's habit of choosing sides and holding heated debates around the dinner table initially shocked his more reserved wife.

Those dinner debates, he says, still shape his style today. He is not afraid to use strong words, and he doesn't compromise.

He also expects others to be as engaged in a topic as he is; he's known for sending frequent polemics to an e-mail list of about 1,300 people.

He is prone to quoting intellectuals and statesmen on both sides of the aisle, citing statistics and data that he often seems to pull from memory and referring to biblical absolutes.

James said he has watched people he is close to "wrestle with demons," although -- in a move that is rare for him -- refrained from giving details. Watching that, he says, taught him that "the best way to avoid sin is to flee from it."

James does not drink, and he declines to be alone in a room with a woman he is not related to, rules he says keep him from the appearance and temptation of sin.

What he has learned from life's trials, he says, is that "God answered prayer, that he is real and can change people's lives at the point where you don't think it can ever get any better ... you can't take responsibility for your own actions if you are constantly blaming your actions on someone else. You can't blame it on saying well, it's a disease. You can't blame it on 400 years of oppression. You can't blame it on some guy you've never met. If you screw up, you have to make that right."

James acknowledges the irony of his liver disease. "No one knows what causes it, but as I often joke with my family, I am the only person who has evidence of a debauched life without engaging in the debauchery," he said.

 Defined by moral issues

Both the people who like James and those who don't agree his ideas about morality define him.

Joel Carter, a former county commissioner who was also part of the "Gang of Five" -- a group of commissioners who cut money to arts groups in 1997 over moral issues -- said James "was someone I had to keep in line."

Carter said James was too quick to give county dollars to public schools, for instance.

"If it's a perceived conservative issue and it had to do with morality, I didn't have to say anything," Carter said. "He does not waver with his politics from that. That is quite admirable. ... In his fiscal conservatism, he had to be taught and brought along."

James' best friend on the current board, Democrat Norman Mitchell, said his friend sometimes uses his insistence on defining everything in moral terms as an "out" to avoid compromise.

"He's going to hide behind the morality piece," Mitchell predicted. "You can't legislate morality and he knows he's not going to get any support for that, and that's his out."

As the furor raged after James made the "moral sewer" comment in an e-mail about problems in schools, Mitchell refrained from publicly blasting his friend, even as members of James' own party said he had gone too far.

The two men often talk several times a day by phone, both said, and have asked board chairmen to seat them next to each other. They bond over cars and describe long, rambling conversations about family and public policy.

But Mitchell, an African American who represents an urban district, said he told James he painted with too broad a brush this time.

"I've said, Bill, you have got to understand that the things you have been saying and the actions you have been taking over the years, it makes him look like a racist," Mitchell said.

Mitchell said he was angry enough to stop talking to James for almost a week during the moral sewer flap, although he later called to mend the breach.

But Mitchell also says people think worse of James than he deserves, and his friend is too often demonized for actions by other politicians happy to let James take the heat.

James says he has apologized for not choosing his words more carefully. But in the same breath, he defends what he said.

"I'm the first to admit that there's always a better way to say it," he says. "However, in the end, the thing that we keep coming back to is, are we right about the facts and are we right to do something about it?"

Later, he added, "Whether people agree with my style or not, it's that I don't want to just sit up there and do nothing. I want to at least move the debate forward and try and solve something while I'm there."

Asked to soften approach

James won another two-year term in November, so he has at least that long to "move the debate forward." But although board members have agreed to examine some of his issues, all eight of his colleagues -- across both parties -- have said they would prefer he find other ways to bring things to their attention.

At their annual planning retreat last week, board members -- one by one -- asked James to conduct himself with more civility.

"It's sort of, everything you need to know you learned in nursery school, or, what was that saying?" asked Dan Bishop, a Republican newly elected in November. "Kindergarten? If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."

Board Chairman Parks Helms, a Democrat, told James "to distinguish between engaging in debate and preaching a sermon."

Still, after the discussion ended , James said he didn't feel isolated on the board and thought his language had brought the board "kicking and screaming" to the table to deal with his issues when gentler words had failed.

"Pushing the edge of the envelope," he said, "is doing good if you have a noble cause."