Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 28, 1993 TAG: 9303280273
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: B-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Miles Hoge is so easygoing that he admits some of his friends think he's kind of dumb.
And that's how he outsmarted them.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. The story begins a few weeks ago, with Tommy and Debbie Jordan, a Buchanan couple who are regular organizers for Democratic candidates in the Roanoke Valley.
The Jordans had a problem. They had decided to sit out this year's contest for attorney general. But then an old friend who had worked with them on Gerald Baliles' campaign for governor in 1985 called to ask if they would work for Arlington lawyer Bill Dolan, and they couldn't say no.
At first, the Dolan campaign had intended to go easy in Western Virginia, figuring that Dolan was such a lock for the nomination that he didn't need to to fight Bedford County prosecutor Jim Updike on his home turf. After all, the Updike campaign was virtually invisible elsewhere in the state.
But then Dolan started to get worried that the Updike campaign's talk of a having a "secret army" of supporters operating "under cover of darkness" might not be a bluff, after all. If an Updike surge really materialized, then Dolan needed to protect himself by winning some delegates in Updike's back yard.
But how?
That's when the Jordans were asked to help. Roanoke, Roanoke County and their own Botetourt County seemed a cinch for Updike. So they looked to Salem, an area they thought the Updike campaign might be taking for granted. And then they called Miles Hoge.
They had gotten to know him last fall, when he volunteered on Steve Musselwhite's unsuccessful campaign for Congress, and had been impressed by his friendly manner. Some of his older friends had gone on to win jobs with other campaigns this year, but Hoge had struck out. "I really was running into a wall trying to get a job, mainly because of my age," he says. When his friends did ask him to help, usually they didn't want him to do anything but move furniture into a campaign headquarters. He felt insulted.
So when the Jordans asked if he would be Dolan's main man in Salem, when many of his friends were working for Updike, Hoge couldn't say yes fast enough. He had something to prove.
He also had to do it quietly. Hoge was afraid if he went to party regulars in Salem to try to organize support for Dolan at the March 22 mass meeting, they might tip the Updike campaign and blow his chance for an upset.
Instead, he simply went to other college students from Salem, and talked them into signing up as prospective delegates for Dolan. It wasn't hard. "He told me a little bit and I thought I'd come by and check it out," says Amy Thompson, another Virginia Western student from Salem he recruited.
The result? "In a town where you can't have a fender-bender without having everyone know about it, I managed to get 15 people and not a soul knew it," Hoge says. "I guess I ended up being the true `secret army.' "
And that's not all. Hoge next talked three friends who are students at Hollins College into setting up their own informal phone bank in their dorm rooms to call more friends in Salem to make sure he would have a big crowd on hand to elect his slate of delegates.
Hoge's only mistake was that he didn't realize Salem is entitled to 16 delegates, not 15. No matter. By the March 8 deadline to file prospective delegates, Hoge had beaten the Updike forces; they had only managed to file seven prospective delegates. That meant even if the Updike side turned out a bigger crowd at the mass meeting, the greatest number of delegates it could elect was seven and Dolan would get at least nine by default.
When longtime party leaders saw the slate of prospective delegates filed for Dolan, they couldn't figure out what was going on, or who was behind it. "I didn't know it till [the day before the March 22 mass meeting]," says Cliffodean Hudson. "It was a little shocking."
To some party elders, it was more than that. Hoge says one Democratic chieftain - he won't say who - started calling his delegates to find out who they were and intimidate them into not showing up. Hoge's friends weren't fazed. One guy said he couldn't talk about it, he was too busy playing Nintendo, and hung up.
Still, the anonymous phone calls claimed one victim. Unable to reach one of Hoge's delegates, the party elder called the young woman's parents, who turned out to be Republicans. They grounded her, Hoge says.
In the end, Hoge never got a chance to pull off his takeover of Salem's Democratic Party. Dolan won enough delegates in the first round of mass meetings on March 20 that it didn't matter what happened in Salem on March 22. In a gesture of good will, the Dolan campaign offered the Updike campaign a deal in Salem - a "unity" slate of 11 Dolan supporters and five Updike backers.
The Updike campaign agreed.
Hoge didn't take any chances, though. Fearful that Updike supporters might renege on the deal and try to vote themselves more delegates, he rounded up some friends who weren't registered voters to be at the meeting. They couldn't participate. But the other side wouldn't know that, Hoge says with a grin. "If they wanted to try a power play, it would look like I had packed the room."
He did, they didn't, and the unity slate passed by acclamation - even though some Dolan supporters whispered to Hoge that he ought to break the deal and take all the delegates while he had the chance.
"We could have kicked their butt, but I gave my word," Hoge says.
In the greater scheme of things, what happened in Salem didn't amount to much. But the point is, it could have. If the statewide race had been close, Hoge's "secret army" in Salem could have tipped the balance.
That's why the next time there's a campaign in Salem, you can bet the candidate himself will be calling Miles Hoge for help.
by CNB