THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 6, 1996 TAG: 9611060389
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A13 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: Decision 96
SOURCE: BY ROBERT LITTLE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 161 lines
Democrat Mark Warner promised Virginians a farsighted vision and youthful change. He wanted to re-fire the government furnace with the world's new technologies. If voters were happy with the status quo, Warner kept telling them, then they wouldn't want him as their representative in Washington.
That message nearly toppled the status quo Tuesday - Republican Sen. John Warner, a man who has occupied one of Virginia's U.S. Senate seats for 18 years, whom opinion surveys call the state's most popular politician. The man who deserved credit for highways, sewer systems and thousands of defense-industry jobs, even a piece of Oliver North's defeat, was re-elected Tuesday 53 percent to 47 percent with 97 percent of the votes counted.
After several news networks and The Associated Press declared John Warner victorious, the senator delivered a speech and accepted a concession call from his opponent. But his lead reportedly withered to less than 12,000 votes an hour later.
Expecting a comfortable victory, John Warner's aides promised the senator would do interviews when the polls closed at 7 p.m. But he hadn't appeared by 9:30. He wanted ``a firmer feel for the numbers,'' his press secretary said.
Warner surfaced just before 10 p.m., said his opponent had just called to concede and then wished Mark Warner and his family well.
``I learned a lot from this campaign. It was tough - a tough two years,'' John Warner told supporters gathered in Northern Virginia. ``And I hope I emerged from it a much tougher senator. I fear no challenge. I fear no challenge to lead Virginia into the next century.''
Several miles away, as Mark Warner delivered a gracious concession speech, the crowd started to boo. Mark Warner told them to stop and praised his opponent.
``I think I can speak for all of us when I say that . . . we hope that salty old Virginia ham continues to bring home the bacon to the commonwealth,'' he said.
Halfway through his speech, someone shouted ``Mark! You're 50-50!'' and the crowd erupted in applause. Mark Warner calmed them again and said ``I want to finish this, but if I have a chance to use version A, don't worry, I'll be back.''
John Warner won a fourth term in the United States Senate, just as the polls always said he would. The only surprise in Warner's re-election was the narrow margin by which it took place. Turnout in Republican districts was perhaps squelched by Bob Dole's poor odds.
Independent polls in the final weeks predicted John Warner to win by either a comfortable double-digit spread or an all-out landslide. Only Mark Warner's own estimates predicted otherwise, and few thought that more than wishful thinking.
Interviews with voters around the state showed that a Mark Warner defeat would speak little about him. Instead, it showed that his biggest campaign hurdle was perhaps insurmountable - as much as Virginians liked him, he was not John Warner.
``Yes, we need new, fresh ideas. But as long as I'm getting them from John Warner, why should I vote for anyone else?'' said Iris R. Bukowski, a 49-year-old Chesapeake resident voting Tuesday.
Said Shannon Little, voting Tuesday morning in Alexandria: ``There are probably a dozen good reasons to vote for John Warner, and no reasons to vote against him.''
The 69-year-old senator's return to Washington would mean he bested everything even his friends could throw at him. When partisan Republicans branded him a traitor and tried to boot him in a summer primary, Warner survived 2-1. In a way, he campaigned this fall as a nonparty candidate, fetching support from Democrats who liked how he bucked the GOP, and Republicans with nowhere else to turn.
Mark Warner spent more than $10 million of his own fortune trying to win the seat, and at times that seemed to irk the senator more than his opponent's criticism. He called it ``un-Virginian'' that a man would spend so much for a seat in Congress, and Tuesday, after voting in Alexandria, he promised a move on Capitol Hill to keep it from happening again.
But the first priority of the 105th Congress will be the federal budget, Warner said, and a fix for the Medicare system that will be bankrupt in six years. Warner will lead the Seapower subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee. That would give him sway over Navy shipbuilding projects.
Virginians who remember the Oliver North-Chuck Robb fracas two years ago probably didn't recognize what a Senate race in Virginia had become. They voted Tuesday not with their noses held, but with a more comfortable ease, with few reasons to reject one candidate besides simply liking the other more.
Mark Warner stumped in every jurisdiction in the state, preaching his promises of educational innovation and fiscal common sense. Only toward the end did he become openly critical of his opponent.
But with John Warner, even the occasional campaign glitch - an associate using ``the N-word'' in a conversation with an NAACP official, a media consultant faking a photograph for a television advertisement - seemed to bounce off like bullets on a battleship.
His 20-point lead faltered in the end, but so slowly that only the most optimistic of critics thought it mattered. The senator just plowed on throughout the state, showing off a stack of newspaper endorsements like they were photos of the grandkids. MEMO: Staff Writers Dale Eisman, Laura LaFay and Elizabeth Thiel
contributed to this report. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by BETH BERGMAN, The Virginian-Pilot
Sen. John Warner accepts accolades at a victory party in Falls
Church. Challenger Mark Warner had conceded the race and many news
services had declared John Warner the winner when the senator's lead
narrowed to just a few thousand votes by 11 p.m.
Photo by BILL TIERNAN, The Virginian-Pilot
Mark Warner accepts the congratulations of supporters Tuesday night
in a packed ballroom in the Radisson Hotel in Alexandria. Mark
Warner had begun his concession speech as early returns showed John
Warner clearly ahead, then was interrupted by cries that he was
neck-and-neck with his opponent.
Graphic
JOHN WARNER'S PRIORITIES
Defense: Shepherd funding for nuclear sub and surface ship
construction through the budget process; ensure a military that can
fight in two theaters simultaneously.
Military health benefits: Keep veterans hospitals and other
benefit programs adequately financed and available to all who
served.
Balanced budget: Eliminate the annual federal budget deficit and
begin retiring the federal debt by passing a constitutional
amendment requiring a balanced budget, and encouraging the president
to use his new line-item veto power.
Tax relief: Reductions in capital-gains taxes, estate-tax cuts
for family-owned businesses and farms and a $500-per-child tax
credit for families making less than $100,000. Amend the
Constitution to require a two-thirds vote to raise taxes, and to ban
retroactive taxes.
Family savings: Tax-deferred Individual Retirement Accounts for
homemakers and a tax-deferred savings program to pay for education
and medical expenses.
Agriculture: Estate-tax relief for farm families, reforms to the
federal agriculture research program, and changes to the Clean Water
Act to ease federal pressure on farms because of ground water
run-off regulations. Monitor the recent farm bill weaning farmers
from the federal government's supports.
Medicare: Advocate a commission - similar to the one that
addressed the Social Security crisis of 1983 - to develop short-term
recommendations on saving the Medicare program from bankruptcy by
2002.
Campaign-finance reform: Change federal campaign-finance laws,
not limiting personal investment but perhaps promoting fairness by
lifting contribution limits when candidates make large personal
investments. Require full disclosure of all contributions, but keep
spending limits voluntary.
Education: Largely a responsibility of state government, but will
oppose efforts to abolish the Department of Education. Ease federal
mandates - like those that have kept Gov. George F. Allen from
accepting Goals 2000 money - to keep curriculum decisions away from
Capitol Hill.
Constituent service: The core of public service: Help solve
people's problems with Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, veterans
benefits, roads, schools and other concerns.
Graphic
CLOSER THAN BEFORE
John Warner has often dominatted in his bids for re-=election, but
Mark Warner earned more votes than many earlier contenders
For complete information see microfilm
KEYWORDS: U.S. SENATE RACE VIRGINIA RESULTS ELECTION by CNB