The Lynchburg City Council has censured one of its members.
Now what?
We’ll see, although the discussion that preceded Tuesday night’s surprise vote to censure council member Marty Misjuns was not particularly hopeful.
Those who favored the censure — which passed 5-2 — focused on Misjuns’ behavior, while Misjuns and ally Jeff Helgeson focused on his politics. In effect, the two sides were talking past each other.
For those not familiar with this drama — and drama seems the appropriate word — we must go back to a year ago, when a Republican slate of candidates won the three at-large seats on the Lynchburg City Council. With two other Republicans already on the council, that gave Republicans a 5-2 majority, their first in decades (the record-keeping is a little shaky, but regardless, this was a big shakeup).
That new Republican majority fractured on Day 1 — perhaps technically even before Day 1. There are essentially three factions on the Lynchburg council. Maryjane Dolan and Sterling Wilder comprise one — they’re the two remaining Democrats on the council. Stephanie Reed and Chris Faraldi come from what I’d consider the more mainstream part of the Republican Party, while Helgeson and Misjuns come from a harder right faction. Council member Larry Taylor is harder to characterize.
U.S. Rep. Bob Good, R-Campbell County, pushed for longtime council member Helgeson to be named mayor. That did not go over well — see my previous column on that. The result: The two Democrats and the two mainstream Republicans voted 4-3 to make Reed the new mayor and Faraldi the new vice mayor. Those splits have provided plenty of political fireworks, but the real drama has been with Misjuns and how he’s carried out his duties.
Rachel Mahoney, drawing on internal emails between council members, wrote about this in depth earlier this year. A few highlights (or perhaps lowlights): Misjuns has intimated he’d take legal action against the city clerk when he asked to use the council chambers for a news conference and she pointed out that hasn’t been allowed in the past. He’s accused fellow council members of being liars and racists and sexists. He’s also been accused of trying to recruit a Liberty University student to wear a body camera to essentially spy on one of Faraldi’s town hall meetings; his response wasn’t to deny this or to apologize but to level accusations against Faraldi. I suggested in a follow-up column that perhaps Misjuns’ confrontational personality is not well-suited to a legislative body such as a city council, where nothing gets done unless you can assemble a majority.
Misjuns has also inflamed some in Lynchburg through his high-octane comments on his Facebook page, where he has made clear his opposition to transgender rights and issued pronouncements such as this recent one: “For decades, Democrats and leftists have been proclaiming a constitutional separation of ‘church and state,’ that doesn’t exist in the Constitution.” He also called on Lynchburg schools to cancel a performance of the musical “The Prom” because it contained “anti-Christian sentiments.” (The show dealt with a same-sex couple.) He also has what, at the very least, is an interesting background: He was fired from the city’s fire department for posting what some considered a transphobic cartoon; he’s now suing the city. Voters knew that when they elected him, so no one should be surprised by some of the things he’s said since.
Some of the speakers at Tuesday’s council meeting conflated all these things in their objections to Misjuns, which is not helpful to their cause. We ought to be able to draw a line between someone’s beliefs and someone’s actions. One of the problems we have today is that we often condone poor behavior by someone if they agree with us. Misjuns’ politics may be a problem for some — they obviously are — but those people have a clear remedy: He will be up for reelection in 2026. Yes, that’s a long time to wait for those who disagree, but that’s why it’s important to pay attention to who you’re voting for. The focus here should be on Misjuns’ behavior. With that in mind, even those who agree with Misjuns’ politics might want to ask whether his actions — which some of his critics have called “bullying” — are truly effective.
In his defense on Tuesday, Misjuns never spoke about his actions. Instead, he portrayed himself as a martyr for trying to be a “disruptor” of the status quo and a defender of children “from being perverted by a sick agenda.” He went on to say “if that’s resulting in a censure, that was worth it.” Later, he fell back on identity politics and suggested he was being singled out for reasons of class. “Never to my knowledge in the history of Lynchburg City Council have we had a working class Ward 3 former city employee at-large member on city council,” he said. “I’m pretty certain that probably frightened a lot of city staff. I can see why. It’s common sense. You don’t typically deal well with being here on the food chain and have someone go from here to here.” Umm, that’s not why he’s been censured. He’s being censured for, well, just not being very nice to people.
It’s telling that one of those who voted in favor of the censure was Taylor, a fellow Republican who has not aligned with either faction and comes across as the most mild-mannered member of the council. Taylor, who sits next to Misjuns, turned to him and said: “I love you, brother, but your attitude has been out of order.”
All this raises an important question, one that goes far beyond the Lynchburg City Council and its current quarrels: Can someone be a disruptor of the status quo and still be nice? Or must they be a jerk to get anything done?
One Misjuns defender in the public comment period spoke to this: “There are a whole lot of us folks in town who voted for the end of the old status quo,” Peter Cefaratti said. “They turned this council around and are still looking for some of the promised results in the areas of school, crime, finances and sound plans for the future. Councilman Misjuns is the one person on this dais who has worked the hardest to shine light on past waste, secret dealings and efficiencies. Mr. Misjuns is no doubt a gruff, unrelenting champion of the principles of the people who elected him but he’s representing the people that elected him. His style reflects the frustration that we all feel.”
I’d quibble with some of that. Lynchburg voters obviously voted for change when they swept in three Republicans. However, the same voters who elected Misjuns also elected Reed and Taylor, who have quite different personalities. So while Lynchburg voters were clearly saying something at the voting booth — they’d like lower taxes, for instance — they installed council members who have very different approaches to carrying out those policies. For what it’s worth, Misjuns was the weakest of the three candidates who won. Reed led the balloting with 12,287 votes, Taylor came in second with 11,658, while Misjuns polled 10,685 votes, just 528 votes ahead of the top Democrat. That makes me question whether Misjuns’ “confrontational” style — to use the speaker’s words — really reflects what “we all feel.” Or is it actually endangering the Republican agenda, and his own personal agenda, by diverting attention from policy to personality?
My bias here is on the side of civility.
I’d contrast Misjuns with another disruptor of the status quo, who has a very different style: Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Both are obviously Republicans and both are champions of lower taxes. Youngkin has also set about remaking Virginia policy regarding transgender students. However, he’s gone about it with a very different tone. That drives Democrats nuts, because they see Youngkin smiling his way through controversies that don’t seem to stick to him. We have another Roanoke College poll coming out on Thursday, so we’ll see what that says, but Youngkin has consistently been in the 50%-plus range in terms of job approval. Youngkin stands out as a perfect example of how a winning personality can translate into political success. (Granted, it didn’t help him persuade voters to elect a Republican General Assembly, but I’ve made the case before that, given the maps before them, they actually did quite well in November’s elections. I’ll have more to say about that in a future column.) My point is: Youngkin’s easygoing public persona goes a long way with the public, even if critics find some of his policies not easygoing at all.
True, you can argue that this is not a good comparison because Youngkin is an executive with the power of appointment and not a legislator, which is essentially what Misjuns is on the municipal level. However, that actually heightens the need for Misjuns to figure out ways to get along with his colleagues. He’s one vote among seven. Until he can put together a majority of four, he can’t get anything passed. After I wrote my original column suggesting that Misjuns’ personality was getting in the way of his performance, I got a message from a Republican council member in another city in Virginia. He said he’d never met Misjuns but felt that my analysis was on target — that he had originally gone onto his council full of fire and fury, demanding change, and quickly realized that was only alienating his colleagues. By changing his style to a more collegial one, he said, he was now able to work with other council members — even Democrats — to accomplish his goals.
I’ve followed local government, and government in general, for close to half a century now. In that time, I’ve seen lots of controversial officeholders, both left and right, but I’ve never seen someone so thoroughly enrage fellow council members, even those of his own party, the way Misjuns has. And not just council members, either. “When I go to an event,” Wilder said, “it’s almost like I’ve had a death — people come up to me and say, ‘I’m so sorry what’s happened to you, what’s happened to our city.’” Dolan echoed that: “I cannot go anywhere in this community without citizens from all political affiliations cornering me and asking me the same question: ‘Why do you not as a city council do something about the actions of Councilman Misjuns?’”
The answer: There’s little that can be done. The censure does come with a fine of one month’s pay — $833 out of a $10,000 annual salary for council members — but otherwise has no real effect beyond a public reprimand. Several speakers Tuesday called on Misjuns to resign; that’s not going to happen. One speaker, Kathleen Davis, signed up to speak about “waste removal,” which turned out not to be about trash collection but about getting rid of Misjuns. She referenced a petition drive to recall Misjuns; I’ve written before why that’s unlikely to succeed — the threshold for the number of signatures is dauntingly high.
Davis also had another idea on what the city council could do. “Mr. Misjuns’ time in office has been an unmitigated disaster,” she said. “This is no longer about the difference in political beliefs. Are we a community whose elected officials will stand by while all these citizens are silently harassed and intimidated — this will get uglier and uglier — or will we pull the plug tonight? Expel Mr. Misjuns and limit his damage to this community. Our community can’t take another 37 months of this behavior. You know it. I know it. Mr. Misjuns has no business being in this role.” Lynchburg’s charter does allow the council to expel a member “for malfeasance or misfeasance in office.” Is rudeness and general boorish behavior really “malfeasance or misfeasance”? Count me skeptical.
Ultimately Lynchburg voters will get a chance to weigh in on Misjuns. Maybe we’ll find out voters like this kind of thing. Maybe they like the plate-breaking disruptor whether he achieves his goals or not. Maybe they don’t. For now, though, it’s clear that what Misjuns has really disrupted is Lynchburg itself.
