Everything about Victor Ashe totally explained
Victor Henderson Ashe II (born
January 1,
1945) is the current
United States Ambassador to
Poland. From 1988 to 2003, he was mayor of
Knoxville, Tennessee. Ashe is a
Republican.
Early career
Ashe was born in
Knoxville, Tennessee, where he attended
public school. He graduated from
Yale University in
1967 with a BA in history, and in
1974 obtained his law degree from the
University of Tennessee College of Law. During his tenure at Yale Ashe was also a member of the
Skull and Bones Society, alongside his former roommate,
George W. Bush. Before becoming an elected official, Ashe worked as an intern for Congressman
Bill Brock, and as a staff assistant for Senator
Howard Baker.
In 1968 Ashe was elected to the
Tennessee House of Representatives; he was only 23 years old at the time. The minimum age for state legislators was 30, so the Tennessee Supreme Court stripped Ashe of that position. Ashe appointed his mother to replace him in the legislature. Any disqualified person who takes office is guilty of a criminal misdemeanor. In 1975 he filled a State Senate seat held by his unelected mother, Martha Ashe; he was later elected to the position and served for nine years. He ran unsuccessfully for the
U.S. Senate in 1984 against future
Vice-President Al Gore.
From 1967 to 1973, during the
Vietnam War, Ashe was a member of the US Marine Corps Air Reserves. He was also the Executive Director of the Americans Outdoors Commission from 1985 until 1987.
Ashe stressed
diversity within his administration, noting when he left office the growth of minorities and women on commissions and boards during his time as mayor.
"The night it all came down I couldn't stop shivering. It changed the way I viewed a lot of things. For the first time, sitting on Council [withmayor Victor Ashe], I really felt I was in the presence of evil. I'd disagreed with people on many occasions and felt strongly about many things, but I never ever had felt something I could describe as the presence of evil. Until that night. There was just darkness. Hopelessness. But never, until Danny's death and the appointment of someone other than his wife, and knowing the orchestration that took place to make it happen, did I realize that I could never again go back to that body without carrying with me my belief that they were capable of the worst possible actions."
—City Councilwoman Carlene Malone, Metro Pulse, "Malone Alone", December 13, 2001
Malone eventually sued mayor Ashe and city council, for holding secret meetings in violation of Tennessee Open Meetings Act
(External Link
).
Mayor Ashe was sued for political retaliation against firefighters. Ashe was cited for contempt of court, for telling a TV news crew that he won the civil rights lawsuit, which was a misrepresentation of the judge's order.
Felony criminal charges were also filed against Mayor Ashe, for his role in approving car-theft and extortion rackets run by city wrecker contractors
(External Link) (External Link). As a result, Ashe and city council terminated the contracts of five towing contractors, banned them for five years from future contracts, and filed a class action lawsuit against them, in his final week in office.
Parkland and public domain
As mayor, Ashe sometimes acquired land for city redevelopment projects from those unwilling to sell, saying that the needs of the community come before
private property rights. He also noted that private owners of unused or undeveloped land within the city of
Knoxville often chose to turn their land over to shopping centers or apartment complexes, and that these actions often caused the city to grow too quickly for services to keep up. Ashe also favored preserving buildings that had possible historic value, at one point threatening to put historic zoning restrictions on a building its owners wished to demolish. Some of the land acquired by the city during Ashe’s time as mayor was used for public parks, a service which may not have been offered had the land remained in private hands. During Ashe's mayoral tenure, parkland in Knoxville was increased from 700 to and of
greenway was added, some of it acquired by the city from unwilling sellers. At a dedication of a public park acquired in such a way after he'd left the mayor's office, Ashe was candid about such methods, saying "This is how the public acquires land," and "…hard decisions [mustbe made] to move the community forward."
Ashe was a strong supporter of parkland in the city. He initiated a program called "Penny for the Parks" to create a
trust fund that would use a one cent tax and federal matching money to commit $250,000 a year for
city parks,
greenways and
historic preservation. After leaving office, Ashe was awarded a Cornelius Amory Pugsley Medal, which was granted by the American Academy for Park and Recreation Administration in recognition of his work on
greenways and public parks.; during Ashe's tenure as mayor of Knoxville he, acting on the advice of Dr. Marek Pienkowski, helped to establish a
sister-city relationship with the city of
Chełm, Poland, and led two delegations to that city.
Ashe has also noted that Poland has a growing economy that offers many opportunities for US businesses. He is interested in having his own area of Knoxville and East Tennessee take advantage of such opportunities, and in 2005 advised a group of 16 Knoxville-area businesses to put together a trade mission to Poland.
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