Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 6, 1993 TAG: 9306060168
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROB EURE and WARREN FISKE STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
Allen may have won the three-way race for the top spot, but Christian activists drawn by lieutenant governor nominee Michael Farris controlled the convention. They booed speeches that pleaded for moderation and gave Farris, a national home-school advocate, deafening ovations.
Henrico prosecutor James S. Gilmore, 43, easily won the nomination for attorney general, completing a young, suburban-oriented ticket Democrats immediately branded the most conservative in decades. More than 13,000 delegates jammed the steamy Richmond Coliseum, prompting Republican leaders to claim it was the largest political convention in world history.
Allen, an affable, 41-year-old Charlottesville lawyer and son of the late Washington Redskins coach George Allen, faces a popular, well-financed opponent in Democrat Mary Sue Terry, who took her party's nomination without a divisive nomination contest.
Allen said Saturday he is prepared for the fight. In an acceptance speech, he asked for unity from the camps of his rivals, Earle Williams and Del. Clint Miller, and spelled out a plan to attack Terry.
Allen linked Terry to three "arrogant" Democratic administrations that he said have "given us 12 long years of a reign that has failed the test on education, failed to keep Virginia safe, and failed the hard working taxpaying families" of Virginia.
He took a pledge to veto any new taxes, promised a hard-line anti-crime campaign, and called for welfare and educational reform. As governor, he will put a crime victim on the state Parole Board, Allen said.
"We're going to stop spending Virginia's education dollars on know-it-all, Ph.D. bureaucrats from California who are the grand designers of outcome-based, feel-good, attitudinal education theories," he said in his acceptance speech.
But a number of Republican activists in the hall wondered privately whether Farris, a strong anti-abortion, pro-gun candidate from the Christian conservative movement, will bring the ticket down.
"Are traditionally Republican women going to vote for Mike Farris? No," said Mary Vaughn Gibson, past president of the Virginia Federation of Republican Women. She nominated Farris' opponent, former White House aide Bobbie Kilberg, and said later that while many GOP women will vote for Allen, Terry "will get a lot of women's support throughout Virginia" in November.
Kathryn F. Hauser, a delegate from Fairfax, called Farris "frightening." She added: "If Ross Perot wasn't such a jerk, you'd see a lot of people leaving the GOP for a third party."
Kilberg was booed by the Farris delegates when she said, "Virginians are mainstream voters. They reject extremes of the left and the right."
Surveying the convention floor from a balcony as delegates voted, Don Moseley, a former 5th District GOP chairman, said: "The Nazis are taking over. . . . This is 1939 all over again, and I forgot my jackboots."
Hours later, as the outcome became clear, Ralph Reed, executive director of the Christian Coalition, political arm of Pat Robertson's religious broadcasting empire, smiled at "another convention taken over by the right wing. I wonder when it's going to stop being news."
Anne Kincaid, an anti-abortion activist who coordinated Robertson's 1988 presidential campaign in Virginia, described Farris as a natural heir to Ronald Reagan's winning coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats. She said Farris is misunderstood by the media.
"It's the media's message to paint him so far to the right that he can't win the election," Kincaid said.
Farris, 41, who said he brought more than 4,000 followers of the home-school movement to the convention, said, "We are here to stay." Farris, the author of several books outlining his evangelical beliefs, has written that "public education is not essential to the preservation of a democracy."
Farris labeled his opponent, Lt. Gov. Donald Beyer, "Big Debt Don," a reference to a $1 million campaign debt left from Beyer's 1989 election.
He said the GOP must stand on principles. "Principles which are spoken but not followed are mere platitudes."
And he said argued that Beyer, not he, is an extremist on the abortion issue. "He doesn't believe parents should be notified when their daughters have had abortions. He is the extremist, not the man standing here today."
State Democratic chairman Mark Warner instantly made Farris the focus of his party's counterattack. "What we're seeing here is a Republican Party that appears to be a captive of the radical right," Warner said. He characterized the two-day GOP event as "a fevent appeal to a narrow sector of the electorate."
Allen, who has taken a stand less strongly opposed to abortion, downplayed the differences between him and Farris.
"We do have some diversity of views, but it's still a strong ticket," Allen said. "You never find two people who agree 100 percent. We're going to run as a team. . . . The differences between Mike Farris and George Allen are not important. What's important are the differences between George Allen and Mary Sue Terry."
But political scientists predicted that Farris could be a drag on the ticket if Allen does not distance himself from his running mate.
Political scientist Thomas R. Morris, president of Emory & Henry College, said public perception of Farris in the next few weeks will be critical.
"His presence on the ticket will either pull the ticket down and label the other candidates as extremists, or Don Beyer will become the prohibitive favorite and people will turn their attention away" from Farris, Morris predicted.
Virginia Commonwealth University political scientist Robert Holsworth said Allen must start "running as an independent and telling people where he differs from Mike Farris. This will be a question George Allen will have to answer at every stop."
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB