Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 16, 1993                   TAG: 9305160172
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-6   EDITION: METRO INSIDE VIRGINIA
SOURCE: ROB EURE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IT'S BRUTAL, IT'S BACKBITING, IT'S THE GOP

Mike Farris is a book-burner who wants to ban Cinderella.

Steve Agee is a draft dodger.

Ahh, spring in Richmond. The azaleas are in bloom, the wading pools are out, and the Republicans are eating their young again.

It has become a ritual, the self-mutilation that passes for GOP nomination contests. Party workers spend their time writing the script for Democratic landslides in a state where they should run competitive races.

State Republican Chairman Pat McSweeney calls this year's internal campaign for COMMENTARY nomination to the three top statewide offices "brutal." Later he explained that's a mild term in Virginia Republicanism. This contest is much better than four years ago, when the three gubernatorial hopefuls aired charges in television commercials in a primary, he says.

The name-calling is in full swing now - as the 14,000 delegates to the June convention can attest - with new mailings, whisper campaigns and faxes arriving daily.

Gubernatorial candidate Earle Williams sent an eight-page mailing to every delegate last week, essentially charging that rival Allen, a former congressman, used his federal office to underwrite the early part of his gubernatorial effort. He alleges that Allen billed taxpayers for telephone charges, travel expenses, mail and staff.

The pamphlet, printed with ominous red and white letters on a black background, proclaims: "These are the facts Doug Wilder, Mary Sue Terry and all Virginia Democrats Don't Want You to See Until After June 5th."

An accompanying letter to Republican leaders from Steve Haner, the former Roanoke newspaper reporter who is Williams' research and press guru, says, "Like too many losing candidates in our past, [Allen] is trying to become something he is not. . . . Somebody has cut him into pieces, borrowed parts from elsewhere and sewn together a Frankenstein version of the ideal Republican candidate."

Allen, who left Congress after only 13 months, has dismissed the Williams accusations as desperate. He also responded to the charges with his own mail late last week.

"Frankly, I thought the Republicans had learned from 1985, 1989, and 1992 that you have to work together to win," said Jay Timmons, Allen's campaign spokesman.

No such luck. The Williams campaign doubtless has more accusations ready for the final days of the campaign.

The campaigns for the lower two offices are just as nasty.

In the lieutenant governor's race, Bobbie Kilberg, sensing she has been out-hustled and out-organized by Mike Farris, the most conservative candidate the party could field on the fall ticket, has taken to issuing weekly faxes charging that the home-school advocate is essentially a nut.

True, Farris, a staunch opponent of abortion and the attorney in some controversial education cases, has written essays arguing for the removal of some classics from public schools. But the attacks seem to be winning Kilberg little support within the party.

In the attorney general nomination fight, Henrico County prosecutor Jim Gilmore's supporters have spread the rumor that Del. Steve Agee of Salem was a draft dodger during the Vietnam War.

In fact, as Agee explains in a letter he sent to Republicans last week, at 18 he was a licensed minister in the Church of the Brethren. He registered as a conscientious objector and was ready to serve in a noncombat role if drafted. Agee ultimately chose law over the ministry and has served in the Army Reserves for nearly a decade.

Republicans seem bent on waging a war this year to mimic their last one. In 1989, Marshall Coleman took down front-runner Paul Trible with an attack campaign that capitalized on the perception that Trible's public persona was faked. Coleman won the battle, but left himself defenseless to the charge that he would say or do anything to get elected.

This time, Republican faithful appear to be resisting the negative attacks. Williams' attacks on Allen don't jibe with Allen's genuine, easy-going personality. And they miss his most vulnerable point - which the party's financial backers pegged last winter - that in terms of experience and knowledge of the job, some say, he's not ready to be governor.

The question facing the GOP after the convention, however, is whether they're stuck with a ticket too damaged by the internal fighting to win in November.

Keywords:
POLITICS