THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, March 25, 1996 TAG: 9603220029
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 55 lines
Republican strategists scouring the states for a vice-presidential running mate for Robert Dole won't be coming to Virginia.
The reasons are both personal and political.
Two years ago, when he was still riding the crest of his come-from-behind election landslide and had not yet had Democratic brakes applied to his tax-cutting, prison-building agenda, Gov. George Allen looked like a long-shot candidate for a Republican national ticket.
Possibly because the Potomac is so close, Virginians often overrate their governors in speculation about national office or appointments. But Allen's folksy and youthful geniality, his wholesale commitment to the Republican Revolution and the reflected glory of his father (former Redskins coaching great George Allen) made national office look like a possibility, if not a probability.
No more.
Allen is still liked by Virginia voters, but his revolution has fallen short. Dole - who in 1976 took the hatchetman role as President Gerald Ford's running mate - might find admirable Allen's prescription for taking on Democrats: ``Knock their soft teeth down their whiney throats.'' But many Virginians were not amused. They objected both to Allen's rhetoric and many of his recommended shifts in policy.
It was Allen's misfortune to introduce the tax-cutting formula of national Republicans in a state that already has one of the lowest tax rates in the country. It's one thing to offer tax relief when the state budget is full of fluff, quite another when popular programs for schoolchildren and the elderly are being eviscerated.
Despite his successful drive to eliminate parole and his lead in a bipartisan effort to reform welfare, Allen could not be paraded before a national audience as a paragon of success in bringing bold, thoughtful and far-reaching change to a state.
Nor (and here's the rub for any Republican governor of Virginia) could he put in the GOP column electoral votes that are not there already. In the past 44 years, the Old Dominion has voted for a Democratic presidential nominee only once, in 1964 when Texan Lyndon Johnson was on the ticket.
That sets Allen apart from Michigan Gov. John Engler, Ohio Gov. George Voinovich and Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, all of whom are being touted as Dole's running mate and any of whom might put critically important swing states in Dole's pocket.
Republicans may have an enviable record of success in putting Virginia in the winning column for presidential elections. But when it comes to elevating one of their own to the ticket, winning spells defeat. by CNB