Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 4, 1990 TAG: 9003013684
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: Long
It is the type of afternoon when class attendance is typically low and "General Hospital" viewership high. And this is the kind of lecture hall where no one would notice if you didn't show up - it seats nearly 400 students.
For this class, 450 show up. The latecomers who can't find chairs bunch up in the aisles.
And in the professor strides, in to deliver his twice-weekly dose of American Government 101.
He is the man who needs no introduction, the story that needs no headline.
You recognize his newscaster voice. You've seen the well-coiffed head in this photo dozens of times before.
Ten of the country's largest newspapers, all outside Virginia, printed his views in 44 stories last year. This newspaper quoted him in 17 stories in October and November alone.
The day after Doug Wilder was elected governor, this political guru received more than 200 phone calls from reporters, some from as far away as Europe.
When he speaks, you hear sound bites.
"You see him so much, you feel like you should invite him to Christmas dinner," quips one Roanoke news follower. "This man can't possibly be a professor; he spends all his time talking to reporters."
And just when you thought it was safe to open up your paper again . . .
Nothing but politics
"Dead third" is where Larry Sabato puts the role of political analyst on his priority list. Dead third after teaching, after researching and writing books.
It is a theme he repeats again and again:
"I want to get this straight. I'm not the University of Virginia's political analyst; there is no such position. There are a lot of people who think that my job is to sit here and answer the telephone and patiently respond to every citizen and press inquiry, and it's not.
"My students and my books are what matters, and the commentary and media thing I do is all in my spare time. I realize that's not how most people see it because they don't know the other side of me."
What exactly is the other side of Larry Sabato?
To a visiting non-political reporter hoping to glean some personal insight into the man behind the quotes (yes, he did finally agree to be interviewed - twice), the other side of Larry Sabato is . . . frankly, the dull side.
Except for the scholarly aspect of the man, what you see on TV is truly what you get: A single guy whose idea of a fun night at home is going over election returns, county by county, on his calculator. A man who religiously follows the news - all three networks - by taping one channel on his VCR, and flipping back and forth between the other two.
After interviews with Sabato and a dozen phone calls made to some of his close associates, here are the few snippets of extracurricular activity that come to light:
He's been a vegetarian for 26 of his 37 years. And as his political tastes have shifted from left to center over the years, his culinary preferences have upgraded from Twinkies to gourmet.
At the Ivy Inn - a reservations-only Charlottesville restaurant, located in a tres Jeffersonian restored brick house - the maitre d' calls him by first name, and the chef, aware of his stomach's aversion to spicy foods, served up his usual special-order entree: plain angel-hair pasta.
He drives a 1980 Mercedes, which he bought used "for less than you'd pay for a new Toyota" and reconditioned himself. It looks slick, and it's his pride and joy.
And that's it.
That's Larry Sabato, the feature writer's nightmare.
A quip a minute when you're talking politics.
"I don't recall ever having a conversation with him about any subject other than politics - not a detailed subject anyway," says Richmond attorney Frank Atkinson, a former student and a friend of Sabato's for 11 years.
Recalls Bob Blue, special policy assistant to Gov. Wilder and another former student: "We were talking on the phone one night, and all of a sudden he interrupts the conversation and tells me to turn on C-SPAN," the public-affairs cable network.
"He said, `You gotta watch it.' They were having a round-table discussion entitled `What is Journalism?' and it related to the book he's currently working on.
"He lives by C-SPAN," Blue says, laughing, "with some CNN thrown in.
"Politics is his life, and that's it. He loves it."
The quintessential Cavalier
But back to the other other side of Sabato, the quintessential Cavalier: former UVa student council president and Rhodes scholar, author of 14 academic-type books, a professor who became tenured after only two years on the job instead of the usual six, an academic who has turned down teaching offers from Oxford.
Most recently, he was appointed to a six-member commission on campaign finance reform, hand-selected two weeks ago by U.S. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell and Minority Leader Bob Dole.
The commission, meeting daily, is studying proposed measures such as campaign spending limits, political action committee reforms, candidate advertising methods - "all the things that thrill me to no end," Sabato says, almost giddy with excitement. "And that is no joke."
Even if it means putting on hold the writing of his 15th book, "Feeding Frenzy," a look at the media maelstroms that occur when a skeleton in a politician's closet becomes the defining storm of an election - the Gary Hart-Donna Rice affair, for example. He'll forgo once again his summer vacation to work on the book; he's never vacationed before anyway.
And he'll spend this month in a Washington, D.C. hotel, driving his Mercedes back to Charlottesville three days a week to teach classes, advise his undergraduate government majors and supervise the honors program.
What gives?
Not much apparently. A breakneck pace is nothing new to Sabato, who seems to thrive on every classroom lecture, become obsessed with every book and positively drool over every state and national election.
One of his students noted on a written classroom evaluation that "Professor Sabato is enormously enthusiastic, in fact more so than is either warranted or healthy."
Corny jokes in class
In his American government class, the lectern is flanked by televisions, the medium through which he shows off his enormous collection of old campaign commercials. It's also Sabato's major concession to the video generation.
He jokes about teaching students who are so hooked to the tube that, at any given time, he can catch some staring into the blank TV screens instead of looking at him. And he calls John F. Kennedy "the man you students think was the first president."
"I've found that young people, especially when stuffed into a hot auditorium, have a tough time listening to somebody for 50 minutes," he says later. "They're used to programs that have commercial breaks. So I work in a gimmick or an old commercial or maybe a joke - but always something politics-related so that it ties in and we don't waste a minute."
In class, Sabato blends his nerd-like fascination for corny jokes and gimmicks with a sarcastic, almost hip sense of humor that keeps the students alert.
"You don't want to miss any of his jokes so you pay attention," says second-year student Amy Fujii. "There are 450 people in this class, but when he speaks, it's like he's talking to you."
For a correct answer to a question - his teaching style is Socratic give-and-take - students receive stickers that read "Politics is a Good Thing!"
When he asks a question that no one's willing to guess at, he dead-pans: "Gee. You're all doing your reading and I'm delighted."
There are the requisite Dan Quayle jokes (about which the class groans) and a few hits on New Jersey. When a student corrects him on a punch line, he comes back with: "Yes, that's right. Always feel free to correct me and embarrass me in front of the class - just like I will always feel free to give you an F."
Sabato mixes political theory with much of the behind-the-scenes information to which he is privy. Through his position, he is able to deliver guest speakers like Gov. Wilder and Attorney General Mary Sue Terry for his classes.
"Look, there's gotta be some benefit to being me or I'm not gonna do all the interviews," he says. "The truth is, I get a lot of anecdotes, useful stories, material for my books and my classes.
"I get contacts, so I can shift students into internships, and then they can help other students get jobs and so on."
His students call him a minor legend on both the UVa campus and among their former high school government teachers, many of whom refer to Sabato's books in their own lectures. So it's no wonder that government and non-government majors alike are clamoring to register for his classes.
This requires a bit of luck, in the case of his introductory class, where demand was such that the department had to turn 80 students away this semester. It also requires a bit of work, in the case of his Campaigns and Elections seminar, for which all applicants must write an essay explaining why they should be accepted and chronicling their previous required campaigning experience. Fifteen of 70 students are usually accepted.
"This is illegal, I'm sure, but I require my 101 students to register to vote before they can get a grade," Sabato says, marveling at his own tactics. "It's illegal, but I do it anyway because no one has ever stopped me."
Judging by the comments of some of his former students, no one's ever likely to complain.
"It's almost a crusade for Larry," says Mark Bowles, a former research assistant to Sabato and currently a lawyer in the state attorney general's office. "He walks around with his `Politics is a Good Thing!' patches, and he's very inspirational to the students."
A model role model
Sabato shares a special relationship with his former students, many of whom he continues to advise well after they've left UVa and gone into politics themselves. He lets some in on the insider talk he hears from his network of political contacts - and, of course, they can let him in on some of the juicy stuff, too.
"He keeps his ear to the ground by staying in touch with former students, the press and politicians on both sides," says former student Atkinson, who worked on Marshall Coleman's recent gubernatorial campaign. "And he's generally good at getting more information than he gives."
Larry Sabato is the model role model where the media are concerned, says another former student, Paul Garrahan, now special assistant to Virginia's Secretary of Public Safety.
"Politics today is a game of the media; that's the way you reach the most people," Garrahan says. "Especially in Sabato's higher-level classes, like Campaigns and Elections, you see by his example good ways to get into print . . . that the person with the funny, concise turn of phrase is the one who's going to be quoted."
Speaking of which, where does Sabato come up with his lines?
"Sometimes you wonder if he stays home and thinks these things up at night, he comes up with them so quickly," Blue says, spouting some Sabato quips.
For instance, Virginia Military Institute's refusal to admit women prompted Sabato to call the school "the last band of unreconstructed rebels in the South."
And, commenting on the politically promising careers of Gov. Doug Wilder and Sen. Charles Robb, Sabato said, "Virginia, mother of many presidents, may be pregnant again."
"As we say in this business," says former student Greg Trevor, now a political reporter for The Charlotte Observer's Raleigh bureau, "Sabato gives good quote.
"And he's not just talking off the top of his head, which is what a lot of people think because he's so intelligent and well-spoken - and because he speaks so often."
A year-round expert
It is the off-season in Sabato's year, when the elections are over and the analyses completed. Years past, Sabato liked to joke that it was the time when he sank back into obscurity.
But that was before his specialties broadened. Back before Virginia elected its first black governor and VMI began fighting for its admissions policy.
Now he is an omnipresent media source year-round. Even off-season, he gets interview requests from a dozen to 15 reporters each week, most of them from out of state.
And he's finding that being too popular is not all that much fun.
"Some colleagues think you're not serious, they call you a popularizer, especially the ones who don't know you publish a lot," he says. "Of course I realize that at any point I could stop returning phone calls. And in fact, I'm not returning as many as I used to."
"But this is about public education in the broader sense." When he does political analysis for the media, "I feel I'm contributing something."
He does it well, according to the University of Richmond's Tom Morris, because he bridges the gap between the academic community and the practical political arena.
"Most people feel comfortable in either politics or academics, but he feels equally comfortable in both areas," says Morris, also a political science professor.
Reporters consider Morris the No. 2 political analyst in Virginia, behind Sabato - a situation he's not complaining about. "I like to joke that I field the calls when people can't get through to Larry," he says, laughing.
But the relationship between Sabato and the media may well be headed toward rocky times. To research "Feeding Frenzy," he's conducted interviews with more than 150 journalists - from CBS News' Dan Rather, to The Washington Post's Ben Bradlee to National Public Radio's Nina Totenberg. And he promises the book will tell some shocking anecdotes about journalism ethics and the way some reporters shape the news they report.
The book, due out in late 1991, "could well hurt my contacts in the media world," Sabato says. "But that's the wonderful thing about being a tenured academic - you just let the cookie crumble."
How does Sabato himself approach the writing process?
Like he approaches all other things: exhaustingly and obsessively.
"I've read 200 books on the media in the past year. Then I start my interviewing. I take notes on index cards; I have over 10,000.
"I dream about it, wake up in the middle of the night and jot ideas down. I'm especially impossible to be around when I'm writing - no distractions, I don't shave, have trouble sleeping. It's almost an addiction.
"I'm sure that's how I'll die one day," he says, laughing. "My adrenalin will overcome my heart."
And the media, no doubt, will be there to cover his last clever words.
by CNB