Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, September 20, 1993 TAG: 9309200049
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BONNIE V. WINSTON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
It was the late 1960s. And while the grounds flared with anti-war protests - the ROTC building was firebombed - and Gilmore the course had been set to admit female students, Gilmore's activism was confined to the College Republicans club.
"We were fighting for truth, justice and the American way," recalls M. Boyd Marcus Jr., who first met Gilmore at one of UVa's conservative klatches.
"We were opposed to the welfare state [President] Johnson was building at the time," Marcus said. "We were for less government and greater free enterprise.
"We had a firm idea of what was right - freedom and anti-communism. We had a reason to be [in Vietnam], and we were to be there to win," Marcus said.
Gilmore, then a fourth-year student in foreign affairs and a statewide officer in the College Republicans, sought the group's presidency.
Bucking the leadership of his UVa club, which had pledged support to a candidate from Washington and Lee University, Gilmore lost a close race after fashioning a coalition among schools "on the outs" with the state leadership.
"He got in the race with all the cards stacked against him," recalled his W&L opponent, Bob Weed, a longtime Virginia GOP activist now practicing law in Washington.
"He has a good eye for opportunity. He picked his opportunity."
Now, Weed said, Gilmore has "picked a good time" for another uphill campaign - this one for attorney general of Virginia.
The 43-year-old Richmond native, now commonwealth's attorney in suburban Henrico County, handily defeated Roanoke Del. Steven Agee in what many thought would be a close fight for the GOP nomination.
Friends and detractors alike say Gilmore has lived for this chance, that for many years, his energies and efforts have been directed to becoming attorney general of Virginia.
"I think it has been a long-term ambition - public service," Marcus said. "I don't remember when he first told me he wanted to run for public office. It was like I always knew it."
Gilmore is a "true politician," said one fellow prosecutor who asked not to be named. "He thinks of the outcome based on politics. He has always had an agenda to move from."
Some Henrico-area lawyers have accused Gilmore of grandstanding, grabbing for himself the county's high-profile cases and leaving run-of-the-mill muggings and larcenies for his assistants. Some suggest he holds his job - refusing to resign or take a leave of absence while campaigning - because he expects to take several big cases to trial before Election Day. One of those trials, a particularly brutal rape case, is sure to attract a lot of publicity.
But Democrat W.W. "Billy" Davenport, the commonwealth's attorney in neighboring Chesterfield County, defended Gilmore's practice.
"A commonwealth's attorney shouldn't delegate that," Davenport said. "You have a duty to be present [and to handle] capital murder, high-profile and controversial cases when the social conscience of the community is involved."
In interviews, Gilmore said his social conscience developed early - growing up the only child of working parents. His father was a grocery-store butcher. His mother was a secretary.
Gilmore joined the Army after graduating from UVa, serving in intelligence. After three years, he returned to Charlottesville, where he finished law school in 1977.
Blondish, with sharp, birdlike features, and of average height, Gilmore is described by associates as conscientious, hard-working, honest and forthright. Critics and admirers also call him intense and, often, humorless.
Gilmore stiffens slightly at the description, allowing that, "I don't think life grants me the luxury to relax."
He has gone after his Democratic opponent, Northern Virginia lawyer Bill Dolan, with fervor, charging Dolan with botching the special prosecution of a former Norfolk judge.
When they appear together, Gilmore pulls no punches. At a recent meeting in Hampton, for example, he called the Democrat a "lap dog for the politicians, not a watchdog for the people."
But some Richmond-area lawyers charge that Gilmore has bungled a few cases himself, an assertion Gilmore heatedly denies.
The lawyers point specifically to Gilmore's handling of a gruesome capital murder case in which a 16-year-old Henrico boy was charged with killing three of his neighbors after breaking into their home. He stole several hundred dollars and the family's car.
The case caused an uproar in the community, both because of its vileness and the age of the defendant.
Gilmore initially filed two sets of charges against the youth - capital murder, carrying a death sentence; and first-degree murder, which carries a prison sentence. After Gilmore failed to withdraw the lesser charge once the case reached Circuit Court, the boy's attorney had him plead guilty to the lesser charge and argued that Gilmore could not pursue the capital case.
Gilmore had to endure several days of bad publicity before the judge blocked the defense maneuver. The youth was tried for both capital and first-degree murder, and was convicted. He received nine life sentences.
Craig Cooley, the defense attorney in the case, declined to comment on it.
"Mr. Gilmore remains in office . . . I still have to deal with him," Cooley said. "My clients want me to be aggressive." Commenting "may not be beneficial for my clients in the future."
Several other area lawyers and Henrico police officers also declined to talk publicly about Gilmore.
But Gilmore gets high marks from others, including assistant prosecutor John Alderman, for organizing the Henrico prosecutor's office.
The office, which has 16 attorneys and an annual budget of $1.5 million, has come into the computer age under Gilmore, Alderman said. The assistant also praised Gilmore's establishment of a "team approach" among staff members to help manage the volume of cases in one of the state's busiest courts.
Alderman said the changes have inspired loyalty among the staff, which for years worked under Democrats.
"I thought it was pretty gracious of him not to clean house when he was elected," said Michael Morchower, a prominent Richmond-area defense attorney. "He runs a political office, but he didn't fire everybody and pad it with Republicans."
His office has been the center of the biggest attacks on Gilmore in the current campaign.
Dolan, who has blasted him for listing his county office telephone number on letters seeking campaign contributions, has called on Gilmore to resign. He's also questioned whether Gilmore is using taxpayer-financed resources - the prosecutor's office, telephone, staff, supplies and equipment - to conduct his campaign.
Gilmore scoffs at the suggestion and notes he's not a rich man. He says he has a duty to the people who elected him commonwealth's attorney to continue doing his job.
But one former Gilmore law partner, state Sen. Joseph Benedetti of Richmond, the GOP nominee for attorney general in 1989, thinks Gilmore should quit his job and conduct a full-time campaign.
"To be frank, I don't see how he can be as effective either as a candidate or as commonwealth's attorney by trying to do both," Benedetti said. "But he seems to be doing it . . ."
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