Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 13, 1993 TAG: 9304130350
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROB EURE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
WILLIAMS MAKING POLITICS HIS BUSINESS
This is the second in a series of stories on the candidates for the Republican nomination for governor. Clinton Miller was profiled last week; a profile of George F. Allen will be published next week.
THOUGH HE LACKS political experience, Earle Williams says his business experience qualifies him to be the state's CEO. So far, he's spent $1.1 million of his own money trying to convince Republicans he's right.
Earle Williams went for a physical about a week before he was to retire last year as president of BDM, the high-tech defense contractor he ran for 20 years in McLean.
The doctor said Williams was in good health and inquired about his retirement plans. "I told him I was running for governor," Williams recalls. "He said `lie back down and let me check your head.' "
Most people plan a life of leisure when they give up work. Williams planned 16-hour days, six This is the second in a series of stories on the candidates for the Republican nomination for governor. Clinton Miller was profiled last week; a profile of George F. Allen will be published next week. days a week as he attempts to come from virtual obscurity to be the Republican gubernatorial candidate this fall.
There are times Williams may wish he'd listened to his doctor. An engineer by training and CEO of the technology services company for 20 years, Williams had only watched politics from the sidelines. This is his first and last campaign, he says - win or lose.
Williams admits to finding some elements of his second vocation perplexing.
He doesn't like to leave an argument without winning it - an impractical luxury in politics. "I have a fundamental inclination to give the right answer, to be right," he says. "I spend too much time trying to convince people who are not on my side."
"I'm not terribly tolerant of people who lie," says the man now operating in a world where shades of truth and hidden meanings are considered high art. "I'm used to an occupation in which there is always a right answer. It's demonstrable. In politics that's often not the case."
But Williams says he loves campaigning one-on-one or with small groups. And he claims with satisfaction that he already has influenced debate in the GOP's three-way contest.
"We are talking about the issues I wanted to talk about from day one. Nobody was talking about attracting business, the cost of higher education or transportation problems. I think we've brought a lot of people into the process."
Williams is passionate about public policy, but remains uncomfortable with personal questions, particularly about his wealth and religious beliefs.
Williams is against regulating abortions in the first trimester, although he supports requiring parental notification when an unmarried minor seeks the procedure. The stand has cost him much of the conservative, anti-abortion vote in the party. He's paid a personal price as well; his daughter Gail is an evangelical Christian and strong anti-abortionist.
"I consider myself a deeply religious man," Williams says. "What bothers me is the lack of acceptance of that by some people."
"Earle has strong convictions and he'll express them openly," says F.N. "Red" Hofer, an executive vice president at BDM who rose through the company with Williams. "He was the one at the company that provided a sense of leadership, who inspired people."
Largely through his own contribution of $1.1 million, Williams' effort is the Cadillac of the Republican campaigns. He hired veteran GOP strategists Ed Debolt in Northern Virginia and Vic Gresham in Richmond. His spokesman and issues researcher is Steve Haner, a longtime party worker noted for his sometimes acid tongue. The campaign offices feature the best in new computer technology.
In December, when former Rep. George F. Allen appeared headed toward clinching the nomination early, Williams stopped that momentum with a high-tech offensive - he went on statewide television with commercials and mailed a 12-minute video to some 40,000 Republican activists. The expensive and high-profile move got him noticed, and Williams now claims he is in a solid second place in the nomination contest.
He bills himself as the nonpolitican in the race, whose experience as head of a successful business has prepared him to be Virginia's CEO.
But Williams also is aggressive in criticizing Allen for votes and positions the front-runner has taken in a decade in politics.
Allen's camp has charged Williams with running a negative race. "It's a recitation of his record," Williams counters, one voters will hear again in the fall from Democratic nominee Mary Sue Terry if Allen is nominated. "I think people understand the difference between that and negative attacks."
Tall and distinguished-looking at 63, Williams' executive stoicism occasionally gives way to the down-home idioms and Southern brashness of his Alabama roots.
Growing up in a rural community, Williams spent his first years in a house without plumbing, a history he recites when his present wealth becomes an issue.
In 1970, when BDM moved to Virginia, Williams was earning $27,000 a year as its chief executive. He borrowed money for a down payment on his home, and again to put his three daughters through school, he says. It wasn't until 1988, when the original partners in BDM decided to sell, that Williams' stock brought him a $15 million fortune.
His father was an educator and moved to Auburn to teach when Williams was still a boy. He attended public schools there and took his degree in engineering in the same school where his father taught.
The Deep South was no breeding ground for Republicans. "Never met a Republican till I was 15," Williams says.
But he leaned toward the GOP early, an inclination solidified when he joined the Army in 1952 and was assigned to the nuclear weapons program in New Mexico.
"I felt Eisenhower was the only chance we had to stand up to the Soviet Union," Williams says of his first presidential ballot.
Williams worked as an engineer for oil companies before finding a job in 1962 with BDM, then a new electronics company in El Paso.
He became general manager of the company six years later and in 1970 moved it to McLean, as BDM established itself as a leader in handling professional services contracts in engineering and design.
The company continued to grow. Williams took BDM public in 1980 and today it handles some 800 government and private contracts annually, with revenues of about $300 million in 1991.
Hofer, his former colleague, said Williams' interest in public policy "was a natural extension of his view of business. He would push for things he saw as important to the company. Good roads, a good education system - those were important to the quality of life and in attracting good people."
Williams began working in the community college system in Texas and that interest continued in Virginia, where Gov. John Dalton appointed him to the state Community College Board in the 1970s.
He also helped establish one of the first day-care centers in Northern Virginia - a facility at Tysons Corner founded for workers in the industries that sprouted in the area.
The most well-worn book in his library is "In Search of Excellence," an early text in the modern quality management movement. "It was the first book that captured something I was trying to do in my business: setting a high standard of attention to detail, not by control but by a set of overarching values," he says.
"I'd like to do that in government. I know it's harder to commit to goals in government, but I believe most people go into government because they truly want to help."
\ EARLE C. WILLIAMS\ \ Party: Republican.\ \ Age: 63.\ \ Born: Linden, Ala., Oct. 15, 1929.\ \ Education: B.S. in engineering, Auburn University.\ \ Profession: Retired president and chief executive officer of BDM, a government and private professional services contractor in McLean. Contracts include engineering and design work on the Strategic Defense Initiative and development of the Patriot Missile.\ \ Public/Political: Virginia Community College Board, 1977-1984; Fairfax County Economic Development Authority, 1976-1978, chairman 1978-1980; chairman Virginia Bush-Quayle campaign, 1992.\ \ Personal: Married to June Anson Williams. Three daughters: Carol, Gayle and Sharon; seven grandchildren.
Keywords:
POLITICS PROFILE