"Charlottesville Democrats may not have as strong a foothold as they would like on Tuesday’s City Council election.

Independent Vance High, who supports the Democrats for Change platform, said Saturday that Democratic candidate David Brown suggested during a Friday telephone call that High leave the campaign to help the Democrats get elected.

Brown said Saturday that he decided to speak with High after they were on radio station WINA on Thursday. They agreed on many issues, and a caller suggested High could have a Ralph Nader effect on the election. Independent Nader has been called a spoiler who drew votes from presidential candidate Al Gore in 2000, possibly costing him the election.

In the 2002 City Council election, Democrat Alexandria Searls lost by 84 votes to Republican Rob Schilling. Independent Stratton Salidis lost but took 614 votes.

“I think that there are a lot of currents in this race,” Brown, a former chairman of the city Democratic Committee, said Saturday. “I think that Kenneth Jackson being local and having grown up in a lower-[income] African-American community certainly is going to get some votes that would often go predominantly Democratic. And I think at the other end, having Vance High as a … left-leaning independent, he certainly will get some votes that would otherwise go Democratic. There are some concerns.”

High further alleged that Brown offered him a “bribe” during the call, saying that in exchange for abandoning his spot on the ballot, Brown could get High a position on a city environmental advisory committee.

Brown said Saturday that no such offer was made.

“I said that win or lose no matter what the outcome was, I’d love to see him stay involved and I would love to see him more involved in the [Democratic] Party,” Brown said. “I think Vance would be an asset to have involved in the community. … If people had known about him ahead of time he would have been a natural to be on the Streams Committee.” The committee’s work is mostly done, Brown said, so High could not receive an appointment to it.

“Pretty much what I said,” Brown said, “was to suggest to him that if he were to agree that the issues that are important to him are the issues that the Democratic candidates also support, and if he thought that this candidacy might have an outcome on the election, [then by dropping out] he might be able to make sure that those issues are supported in the same way that he would support them.”

High said on the radio show that he would vote for Brown. He retracted that statement Friday and he said he will not leave the campaign.

“I was made a bribe to drop out of the election, from David Brown,” High said. The call, he said, could not be misinterpreted.

“Hell no,” High said. “These guys are just playing me like some kind of loose fish.”

Earlier in the campaign High accused Democratic incumbent Kevin Lynch of lying when Lynch said during a candidate forum that a developer had been fined for cutting down trees. The developer never had been fined, High said. Lynch later said the developer was told to replace the trees he cut." (Elizabeth Nelson, The Daily Progress, May 2, 2004)

Contact Elizabeth Nelson at (434) 978-7245 or enelson@ dailyprogress.com.