Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 1, 1992 TAG: 9203010092
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LEXINGTON LENGTH: Long
Steve Musselwhite strategically stationed himself between the wine table and the oysters Rockefeller. When he thanked one voter for her interest, he pivoted smoothly, like Larry Bird taking an in-bounds pass, and instantly struck up a conversation with another:
"And what issue, or issues, are you interested in?"
Soon he was enmeshed in the details of health care, and their private conversation submerged beneath the murmur of voices and the tinkling of wine glasses. A few feet away, over by the china cabinet, John Fishwick was working his own little knot of listeners. John Edwards stood in the foyer, doing the same.
This is what the race to succeed retiring Rep. Jim Olin looks like: Night after night, from Cave Spring to Cootes Store, from Moneta to McGaheysville, the three Democratic candidates meet and mingle with the hardest core of party activists.
It's the political equivalent of an audition.
On this night, they're at a reception for about 30 Democrats from Lexington, Rockbridge County and Buena Vista at the Washington and Lee University Alumni House, and if the candidates' speeches do anything to sway the crowd, it's not apparent.
"These are activists; most people here have made up their minds," says Alice Hartis of Fancy Hill.
In the two months or so that the campaign's been under way - ever since Olin announced in December he was retiring - the candidates have focused largely on what political consultants refer to as the "first tier" of party activists.
These are the county chairmen and chairwomen, the precinct captains, the people who show up at every party meeting regardless of who's running.
They've signed up with one candidate or another largely for personal, not political, reasons.
"I've watched him ever since the first time he went to a convention," Hartis says as she explains her support for Fishwick. "It was for Jimmy Carter. I remember seeing him at the convention; he was 18 years old, and I always hoped he would go big-time."
Hartis' friend, Mary Graham of Goshen, has gone with Edwards. "He's come to all the Democratic things at Southern Sem," she says, referring to the annual Labor Day picnic in Buena Vista that commences at Southern Seminary. "You remember people."
On this night, the crowd nibbling hors d'oeuvres seems about evenly divided among the three contenders - at least that's Hartis' reading. "If you knew the names, you'd know," she says. "I'm a Fishwick person, he's a Musselwhite person . . . "
So far, the campaign has taken place well out of public view, as the candidates methodically work to sign up these first-tier activists.
That will change soon, as the candidates begin to reach to the second and third tier of people on the fringes of political involvement. There, they will be challenged to energize them to turn out in force when Democrats meet April 11 and 13 in the district's 22 localities, from Roanoke County to Rockingham County, to elect convention delegates pledged to one candidate or another.
Look for six weeks' worth of news conferences and photo opportunities and events designed to attract free publicity.
It's already starting.
Two weeks ago, Fishwick - who has proclaimed himself the champion of working people - called news conferences in Harrisonburg, Lynchburg and Roanoke to trumpet his "Fishwick Economic Plan for America's Future."
Musselwhite - who says he'll be the "education congressman" - followed two days later with a news conference to present his plan for "Revolutionizing America's Education System."
For the most part, these plans are filled with generalities.
All three Democrats are pushing a middle-class tax cut and national health care - this year's model for Democrats across the country. How much, for whom, how to pay for it - those are all details the candidates say they aren't prepared to discuss just yet, except in general terms.
The closest you'll get to specifics is for Fishwick to call for increased food sales to the former Soviet republics - a proposal that ought to play well in the agricultural counties in the Shenandoah Valley.
Or for Musselwhite to say he's against tuition tax credits and vouchers for private schools - a stand likely to play well with teachers, who sometimes can turn out in forceful numbers for mass meetings. It's probably no accident that Musselwhite also used his news conference to pass around a snapshot of himself marching with teachers outside the General Assembly in a recent protest of education budget cuts.
Gradually, some political differences are starting to emerge.
Musselwhite seems to be trying to put together the same coalition of moderates and business leaders that helped win Gerald Baliles the Democratic nomination for governor in 1985.
Edwards and Fishwick seem to be mining more blue-collar territory. Both have pocketed union endorsements.
But none of the candidates fits neatly in a pigeon-hole.
Musselwhite introduced himself as the business candidate, but he also talks about how he grew up in a lower-middle-class family, started work at age 12 for 35 cents an hour in a florist's shop and had to work his way through Marshall University in West Virginia. By contrast, labor favorites Edwards and Fishwick both hail from prominent Roanoke families and went on to become Ivy Leaguers - Edwards at Princeton, Fishwick at Harvard.
Perhaps that's why the three-way scramble hasn't yet cleaved neatly along ideological lines to become a pitched battle for the soul of the party.
"If Steve weren't running, I could join in with either of the other two guys," says Otis Mead, a Lexington real estate agent who says he's backing Musselwhite because "I think Steve represents Middle America in a fashion maybe the other two haven't had an opportunity to."
Over the next six weeks, the three Democrats are likely to try to spotlight their differences, no matter how minute. Their relative sameness could make their elbows even sharper as they jostle for position.
Musselwhite's campaign was quick last week to fire off a news release excoriating Fishwick's economic plan, apparently because Fishwick made no mention of raising the top income-tax rates.
"This is clearly someone who is not prepared to make the wealthy pay their fair share," the release said in Musselwhite's name. "This shows that Fishwick is standing behind the wealthy Americans who have benefited from politics over the last 12 years."
In person, though, Musselwhite's rhetoric was substantially milder, and he stopped well short of calling for an increase in the top rates. "I didn't say I'm supporting that, I'm just saying that's something we need to look at," Musselwhite said in an interview.
In fact, while all three Democrats push middle-class tax cuts and "tax equity," none is willing to call outright for raising taxes on the wealthy. "Certainly it ought to be on the discussion table," Fishwick says. "At this point, I don't think we need to raise anybody's taxes but if we do, it ought to be for the highest 1 percent that got tax breaks in the last decade. At this point, I think we can cut spending."
As for Edwards: "In general terms, I believe in a progressive tax system. How specifically it ought to be structured," he's not ready to talk about in detail.
One clear difference among the three candidates, though, is a capital-gains tax cut. Musselwhite says he's for it, saying a cut will spur growth. Fishwick says he's against it, calling the cut trickle-down Reaganomics. Edwards comes down somewhere in between, saying he'd consider it, but only in the context of overhauling the whole tax system.
Whether those differences are enough to animate people to support one candidate over another is tough to say. It didn't in Lexington.
When the reception was over, the women gathered in the kitchen to wash dishes. The undecided among them talked about who was supporting whom, trying to get some clues from their friends about whom to back.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB