On May 9, 2002, Rob Schilling sat at his home computer and created a pair of posters lettered with the words "Thank You." With his wife—and constant companion—Joan, he then spent the sunny Thursday afternoon standing on the corner of McIntire and Preston, waving the signs and smiling at rush hour traffic.
Two days earlier, Schilling had defeated Democrat Alexandria Searls for one of two contested seats on Charlottesville’s five-member City Council. He won 2,169 votes, 359 fewer than the overall winner, incumbent Blake Caravati. Only 11 percent of the City’s registered voters had cast their ballots for Schilling, so out of the hundreds of motorists who saw his posters, probably only a handful understood the message. The rest had to wonder, who are those people? (For many, the answer would come in the following morning’s Daily Progress, which lapped up the traffic stunt with a front-page color photo.)
In case it wasn’t obvious from his shoulder-length hair, the street-corner gesture proved Schilling was no ordinary Republican. Darden Towe, the City’s last Republican Councilor, had left office in 1990. A revered figure in Charlottesville and Albemarle, the courtly Towe was honored by a public park, but he never stood at an intersection waving homemade placards. Although Schilling’s politics are similar to Towe’s, his style couldn’t be more different from that of the respected insurance executive who died in 1992.
During the past year, Schilling has used his knack for public relations to cast himself as the outsider on Council. He’s crafted his image as a man-of-the-people watchdog, yet he’s never burdened himself with a clear vision for the future of Charlottesville.
Now some Democrats on Council say they’re fed up with Schilling’s self-promotion. They say that for all his supposed watchfulness and the many times his picture has appeared in the ever-faithful daily newspaper, he did woefully little work during his first year, even for a rookie Councilor. Schilling had it easy, the Democrats say, but it looks like the honeymoon is over.
If he’s aware of what fellow Councilors have in store for him, it’s not disturbing Schilling’s preternaturally smooth-going demeanor. All the things that make him stand out from his fellow Councilors—his strict ideology, his itinerant professional life, his public manner, his hairstyle—serve his agenda: He wants to distinguish himself from everyone else on Council by claiming the heart of the little guy. Even without clear Council victories to call his own, Schilling has parlayed his back-to-basics conservative slogans into name recognition and constituent loyalty. More than that, even those who vehemently disagree with Schilling’s platform know who he is and the stripped-down kind of government he stands for. He might not be the smartest guy in City Hall, nor the most prepared or dedicated, but with his ability to spin criticism into selling points and stay on message for his supporters, Schilling could very well be Charlottesville’s best politician.
"Non-issue" or single issue?
A few months ago, Caravati met Rob Schilling at the Mudhouse, a popular locale for political huddles. "I told him that I intend to manipulate the hell out of him, and that I wanted him to manipulate the hell out of me," says Caravati. "That’s called realpolitik."
Caravati, a construction contractor, says this was his way of encouraging Schilling to participate more fully on City Council.
"My greatest disappointment with Rob has been his unwillingness to share the workload. That offends me," says the veteran Councilor and former Mayor. "Nothing has shown me he can keep up. If you’re not engaged, what good are you? He’s becoming a non-issue."
Caravati keeps his voice low as he utters his assessment, leaning across the table. Councilors rarely disparage fellow members of the team in public—until now. "It’s kind of embarrassing," Caravati says of Council’s infighting.
Other Democrats also seem fed up, and maybe a little uneasy. During the past year, Schilling alienated his colleagues by refusing to craft policy through one-on-one negotiation or to serve on his share of committees. Schilling explains this behavior as an attack on the philosophy that guided Council during the 1990s, namely that government should use its power and money to leverage the private sector for a liberal notion of the public good. (Those ideas are set forth in Council documents like the 2020 Vision paper, which establishes among City government’s obligations the "courage to embrace positive change for the common good" and "promote educational excellence and an intellectual climate" to "nourish the spirit.")
"He’s questioning a couple of the basic philosophies we operate under," says Mayor Maurice Cox, "that Council is a collaborative effort, that each member of the Council is part of a team and that government has an activist role. He agrees with the things we pursue, but not how we pursue them."
Schilling’s contrariness first went on display last July 1, the day the first-time public servant was sworn in. Also on that day, Council had announced their appointees to the City school board. In his thank-you address Schilling launched into criticisms of the process, reiterating his campaign assertions that the board should be elected, not appointed. Some wondered about the harsh timing of such a gesture—casting aspersions on the achievements of new school board members as he reveled in his own surprise accomplishment. In the year since, Schilling rarely has attended school board meetings to observe whether an appointed board exceeds his expectations.
Indeed, aside from making the school board issue the center of his 2002 campaign, Schilling has done little to advance his view. "He never tried to develop his idea as a pitch, or showed the rest of us examples of how an elected school board has helped other communities," says Councilor Kevin Lynch. "Building consensus for a proposal involves more than just stating that proposal. You have to make a case."
Reflecting on his own experiences as a Council newcomer, Cox says it’s not uncommon for freshman Councilors to adopt a critical posture, especially if they’ve never held public office before.
"When I started, I thought that through the persuasiveness of my argument, the other Councilors would say, ‘Oh, that’s how you do it.’ Well it doesn’t work that way," says Cox. "I wanted to help Rob around that experience."
But Schilling has persistently shunned one-on-one negotiation, preferring to air his criticisms in public. For example, a recent proposed ordinance to raise water rates caused plenty of disagreement among the Councilors, but Schilling waited until the regular meeting to engage his peers, reading before the public a list of detailed questions. Cox reprimanded Schilling, asking him to have his questions answered beforehand, and to come to the meeting prepared to comment on the proposal.
"I would give him an A for public relations," says Councilor Meredith Richards, "and a D-minus for effective action. He reserves his participation on Council for when the cameras are rolling."
Schilling has shown himself able to reject even the strongest persuasion. Cox asked Schilling three times to sit on the housing task force, an influential new board currently re-evaluating Charlottesville’s housing strategy. And three times Schilling, a real estate agent who manages several rental properties in Charlottesville, refused the Mayor’s request. Either he’s oblivious to protocol or he’s stubborn.
Schilling’s snub further irritated his colleagues. Council Democrats consider their work on boards and commissions to be among the most important they do as elected representatives, because it allows them to craft policy side-by-side with citizens.
But Schilling has his own way of reaching out to constituents. His most aggressive maneuver to date occurred three months ago.
On April 15, Council met to approve the City’s $93 million budget for 2003-04. During the meeting, Schilling voted against fee increases designed to fund five new community police officers and repairs on City school buildings. Although he says public safety and education are his top priorities, Schilling explained his opposition to increasing meals taxes and vehicle decal fees by saying "I agree with the City’s goals, but not the means."
Then, as the other Councilors gathered to celebrate Jeanne Cox’s 20th anniversary as Council’s Clerk, Schilling—clad in a lavender suit and cowboy boots—led reporters whom he had alerted to his intentions that morning to the sidewalk outside City Hall. Reading from a prepared statement, he said Council could have worked harder "for the people in this community" by reducing spending on architecture, social services and the McGuffey Art Center.
"From Belmont to Greenbrier, from 10th and Page to Alumni Hall, I hear you loud and clear," he declared. "Enough is enough."
As Schilling walked away with his wife, Joan (who is never far from his side during public meetings or events), Lynch offered this rebuttal: "If Rob had spent as much time getting his ideas across to Council as he does getting in front of the camera, he might make some progress."
But "progress" is a subjective concept. Though Schilling has consistently retreated from the messy grunt work of building policy through argument and compromise, he has won adherents. Certainly his reputation has advanced among some of the City’s electorate. In late June, for instance, Charlottesvillian Charles Weber Jr. wrote to this newspaper in praise of the new Councilor.
"Schilling has rightly argued that the budget process needs more discipline," Weber wrote. "I hope the citizens of Charlottesville will recognize the value of Schilling’s service and elect a few more Councilors willing to challenge the status quo."
The simple view of Schilling as Council’s official gadfly fails to take into account the many split votes among the Democrats and their mosaic of consensus building. Yet Schilling’s shrewd public relations skills fuel the notion that he is a Republican St. George fighting back a fiery Democratic bully.
"It’s easy to be a political minority in one regard," says Cox. "You don’t have to generate policy. All you have to do is react. All [Schilling] has to do is be perceived as the one on Council who keeps those Democrats in line.
"But I hope he’s got a greater ambition for his time on Council than that," Cox says.
God, Reagan and a stray comment
The mercury on a recent Sunday morning hit 87 degrees by 11am. With heavy humidity in the air, parishioners streamed into St. Thomas Aquinas Church on Alderman Road, smiling blissfully, inspired by the air conditioning.
In the front of the sanctuary, Schilling, who leads the choir every Sunday, received a signal from the priest, glanced at his choir, and drove a pick through the 12 strings of his acoustic Takamine guitar. The priest and a small entourage walked slowly down the aisle toward the altar as the congregation sang the opening hymn. Voices, guitars, piano and flute joined in perfect harmony.
"Rob is a really accomplished musician," says alto vocalist Ann McAndrew. "He can be a firm leader, but he keeps us focused. He can hear when something’s off and get to the heart of what we need without wasting a lot of time."
Who can say why one note is wrong and another is right? You know it when you hear it. In choir rehearsal, when Schilling hears wrong notes he stops the song and works with the offending singer or instrumentalist until the part is right. "When the voices and harmonies go together a certain way, I just love the way it makes me feel," he says.
Music was Schilling’s first love growing up in 1970s Pasadena, California. He and his friends didn’t even know how to play when they started their first band in high school, but in only one year they were gigging on the local club circuit. Schilling’s star reached its zenith in the mid-’80s, when his band, The Prime Movers, toured the United States for one month, opening for Thomas Dolby, the one-hit wonder behind "She Blinded Me With Science."
Schilling met Joan Carlin in 1986, when he was 24 years old. By the time they were married in 1991, Schilling was burned out on the rock scene. He turned his talent to God, directing and writing music for Catholic Mass.
Music is his longest-running vocation. Otherwise, Schilling has held a wide variety of jobs––advertising, teaching, property management, computer consulting––that allowed him to arrange his life around music. Now a licensed Realtor, he maintains his work-at-home lifestyle.
"My goal is spending the most amount of time I can with my wife," he says. Joan returns the loyalty, faithfully attending nearly every City Council meeting and always staying to the bitter end.
"It’s a way of being part of his life," she says.
Music wasn’t his only sustained interest in California, however. He admired Ronald Reagan and listened avidly to talk radio—and the unwavering ideological spin he gives to Charlottesville politics seems to draw directly from both of those sources.
But the West Coast started to lose its appeal by the end of the ’90s, and in 1998, he and Joan decided Southern California was too big and too crime-ridden. They packed up and headed east. Ironically for a pro-market Republican who thinks government should stay out of business’ way, Schilling says they rejected Raleigh, North Carolina, because it was growing too fast. They moved to Fluvanna County and after one year bought a house in Charlottesville’s Greenbrier neighborhood.
One afternoon he made an idle comment to his new neighbor, City Republican Party leader Bob Hodus. "If you ever need a candidate," Schilling said, "here I am." By February, Schilling’s name was on the ballot.
One of Schilling’s first acts as a new City Councilor was to give his colleagues a copy of his CD, Sing a Psalm, a collection of rock and soul numbers performed by the Glory Express, a choir Schilling directed in Southern California. Schilling wrote the lyrics by adapting verses from ancient poems collected in the Old Testament.
Sing a Psalm is not in any of the Democrats’ CD players right now, but perhaps it should be. Schilling’s politics are uncannily similar to his musicianship. As a choir director, Schilling can tell exactly when a note sounds wrong to him. He points out the mistake politely, and performs the correct melody confidently.
That’s what he does on Council, too. If a policy sounds flat to his Reaganite ear—if it’s too expensive, or it smacks of back-room dealing—Schilling shakes his head and says, "I can’t go along with this." His voice is somehow humble and arrogant at the same. His message is always simple.
"He’s a natural politician," says Rosamond Casey, president of McGuffey.
At his April press conference, Schilling claimed the City "allocated" $400,000 to McGuffey; he questioned whether it wasn’t a waste of money, a remark that prompted former Mayor Virginia Daugherty to write to C-VILLE in dismay. "That figure is the projected rental value of the building" if it went into private hands, she wrote. "How can he be so confused?"
Casey invited Schilling to a meeting to correct the erroneous figure, which she says doesn’t take into account the hundreds of thousands of dollars in capital improvements to the former school that the City would have to undertake before even contemplating turning it over to developers.
"I’ll never forget the furnace blast of anger that opened our conversation," says Casey. She says Schilling had her and McGuffey artist Robert Bricker "pinned against our chairs for about 10 minutes while he used McGuffey as the whipping boy to make the point that Council was in need of an overhaul.
"I felt he was dangling McGuffey as a luxury that doesn’t benefit the common man," Casey says.
Once she and Bricker took Schilling on a tour of the building’s many studios, however, Casey says the meeting took on a different tone. "It was very friendly. He said he likes McGuffey and didn’t want anything to happen to it."
Casey says she and Schilling made progress, and Schilling now says he wasn’t criticizing McGuffey per se, but rather the way Council fails to scrutinize its spending. But Casey is still uncertain about Schilling’s true opinion.
"He appears to be a man of the people, but there’s a feeling that he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing," she says. "He cultivated this friendly, ‘I’m-on-your-side’ attitude, but with an agenda underneath that nobody is going to get at. He’s unshakable on certain points.
"Any good conservative would be, right?"
Schilling’s unwillingness to compromise is precisely what appeals to Republicans.
"That’s a quality I happen to like," says Kevin Cox, an active Republican who compares the all-Democrat City Councils of the 1990s to "a homeowners association in some planned community.
"I like to see somebody who’s committed to his beliefs and ethics," says Cox. "Screw consensus. Sometimes that just means you get something that nobody likes."
Back to basics
"My election was a backlash against the perception of insiders running City Hall," says Schilling. "I see myself as a watchdog. It’s the job I was elected to do."
In his first year, this determined alienation has cost Schilling the chance to make his mark on big issues, such as housing. But his Republican supporters seem content to let the Democrats continue to shape long-term policy, as long as Schilling works as a thorn in the donkey’s side.
Hovey Dabney, the former chairman of Jefferson National Bank who donated $500 to Schilling’s campaign, can’t name an issue offhand to which Schilling positively contributed. "I could probably think of one if I tried," he says.
"I’m really a member of the Mugwump Party," he says. "Their slogan is ‘Throw the bums out.’ I voted for Schilling because he provides a different view. He’s not one of the usuals. I think he’s done a great job representing my interests."
And even if, when Schilling invokes "the working people" or "the neighborhoods" whose voices he claims to hear, the Democrats struggle to keep their eyes from rolling back, they would be wise to look past his rhetorical cheesiness. For although he doesn’t say it directly, Schilling is addressing the people who feel like outsiders: those who don’t agree with City Council’s intellectual bent; the developers who have their projects rejected by the Board of Architecture Review; the people who speak at public hearings and only receive a polite smile from the Mayor and a reminder that their three minutes have passed.
When the Democrats say Schilling doesn’t do the work, they do not mean he is lazy. The hours that he might spend on commissions or kibitzing with fellow Councilors he says he spends instead talking with citizens, gleaning their views on particular issues. And he reads City documents closely—his 2"-thick binder on the new zoning policy is blooming with yellow Post-it notes that highlight important paragraphs.
"I have my own style," Schilling says, shrugging off his colleagues’ criticism.
And the style suits his anti-activism—that is, his narrow view of the role of government.
Schilling says education and public safety are the primary obligations of government. "Beyond that, we need to question and justify everything we spend money on. I have more faith in people doing things than in government doing things."
Anyone who has watched in frustration while Council allocates $40,000 here and another $70,000 there to fund exploratory committees or design studies that seem to yield no discernible results after years in the City incubator has to give at least a passing nod to Schilling’s point. But many a Councilor who has first taken to City Hall with a fixed view of how the system ought to work has eventually had to open his mind to another, perhaps more entrenched and definitely more collaborative way of working. Schilling gives no indication that a broader perspective is in his future.
"There are some things about this city that need fixing," he says. "And I’m not here to be a rah-rah champion for the status quo."
The temperance society
Whether Schilling is the best politician in Charlottesville, he’s certainly been loyal to the people who voted for him, and to the party whose ideology he espouses. And he has been effective at building an easy-to-understand public image, and communicating it to his supporters through the media.
In the past year, Schilling has done what he was elected to do—irritate the Democrats. The conflicts over his political method aren’t likely to ease before next year’s Council elections. Nor is it likely that Schilling will begin contributing more ideas on Council, committed as he is to casting himself as "the other." Partisan differences will probably grow more heated as the May election for three open seats draws closer.
In that election, the seats currently occupied by Meredith Richards, Maurice Cox and Kevin Lynch will be up for grabs. Neither party has yet put forward candidates to run for them. But both parties surely have taken home lessons from the 2002 election, when, cocky and under-organized, the Democrats miscalculated how many people would vote against them by voting for Schilling.
"Schilling’s election was a wake-up call," says Lynch. "Hopefully that underestimation won’t be repeated. There’s certain usefulness in that role as official complainer. It makes everyone do their homework. But my challenge to voters is that we can’t afford to have another Republican on City Council."
From the look of it now, the chances are middling at best that Republicans will be able to step forward to lead the City. Indeed, there are only "about 10" active Republicans, says John Pfaltz, who ran for Council under the GOP banner in 2000. And none of them have articulated a clear vision for the City, other than to say they want more money for police and schools and less money for everything else. Even Schilling, with the benefit of a full year in government to learn the ropes, says he has no specific ideas what he would cut from the budget.
By contrast, the Democrats have a strong machine and a wide—critics might say too wide—range of expertise. Architects, engineers, builders, environmentalists, lawyers—the Democrats offer all this and more.
"The Democrats have a lot of depth in a lot of areas," says Pfaltz. "It’s easy for them to specialize."
Complain as some might about Democrats, in tones that echo Rush Limbaugh-style anti-intellectualism, voters have repeatedly chosen these experts to lead the City. Maybe in Schilling voters found just the right dose of conservative caution to temper—but not destroy—liberal ambition.
Charlottesville needs an activist government to protect the public sphere from an unchecked pro-business agenda. Under a hypothetical Republican rule where art, architecture, and urban planning are suspect, there would be little to distinguish Charlottesville from Lynchburg or Danville.
Suppose, for instance, that a Republican majority voted to disband the Board of Architectural Review, much maligned by conservatives. Free from government control, developers could turn Downtown into a stucco-and-neon strip mall. [Don’t think some haven’t tried. See, for instance, C-VILLE’s June 17 cover story on the saga of D&R Development, which was a $500 contributor to Schilling’s campaign.]
And consider this—both Schilling and Republican Chairman Bob Hodus say they wouldn’t have spent the $6.5 million Federal grant the previous all-Democrat Council secured to build a bus transfer center and plaza on the Mall’s east end.
"I don’t think that’s an appropriate project," says Schilling. "I would have given it to some other community that could use it properly." Hodus says he would erect a bus shelter instead of a commerce-generating hub.
Fortunately, absent conservative input, Charlottesville is in line to get a cool new building and a swanky new amphitheater to further invigorate Downtown. If the Republicans had been in charge, we’d be awaiting the unveiling of a Plexiglas shelter surrounding a metal bench. Sure, it might be cheaper, but in politics—as in many other areas—sometimes cheap comes at a high price.