ROANOKE TIMES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, April 2, 1990                   TAG: 9004020312
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH                                LENGTH: Short


LAROUCHE FOLLOWER SEEKS PORTSMOUTH CITY COUNCIL SEAT

Richard Z.L. Williams last week announced that he would begin his attack on a long list of America's ills by running for the Portsmouth City Council as a follower of jailed political extremist Lyndon LaRouche.

"We have got to wake people up as to where America is going, because believe me, brother, it's on the bottom," he said. "And I was definitely interested in seeing what I could do to get it squared away."

Williams, 64, became one of nine council candidates in five Hampton Roads cities to join a so-called Common Sense Slate organized by supporters of LaRouche, a four-time presidential hopeful and convicted felon whose apocalyptic views have made him America's best-known fringe candidate.

"I don't agree with everything he says," Williams said of LaRouche, who is serving 15 years on fraud charges. "But I like some of his ideas, and I'm an old, common-sense man, brought up the hard way."

Impending bedlam is a hallmark of LaRouche's philosophy, which paints the world economy as teetering on collapse and drug trafficking as the work of a Zionist conspiracy. He demands a return to "classical education" to counter the effects of the "rock-drug-sex counterculture."

LaRouche, who from his Minnesota jail cell is running for Congress in Northern Virginia's 10th District, argues for continued distrust of the Soviet Union, an ambitious defense buildup and federally backed reindustrialization.

The LaRouche group's nine Hampton Roads candidates - four in Norfolk, two in Virginia Beach, and one each in Chesapeake, Portsmouth and Hampton - are part of a campaign by LaRouche's National Democratic Policy Committee to seek hundreds of local offices throughout the country.



 by CNB