Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 20, 1992 TAG: 9203200339
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
One party worker said the event may be the best-attended meeting in Southwest Virginia in recent memory.
The meeting will get under way at 10 a.m. at Blacksburg Middle School.
What's drawing the interest is a hotly contested race for the Republican nomination to challenge incumbent Democratic Rep. Rick Boucher of Abingdon this fall.
George Bell, a business consultant from Blacksburg; Gary Weddle, a Radford businessman; and Lew Sheckler, a Radford University music professor, have entered the fight for the nomination.
Two hundred seventy people who want to be delegates to the 9th District GOP convention in Wytheville on May 23 pre-filed for the mass meeting.
Montgomery County will have 42 delegate votes for the district convention, but party rules say those votes can be divided into fifths. That means the mass meeting can pick, at the most, 210 of the 270 who pre-filed to send to Wytheville.
That promises a real contest Saturday.
A multipage ballot will be distributed at the meeting. Delegates will be listed by slate according to the candidate they say they support or if they are uncommitted. Four hundred sets of ballots have been printed in anticipation of a large crowd.
None of the announced congressional candidates has a majority of those who pre-filed to become delegates, according to 9th District Chairman Ward Teel of Christiansburg. Teel, himself, pre-filed as an uncommitted delegate and will be seeking re-election as district chairman in Wytheville.
Once delegates are elected Saturday they are not bound to support the candidate for whom they pre-filed and are free to vote for another candidate at Wytheville.
County Republicans also will pick a new county chairman to replace Bell and pick delegates to the state convention in Salem on May 29-30.
Oliver Strawn of Blacksburg has announced as a candidate for the county chairmanship.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB