Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 7, 1993 TAG: 9303070117
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEDFORD LENGTH: Long
UPDIKE HOPES TO FINISH WITH RUSH
STARTING NEXT WEEKEND, Virginia Democrats will begin to decide the fate of Jim Updike's underdog bid for the attorney general's nomination. Can his union supporters help him pull off an upset?
To use one of those country witticisms that Bedford County prosecutor Jim Updike is so fond of, common sense ought to tell you that his campaign for attorney general is about as hopeless as a possum staring down an 18-wheeler.
After all, on the one side there's Bill Dolan, a well-connected Northern Virginia lawyer who's raised more than $200,000 and has spent five years traveling the state to woo party leaders.
And then there's Updike, who's from the political equivalent of nowhere; who's got precious little cash, even less name recognition outside cameras-in-the-courtroom range of the Roanoke-Lynchburg television market and practically no insight into how to run for statewide office.
Until 60 days ago, Updike's campaign consisted almost entirely of his own enthusiasm. So where is he now, only a week away from the mass meetings to select convention delegates?
Updike's campaign office atop Rapid Printing in downtown Bedford certainly gives the appearance of being a real campaign headquarters. There's now staff on board, answering the phones, stuffing envelopes, feeding press releases into a fax machine. And the candidate is constantly on the road, driving and flying from one end of the state to the other to buttonhole Democratic activists.
Updike even made a small scene at the Democrats' annual Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner in Richmond a few weeks ago, plastering the seats with Updike literature and opening a hospitality suite (complete with ham biscuits baked by his mom) that partied into the wee hours.
Still, where they've seen evidence of an Updike campaign at all, most Democratic leaders around Virginia say Updike's effort is too little, too late. They figure Dolan can't help but lock up a majority when Democrats assemble in local mass meetings across the state on March 13 and 15 to select convention delegates. "My assumption is it will be over then," says Fairfax County Democratic Chairwoman Cathy Hudgins, who's backing Dolan.
The picture most party leaders paint is that Updike is strong in Western Virginia - where his celebrity status pays off and regional loyalties run deep. He has pockets of support around Richmond, where he's spent much of his time. But they see Dolan as the all-but-unanimous choice in Northern Virginia and Tidewater, which between them have almost enough delegates to determine the party's nominee.
"I don't know of anyone actively working for Jim Updike up here," reports Hudgins from Fairfax County. "I don't think he has a presence in Virginia Beach," echoes former state Sen. Sonny Stallings. "I don't know of any hard-core people saying they're for Updike."
Most, Stallings says, don't even know who Updike is. He figures the best Updike can hope for is that a lot of Democrats not yet ready to declare for Dolan simply file as uncommitted delegates.
"What he needs to have is a lieutenant down here banging on doors saying, `Hey, put down uncommitted, give us a chance.' If you can't do that, it's over before he gets there to the convention. He needs some damn organization."
That's where most talk about the Updike campaign either ends - or starts to get interesting.
"I don't mean to be coy," says deputy campaign manager Carol Lee Strickler, and then proceeds to be exactly that. She won't say how many people Updike's campaign has hired, won't say who his local coordinators are around the state, won't drop names of key supporters outside his home base. Usually in politics, that's a sure sign they don't exist.
But this time, Strickler and campaign manager Billy Sublett insist it's all part of their plan. They claim party leaders don't have a clue what's really happening, because Updike is bypassing the party establishment partial to Dolan and amassing a "secret army" - drawing heavily on union members - that will take the mass meetings by surprise.
"This is a guerrilla campaign," Strickler says. "We've been moving under cover of darkness," Sublett says. "If people don't see it, then they're probably not with us."
Ask Democrats about the mass meetings coming up, and they're likely to yawn. There's no contest for either governor or lieutenant governor: Former Attorney General Mary Sue Terry and incumbent Don Beyer are unopposed. So the only thing, aside from yellow-dog Democratic Party loyalty, to draw folks to the caucuses is a low-key race between two relative unknowns for the No. 3 spot on the ballot.
"It's damn boring," Henrico County Democratic Chairman Bernie Henderson says.
That's partly what Updike is counting on.
Updike's strategists are banking that the soft-spoken, cerebral Dolan - he reminds many of former Gov. Gerald Baliles - may have tied up the party leadership but hasn't excited the grass-roots activists, especially in the party's liberal wing.
"He's been out there for so long, you would think he'd have locked it up, and that's what surprised me," says Lynchburg Democratic Chairwoman Mary Margaret Cash, who's working for Updike. "It's a top-down campaign."
In contrast, Updike is mounting a populist pitch. He talks about how down in Bedford County, the country folks grew up as Democrats 'cause they weren't rich enough to be Republicans. He's sending out mailings that rail against "the inside power brokers in Virginia."
Instead of the obligatory coat and tie, Updike's campaign literature pictures him in a denim jacket. And he's trying to stoke what his campaign manager calls "the passion factor" - using the same fiery delivery that has made him regionally famous in the courtroom.
"Everybody who's met him has been impressed with him," Stallings says. "He shows well and he speaks well." Says one Tidewater Democratic leader: "If Jim had an organization, he could have taken this thing away from Dolan. Let's face it; the ticket [with Terry, Beyer and probably Dolan] has a little blandness to it."
That same blandness may also serve to depress the turnout at the mass meetings, and low attendance can magnify the clout of certain well-organized voting blocs - principally organized labor. Updike's father and uncle were longtime members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and Updike has tried to use that connection to plug into the labor movement statewide.
There's some evidence he's succeeded.
Most party leaders say they haven't seen much evidence of an Updike campaign in populous Hampton Roads. Russell Axsom, a shipyard worker from Hampton who's the union's vice president, says they just aren't looking in the right places - such as union halls. In the past few weeks, Axsom says, Updike has quietly rallied enough support to pull even with Dolan in Hampton Roads.
This is not a campaign about issues or ideology. Instead, it comes down to image. "We like his hominess, his background," says Dan Anderson, who heads a Roanoke-based railroad union whose members across the state are organizing on Updike's behalf. "We feel he's more sympathetic to the working class and middle class than Dolan. We don't know Dolan that well."
Updike, thanks to his job as commonwealth's attorney and his friendship with Bedford County Sheriff Carl Wells, also has tried to get help from fellow law enforcement officials around the state. He claims the endorsement of 86 current and former sheriffs, whose nod can often be critical in some rural localities.
One Dolan supporter calls this unusual alliance of generally conservative rural cops and generally liberal union members from the cities "a very muscular coalition" that has caught the Dolan campaign by surprise.
Sublett, the campaign manager, spins this scenario: A last-minute Updike surge and a big chunk of uncommitted delegates keep Dolan from winning the nomination outright in the mass meetings. Democrats, taken aback by Updike's surprise showing, start to reconsider Dolan's electability. And then Updike's oratory stirs an otherwise lethargic convention in Richmond in early May to nominate the theatrical country prosecutor.
It's a strategy that could work, Stallings concedes. "A low turnout in the mass meetings could make the difference; if he could pull from blacks and labor, watch out."
Still, most Democratic leaders don't think it's in the cards, the poker faces at the Updike headquarters notwithstanding. They think Updike's political career could hinge not on how long he can hang in this race, but how soon he gets out.
"What people will get upset about is if there's a clear result out of the mass meetings and he stays in there too long," says Dan Alcorn, chairman of the 11th Congressional District in Northern Virginia.
However, with a respectable second followed by a graceful exit, Henderson says, Updike could put himself in a position to run again in 1997.
Keywords:
POLITICS
Memo: ***CORRECTION***