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

DATE: SATURDAY, October 16, 1993                   TAG: 9310160253
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C4   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: DALE EISMAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium

TERRY AD USES FAKE PROP

"This is a list of all the promises made by my opponent," Mary Sue Terry tells Virginians as she fans a sheaf of computer printouts at the beginning of one of her latest television commercials.

No, it isn't.

It's a prop, Terry aides acknowledged this week. "It's illustrative," offered Jay Marlin, campaign spokesman.

But Marlin insisted that Terry's visual aid is based on fact: Republican nominee George Allen has made more than $1 billion worth of promises, just as Terry asserts in the ad, he said.

While Allen aides accuse Terry of making her own set of big-spending commitments, her new commercial is a key part of her campaign's growing reliance on a tactic the GOP has employed for generations.

This year, Democrats are running as the party of tightfisted governance, accusing Allen of making promises he can't keep - or at least can't keep without raising taxes.

"Here in Virginia, we can't afford to throw money at every problem . . .," a smiling Terry says in the ad. "As governor, I'll find new, innovative ways to cut waste and do more for less.

"So while I can't out-promise the competition, I sure can outsmart 'em."

The "promises" ad, and another Terry commercial accusing Allen of delivering "zero on parole," are part of an attack on Allen's trustworthiness that has supplanted gun control as Terry's major focus.

With polls showing Allen running even with the once-heavily favored Terry, "the burden is on her to change the dynamics," said Thomas Morris, a political scientist and president of Emory & Henry College. If Terry is to win, an ad "focusing on him and trying to give some specific base to her question about whom you can trust has to take hold," he said.

The job is particularly tough, Morris added, because "George Allen is not in any way threatening, and therefore his personality resists an extremist label."

Keywords:
POLITICS

by CNB