THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 27, 1994 TAG: 9411270057
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICH SQUARE LENGTH: Long : 131 lines
As far as Republican Ted Tyler and nearly 50,000 of his unsinkable 1st Congressional District supporters are concerned, Tyler won the U.S. House of Representatives race earlier this month - even though he was a tad short on votes.
And just to make his non-victory more binding, Tyler said last week he was ``keeping our campaign staff in place for the 1996 race.''
``That, for sure, will be our winning year,'' he added.
On Nov. 8 Tyler lost his second 1st District Congressional election in two tries to Rep. Eva M. Clayton, a Warren County Democrat. Clayton in 1992 became the first female and the first African American to be elected to Congress from North Carolina in this century.
``All our friends feel the voting this month was a great moral victory for the GOP and for me in the 1st District,'' Tyler said. ``Not even Ronald Reagan could have done any better.''
Clayton got about 60 percent of the more than 100,000 1st District votes cast, to Tyler's 40 percent in the black-majority voting area.
Tyler spent about $10,000 of his own money on the failed 1st District effort and ``didn't get a dime'' from a Republican Party that was heavily bankrolling more likely candidates in conservative white districts.
``And this year we carried Pitt County and Martin County - the political heart of the district - that should send a message to many Democrats to switch in 1996,'' Tyler said.
Tyler is a gentlemanly, 59-year-old pharmaceuticals salesman who had no trouble getting elected for nine years as the white mayor of Rich Square in heavily black Northampton County. ``We're all friends and neighbors here,'' he said.
When the General Assembly remapped the 1st District to include a majority of black voters, the legislators at the same time removed large blocs of white voters from an earlier 1st District and moved them into a new 3rd District that parallels the new 1st District down through N.C. coastal counties.
Tyler's 1st District election loss on Nov. 8 was more than balanced by a stunning Republican victory in the new 3rd District. Representative-elect Walter B. Jones Jr., a Pitt County Democrat-turned-Republican, defeated four-term Democratic incumbent Rep. H. Martin Lancaster, a Goldsboro lawyer.
Tyler is counting on the shock of Jones' GOP success to further unsettle those 1st District white - and black - voters who used to support Jones' father, the late 12-term Rep. Walter B. Jones Sr., D-Farmville.
Also, Tyler supporters think by 1996 some disenchanted African-Americans will have become interested in other candidates besides Eva Clayton.
The U.S. House of Representatives is a more realistic goal for black politicians than is the North Carolina governorship.
When the new 1st District was created by the 1992 General Assembly, a co-chairman of the legislative redistricting committee was state Rep. Milton F. Fitch Jr., a powerful black Democratic leader from Wilson County. It was no secret among Fitch's friends that he included Wilson in the new Congressional district because he hoped to go to Washington some day.
In the regular 1992 Democratic 1st District primary election, Clayton was one of four African Americans seeking the Congressional nomination. One of the white primary candidates was Walter Jones Jr., then a Democrat seeking to succeed his recently deceased father.
Clayton was the top black vote-getter, but she failed to get the 40-percent of the votes needed to beat the younger Jones for the primary nomination. Subsequently, only a major effort to get 1st District blacks to vote together won a runoff primary for Clayton, and she went on to beat Tyler in the 1992 general election.
Tyler is counting on a forthcoming U.S. Supreme Court appeal decision to help bring him victory in the 1996 Congressional race in the presently black-tilted 1st District.
On Monday, Robinson Everett, a Duke University law professor and Durham attorney, asked the U.S. Supreme Court to re-examine the 1992 General Assembly redistricting of the 1st and 12th Congressional Districts in North Carolina.
U.S. Justice Department voting rights guidelines were used in 1992 by North Carolina legislators to redraw U.S. House voting areas to give the new 1st and 12th Districts a majority of African-American voters.
As expected, both black districts sent African-American candidates to Congress in 1992 and 1994, but Everett and an influential group of Republicans are fighting the Congressional reapportionment on grounds of ``gerrymandering.''
In the 12th District, Everett says the Constitutional rights of white voters have been violated. The 12th District snakes down I-85 between Durham and Charlotte, and in some places it is no wider than the interstate highway.
Should the Supreme Court rule on the gerrymandering charge or otherwise cause the N.C. Congressional voting map to again be redrawn, a new 1st District could emerge that would be more supportive of Tyler's determination to go to Washington in 1996.
``We hope the Supreme Court will act quickly on our appeal,'' said Dorothy Bullock, a law associate of Everett and one of the plaintiffs in the redistricting challenge before the Supreme Court.
Tyler hopes so, too.
``We're going to win in 1996,'' he said, ``And, no, I won't complain about how difficult it is for me in the present 1st District.''
The Clayton-Tyler race this year may have been one of the very few mudless Congressional election contests.
Neither candidate indulged in name-calling, and Tyler politely escorted Mrs. Clayton to her chair when they met on the same debating stage.
``She's a fine lady,'' Tyler said.
Back in 1992, in their first race, Clayton said repeatedly: ``Ted Tyler's a gentleman.'' She said it again this year. MEMO: A new appeal filed Monday seeks again to bring before the U.S.
Supreme Court the controversial 1992 North Carolina General Assembly
remapping that created two black-majority Congressional districts.
The appeal, filed by Duke University Law Professor Robinson O.
Everett of Durham, asks the Supreme Court to once more consider the
``gerrymandering'' that packed enclaves of African-American voters into
the two oddly shaped N.C. election districts.
Both new voting areas elected black U.S. Representatives in 1992 and
again this year.
Everett's appeal asks the high court to set aside a split decision by
a three-member U.S. District Court panel in Raleigh that earlier found
in favor of the General Assembly's black voting areas.
The Supreme Court had previously sent the case back to the U.S. Court
for action.
Since Everett began his litigation, courts in several other Southern
states have ruled against similar legislation that has arbitrarily
created black voter majority districts.
In Monday's appeal, Everett and another group of North Carolina
plaintiffs acted in concert to try to get the Supreme Court to examine
at the highest legal level state election laws based on U.S. Justice
Department voting rights guidelines.
ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Ted Tyler, GOP candidate for U.S. House, lost, but says ``not even
Ronald Reagan could have done better.''
KEYWORDS: REDISTRICTING CONGRESSIONAL RACE RESULT by CNB