Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 22, 1992 TAG: 9203220187
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
It was a session in which Republicans snubbed their departing county chairman by giving one of his opponents for the 9th District congressional nomination more delegates to the May 23 district convention in Wytheville.
It was one of many ways the hotly contested nature of the GOP congressional campaign was in evidence during the meeting, after which no one candidate could claim a clear victory.
Outgoing Chairman George Bell collected 12.2 delegate-votes and trailed Radford businessman Gary Weddle, who had 13.8. Lew Sheckler, a Radford University music professor, came in a close third with 11. Five votes will go to the convention uncommitted.
Montgomery County, with its 42 votes, will have the largest delegation at the convention, which will pick someone to run this November against Democratic Rep. Rick Boucher of Abingdon.
Bell tried to put the best face on the meeting's outcome. "It was pretty much expected," he said, pointing out that Weddle was reared in the county and Sheckler had been at Radford 27 years.
He had expected that Montgomery's would be the hardest of the 9th District's 19 counties and four cities to carry, Bell said.
The loyalty of delegates was essentially predetermined because of a requirement that they file a declaration before the meeting. The results, however, were not announced until the meeting.
Party rules allow each delegate-vote to be divided into fifths, and 270 people pre-filed for 210 available delegate slots. The mass meeting unanimously picked 69 Weddle delegates, 61 for Bell, and 55 for Sheckler with 25 uncommitted. The 60 people not picked as delegates were chosen to be alternates.
Party rules don't prevent delegates from switching their allegiance once they get to the convention.
Although the prefiling took some of the drama out of the delegate selection, the 200 Republicans attending the meeting and the candidates, themselves, found other ways to spice things up.
Right off, a coalition of Weddle and Sheckler forces rejected the choice for temporary mass meeting chairman who was proposed by Bell's county organization. County party Secretary Wendell Hensley of Blacksburg was turned down in favor of John Beamer of Christiansburg.
"We just wanted to make sure we have a good, fair, equitable mass meeting," Weddle said after watching Beamer's selection with obvious satisfaction.
Weddle and others had criticized Bell for his role in setting up the Montgomery meeting as county chairman. The pre-filing requirement for delegates and a $5 fee for those wanting to be delegates drew criticism.
Bell gave up the chairmanship Saturday. He has said he wanted to leave it earlier but could find no one willing to take the job.
In his opening remarks to the mass meeting, Bell responded to his critics, saying that without the prefiling, selecting the 210 delegates would have taken hours. "Leadership requires tough choices," he said.
This led Weddle, who was standing at the back of the Blacksburg Middle School auditorium, to wonder aloud if Bell had prematurely launched into his campaign speech.
Later in the meeting, Bell supporters distributed a letter to the media, which said that Weddle's father, Lonnie Weddle of Blacksburg, had written a personal check for $585 to cover mass meeting and district convention fees for 59 of Weddle's 87 pre-filed delegates.
Bell acknowledged in an interview that there was nothing in the party's rules that prevented Weddle from paying the fees. But, he said, average voters should understand what Weddle did and make up their own minds about it.
"If Gary Weddle has done anything improper, I think the truth needs to be told," Bell said.
Weddle dismissed Bell's attack as sour grapes. "They're upset they didn't win and they're pulling out all the stops," he said.
Many of the delegates he had asked to come to the mass meeting were upset about the filing fees, and he had offered to pay them, Weddle said. "We were trying to make it as easy as we possibly could for our delegates," he said.
His campaign has reimbursed his father for the check and many of the delegates have since paid him back, Weddle said.
Also Saturday, George Alder of Blacksburg, Sheckler's campaign manager, was picked to replace Bell as county party chairman. Alder beat out Bell's campaign treasurer, Oliver Strawn of Blacksburg, for the job.
Alder's choice led one Bell supporter to quip that there had been something in the meeting for everyone.
Montgomery County's was the third Republican mass meeting to be held in advance of the 9th District convention.
Bell claimed the 11 delegate votes that were picked in the district's Roanoke County precincts on March 12. Scott County's Republicans selected 17 convention delegates Thursday night but none of them are pledged to a particular candidate.
Dickenson County Republicans were scheduled to pick convention delegates Saturday night.
Each of the candidates was saying at this point that he had a good shot at the nomination.
Bell can break even in the coalfields and can carry the Interstate 81 corridor, said Strother Smith of Abingdon, an Anglican priest and Bell's campaign manager.
Bell has been putting together an organization of political veterans, but one highly-touted money raiser that his campaign has claimed says she's never come on board. Betsy Davis, who raised millions for Marshall Coleman's gubernatorial run, said Saturday that while the Richmond firm for which she works has sold Bell some mailing lists, she is not personally working for his campaign.
Weddle has hired William Pascoe III, an Alexandria-based campaign consultant. But, instead of spending money on building an organization as Bell has, Weddle said he's been busying traveling the district lining up potential delegates.
Weddle said he felt his support in the far southwestern portion of the state is much stronger than Bell's.
Sheckler said he felt good about the outcome of the meeting. "Under the circumstances I did very well," he said. "This is the home turf of my two opponents."
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB