Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 10, 1994 TAG: 9411100100
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER NOTE: below
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Oliver North's candidacy foundered on a cultural divide running through Virginia politics.
It's much the same electoral fault line that tripped up Republican lieutenant governor hopeful Mike Farris a year ago and frustrated Marshall Coleman in his GOP gubernatorial quest in 1989 - but also launched Virginia into the lottery business and the horse-racing field:
Virginia's suburbs can outvote the countryside - and suburbanites, however much they wanted to send a message to President Clinton, apparently just couldn't stomach North's high-octane rhetoric.
"It's a cultural thing," says Mark Rozell, political analyst at Mary Washington College. "North's virulent, anti-establishment message did not appeal to those people. It appeals primarily to disaffected voters, who are in the minority. Suburbanites are less attuned to a strong populist message like that."
If anything, they may be repelled by it. How else can one explain Tuesday's returns, in which Democrat Charles Robb won many affluent precincts that normally vote Republican - while North cut into many blue-collar neighborhoods that traditionally go Democratic?
It's a topsy-turvy pattern Virginians have seen before - and could see more often, as the state's politics undergo what could be an epochal realignment, especially in rural areas.
The rural vote, once reliably Democratic, has gone solidily Republican in the past four state elections - the 1989 governor's race, the 1991 General Assembly races, the 1993 governor's race and, now, the 1994 Senate race.
"Last year, I called it the rural revolt," University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato says. "This year it's the rural hum-drum. It's now expected."
The only rural localities on which Democrats still can rely are those in the coalfields of far Southwest Virginia, where labor unions are strong, and some Southside counties that are home to significant numbers of black voters.
To overcome that, Democrats have been forced to run up big margins in the suburbs, especially in Northern Virginia.
Suburban voters tend to be Republican-leaning, yet Democrats have been able to pull off that trick whenever they've been presented with a GOP candidate they can characterize as extreme.
In 1989, Democrat Douglas Wilder used abortion as the issue to push Coleman to the far right. In 1993, Democratic Lt. Gov. Don Beyer exploited GOP challenger Farris' background as a home-school advocate. This year, it may not have been ideology that did in North so much as the tone of his campaign - not to mention his Iran-Contra baggage.
"There's not too much difference between the way Ollie North would have voted in the Senate and the way John Warner votes in the Senate," says Jim Ferreira of Abingdon, the western vice chairman of the state Republican Party. But North was "demonized," he says, by the Democrats and by the news media, and that's what caused him to lose among image-conscious, affluent voters.
Whatever the cause, the results can be seen on a statewide scale. For instance, Robb didn't run especially strong in Fairfax County (51 percent), but North's showing there was noticeably weak (36 percent), giving Robb the margin he needed out of Northern Virginia.
Elsewhere, Robb carried some suburban localities Democrats normally would lose, such as Chesapeake. And he came remarkably close to beating North in other populous suburbs - Virginia Beach, Prince William County, Roanoke County, even Henrico County.
Those same trends could be seen on the precinct level in Roanoke, too. Robb carried Raleigh Court, a middle-class neighborhood whose five precincts are considered key swing precincts. But he also won handily in two of the city's most Republican precincts, Fishburn Park and Lee-Hi. And he came within three votes of carrying South Roanoke No. 2, and within 13 votes of winning South Roanoke No. 1.
Yet Robb didn't fare nearly as well as he should have in the blue-collar neighborhoods of Southeast and Northeast. North carried the Tinker precinct, and came within 11 votes of winning in Jefferson-Riverdale.
Rozell isn't surprised. "Much of North's appeal was working class. He had a strong, anti-establishment message. That message is class-oriented."
Republican strategists see those blue-collar voters, once called Reagan Democrats, as their constituency of the future.
Ferreira believes the Republican Party, despite North's election loss, has been strengthened permanently by an infusion of new party activists, especially rural and blue-collar voters animated by social issues.
The catch is figuring out how to reconcile their interests with those of the more moderate suburban voters Republicans need to attract to win.
"The country-club crowd, and that's an accurate term for them, feels very uncomfortable with us," Ferreira says.
He says some moderate Republicans, such as U.S. Sen. John Warner, should leave the party if they can't accept this new generation of conservative activists.
Some political analysts, such as Sabato and Rozell, contend that the past few elections serve to define the right-hand boundary of the Virginia electorate. In short, Republicans can win if they nominate mainstream conservatives such as Gov. George Allen and Attorney General Jim Gilmore - but not more hard-edged conservatives such as North and Farris.
Ferreira and other Republicans disagree.
North and Farris didn't lose because of their positions, they say, but because of the way they were portrayed. Ferreira says Republicans simply need to do a better job of packaging their candidates for a suburban electorate.
Meanwhile, the election returns contain danger signs even for the victorious Democrats - mostly in the loss of rural Virginia.
Democrats shouldn't always count on being able to win so big in Northern Virginia, warns former state party Chairman Paul Goldman. "Democrats can't always rely on Oliver North to run against."
Instead, Goldman and others say the party needs to figure out how to become competitive again in rural Virginia.
"We need a strategy," says Susan Swecker, a Richmond lobbyist and former executive director of the state Democratic Party. "We have to appeal to people who feel disenfranchised with government, especially in rural areas. I think this is a wake-up call to address what our message is, what our values are."
In some ways, the estrangement of rural Virginia from the Democratic Party has been a subtext of this year's campaign.
"I think that's the message Virgil Goode was trying to tell the Democrats" during his primary challenge to Robb, says one Republican state senator, Malfourd "Bo" Trumbo of Fincastle. "They have grown dependent on Northern Virginia and they have locked out the folks who have been traditional Virginians."
Part of the problem - or, from the Republicans' point of view, the opportunity - is issues.
"The Democratic Party is perceived nationally as not representing rural issues," says Del. Creigh Deeds, D-Bath County. For instance, gun ownership is a hot-button issue for many rural voters, yet urban Democrats usually push gun control.
What's happened to rural Virginia Democrats closely mirrors what's happened to most Democrats across the South.
"The Republican majority in the South is a reality," Deeds says. "We need to rebuild our Southern base; in Virginia, we need to rebuild our rural base."
by CNB