Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 2, 1993 TAG: 9305020048
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Steve Agee won't win any Oscars. A flair for the dramatic? Not his style, though at least he comes by it honestly. He's a Republican knockoff of his first cousin, former Democratic Gov. Gerald Baliles: studious, methodical, low-key.
Perfectly fine for a tax lawyer, but not the sort of fellow given to the incendiary rhetoric that arouses the party activists who decide conventions to foot-stomping frenzy.
For a long time, that was the rap against him.
Too laid-back. Especially when his rival, Henrico County prosecutor Jim Gilmore, is the epitome of a red-meat conservative, intense and aggressive, talking tough about how he's been "fighting on the front lines" of law-and-order. Instead, Agee's out there lecturing that the attorney general is really the lawyer for a zillion state agencies. Yawn.
Too invisible. Gilmore busted out of the gates so early he lined up commitments from many Republican leaders in 1992 simply because he was the first one to ask for their support. Agee? Nice guy, but never met him. State legislator, right? From out west somewhere?
But politics is a funny business, and the attributes once used against Agee now seem to be the ones that weigh most heavily in his favor.
With a month to go before 14,000 Republicans try to squeeze their way into the Richmond Coliseum on June 4-5 to nominate their statewide ticket, the momentum appears to be swinging Agee's way.
"I think Jim Gilmore has the lead, but I don't think it's significant," concedes Jim Ferreira, an Abingdon GOP leader and Gilmore supporter. "I think Steve has made a real push in the last few weeks."
"For months, it looked like it was a done deal for Gilmore," agrees Anne Kincaid of Richmond, the head of an influential anti-abortion group, "because he'd been working on this thing for years and Steve wasn't going to have a chance. That's really changed now. The tide is turning."
Gilmore partisans write this off as the inevitable consequence of Agee making up for a slow start by quickly pocketing support he should already have had. But Agee backers see something larger at work - and Virginia's two best-known political analysts, often privy to what party leaders are thinking, are inclined to agree.
Specifically, many Republicans are nervously pondering the prospect of a ticket headed by two hard-core conservatives favored by the religious right - George Allen for governor and Mike Farris, an obscure lawyer and home-schools advocate, for lieutenant governor. Against that backdrop, analysts say, Agee is rapidly surfacing as a potential ballast to keep the ticket from listing too far to the right, and striking too sharp a tone.
It's not so much a matter of idealogy, as it is one of image - the slash-and-burn Gilmore and the warm-and-fuzzy Agee may not be that far apart on most issues. But stylistically, Agee with his McLuhanesque cool simply seems more moderate than the hot-button Gilmore, and in politics, perception is everything.
"The Republicans are most vulnerable, as they have been in the last three elections, as being perceived as too far to the right, and Agee, I think, provides some protection for the Republicans on that issue," says Emory & Henry political analyst Tom Morris.
University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato, as usual, puts things more bluntly: "There's only one reason why Agee is still in this race and that is a very significant number of Republicans are desperate for victory. After 12 years in the desert and staring 16 years in the face, they know they need to win the governorship and they see Agee as a candidate who could moderate Allen and surprise the editorialists and surprise the pundits and cause people to sit up and take notice."
Gun bill put Agee in the cross hairs
The basic outline of the race goes like this: Gilmore talks almost exclusively about getting tough with criminals, Agee tries to point out that the attorney general is prohibited from prosecuting cases in most circumstances, and instead stresses the attorney general's other duties.
Agee is closer to the truth, but Gilmore's law-and-order pitch is probably closer to the hearts of Republican activists. "I know there's a little mini-debate over what the attorney general's job is," Ferreira says. "Most of us want a cop."
If that were the only factor, Gilmore might have locked up the nomination without a struggle.
But then a strange thing happened.
The General Assembly was convulsed by the titanic struggle between the National Rifle Association and Gov. Douglas Wilder over the one-gun-a-month bill aimed at breaking Virginia's reputation as a gunrunning state. And on the biggest law-and-order issue of the year, Agee turned out to be the most visible statewide candidate of all.
In fact, Agee found himself at the center of the action, as floor leader of the GOP-sponsored compromise that eventually was embraced, and passed, by an odd-bedfellows coalition of urban Democrats and suburban Republicans.
Agee's high-profile role put himself squarely in the cross hairs of the National Rifle Association - whose influence may be waning at the state Capitol but which can still flex considerable muscle in the more conservative confines of a Republican convention.
"A risky but gutsy move," the Richmond Times-Dispatch called it. "A very courageous vote," echoes former Republican federal prosecutor Richard Cullen, who teamed up with Wilder to lead the bipartisan attack on gunrunning.
Usually, that's a nice way to say a politician just flushed away his career. But Agee is finding just the opposite. Going eyeball-to-eyeball with the NRA did not spell the end of his candidacy, but merely the beginning.
"For two years, there wasn't anybody running against Gilmore and he was getting people simply because there wasn't anybody running against him," says Al Rider, an investment manager and Republican activist from Goochland County who helped organize a group of prominent business leaders to push the gun bill.
Suddenly, the gun bill blasted Agee's name into the state's headlines.
"Agee needed something to propel him, to get people talking about him," says one Richmond Republican involved in the debate over the gun bill. Agee's leadership role on the gun bill got people talking about him, all right. Even more, it gave Agee something to talk about - it presented him with the opening to go on the offensive and start hammering Gilmore for "ducking" the issue.
The evidence? When the Virginia Association of Commonwealth's Attorneys voted to endorse the gun bill, Gilmore was the only member who abstained. Agee claims Gilmore told the group behind closed doors that the issue was "too politically sensitive" for him to take a position on; Gilmore says he doesn't remember saying that, but insists he wanted to delay action simply because there was confusion that day over where his party's candidates for governor stood on the bill. That's no excuse, Agee now tells fellow Republicans whenever he gets a chance: "You can't run for attorney general and hide from legislation to fight crime."
This sight of Republicans voting for - and then bragging about - what the NRA called gun control may be disorienting to some Virginians. But that just goes to show how much the Old Dominion is changing.
The vote on the gun bill broke not so much along ideological lines as cultural ones. "You have to understand we're in the suburbs and Norfolk is just a blink of the eye away from us," explains Shirley Forbes, an Agee supporter from Chesapeake. "There's a lot of violence there and people here are real concerned."
Moreover, it's the suburbs that now control the outcome of Virginia elections. "If Republicans want to win statewide, they have got to recapture the suburbs, and the polling we did was just overwhelming that 85 to 90 percent of the suburbs are in favor of handgun control," Rider says.
"If Jim Gilmore gets the nomination, the Democrats will go after him and say he stuck his head on the sand on the most important crime package in the General Assembly for some time."
Gilmore contends there are better ways to fight crime than limiting gun purchases, and besides, he's the only one who's got experience as a prosecutor - and therefore better credibility on the crime issue.
In any event, it's unclear how many convention delegates, if any, Agee picked up by his stand on the gun bill. By most accounts it's a wash, with Agee incurring the wrath of some rural Republicans who don't brook any restrictions on gun purchases, while winning praises from some suburbanites fearful of urban violence, ideological purity be damned.
But the more important thing is the gun bill showed the low-profile Agee hanging tough in a firefight. "I didn't know Agee well, but he showed me a real fortitude," says Rider. Why does that matter? Because at heart, this contest isn't so much about substance as it is about style.
`A note of desperation'
Style isn't an idle concern, especially when Republicans contemplate the matchup with the Democratic candidate for attorney general. Bill Dolan, an Arlington lawyer seeking his first elected post, is the very model of a suburban Democrat - smooth, soft-spoken, moderate in tone if not in politics. In short, a lot like Agee.
Gilmore's supporters say that's why their man would be the better candidate, because he'd draw a stark contrast while Agee would tend to get overlooked in a crowd. "I think people are looking for a strong, aggressive individual," contends Gilmore's campaign manager, Bryan Slater.
But Agee backers warn that Gilmore might be too strong, too aggressive. "Steve's manner is more inclusive," says Del. Frank Hargrove of Hanover County. "He's gentle but persuasive. His opponent is more strident; he's overly intense. It's going to be much more difficult to get Jim Gilmore elected than to get Steve Agee elected."
In recent weeks, that argument has started winning over some prominent conservatives to Agee's side. In particular, the endorsement by Kincaid, the state's top anti-abortion lobbyist, turned heads. "Steve is going to do better in debates and in being a messenger," she says.
Ultimately, though, the Republicans' choice for attorney general will depend on the cross-currents blowing in the races for governor and lieutenant governor - and that's where style may become the deciding factor.
"You've got an awful lot of Republicans, in their minds, trying to put together a ticket that actually has a chance; and there's a note of desperation sinking in," Sabato says.
Allen has a sharp tongue. That may delight Republican partisans, but Virginia history suggests such scorched-earth rhetoric can scare moderate voters, Sabato and Morris warn.
If Allen is the nominee, they say, Republicans need to construct a ticket that softens his image. But Farris - who once called the public school system "a godless monstrosity" - won't do it. "Farris would cause Allen great difficulty," Sabato says. But there may be nothing that can be done to forestall a Farris nomination.
So that's turning Republican attention to the attorney general's race. "It's not insignificant who's on the ticket with you," Morris says. "Mary Sue Terry will have a strong ticket. The last thing the Republican gubernatorial candidate needs is the perception he's running with a weak ticket."
How Republicans choose to define weak and strong could determine whether Agee becomes the first Roanoke Valley candidate on a statewide ticket since 1970, or spends the fall practicing law.
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POLITICS
by CNB