Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 31, 1993 TAG: 9310310135
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARGARET EDDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
"It's an advantage to the extent that people are likely to trust you more," the morning's host recalls her saying, "but once you start to fall, it's extremely difficult to break the fall."
Fulfilling her prophecy, the woman who once had a 10-to-1fund-raising advantage and a 29-percentage point lead in the governor's race approaches Tuesday's election battling from behind to best a sour electoral climate and a series of squandered opportunities.
Meanwhile, Republicans - optimistic but skittish after a 12-year exile from the ExecutiveMansion - are marveling at theReaganesque success of George Allen, who has countered potentially lethal links to the National Rifle Association and the religious right with affability and a photogenic family.
While the poll that counts is still two days away, a variety of Democrats and Republicans interviewed last week agreed that the election of Allen, a 41-year-old former congressman and state legislator, looks likely, though not assured.
The Terry victory that for most of the 1990s seemed preordained has become "an extraordinary challenge," said Robert Holsworth, a VCU political scientist.
And in a touch of irony, considering Terry's circumspect view of feminism, her media adviser and others suggested that she must now rely on women to bring her home.
"The open question is how women will break at the end," said Bill Knapp of the Washington firm of Squier, Knapp, Ochs Communications.
With males favoring Allen by a 20-point spread in some polls, Terry must create a similar gap in her favor among women. The good news for Terry is that the largest blocs of undecided voters apparently are among blacks and women - two groups presumably open to her message. If the polls are correct, however, she would need almost all of the "undecideds" to win.
That the campaign has reached this unexpected finale reflects, in the view of Terry's advisers, an unstable political climate - the same disgust with politics-as-usual that propelled Bill Clinton and Ross Perot in 1992.
They believe the volatility is magnified by voter unhappiness with Virginia's leading Democratic politicians, U.S. Sen. Charles Robb and Gov. Douglas Wilder, and by a subtle campaign targeting Terry's status as a single woman.
But to Republicans and Democrats outside Terry's inner circle, her problems also reflect missed opportunities and questionable decisions, coupled with a tireless opponent who capitalized on the Democrats' mistakes and made few of his own.
Those critics argue that Terry paid too little attention to the Democratic base among blacks and labor, wasted her enormous fund-raising advantage in June by not attacking Allen's record and heralding her own, never adequately told the impressive story of her rise from rural obscurity and seldom spoke of the Democratic achievements of the last 12 years.
Perhaps worst of all, Terry's early ads conveyed little warmth; the candidate sometimes was shown frowning in her own commercials.
"At a minimum, this is a campaign that has squandered some advantages in a way that will be remembered for a while," Holsworth said.
Terry and her consultants acknowledge the complaints but concede little ground. What those who do not have access to comprehensive polling data fail to recognize, they say, is that 1993 was destined to be a good year for Republicans in Virginia.
Contrary to the widely held view that she was a shoo-in, Terry "is the only candidate who could even be in the race right now," said Tom King, political consultant to the campaign.
And Knapp, who worked on Clinton's presidential campaign, bristled at criticism that Terry has failed to convey her personal story and record. "With all due respect to conventional wisdom, the dynamics in this state are totally unrelated to whether we ran a `roots' ad," he said. "The reality of the race, recognize it or not, is that there's a tidal wave in this state, just as there was a tidal wave in the country last year."
The cry is for "change . . . discontent with those in power," he said.
Post mortems of the governor's race are likely to focus first on June. Terry's lead in the polls, and more importantly in fund-raising, was enormous then; at the end of the month, she had $2.7 million in the bank, compared to Allen's $288,500.
Republicans expected a double-whammy television attack shortly after their state convention, with Terry blasting Allen's links to the religious right while running flag-waving footage about her family and accomplishments.
Instead, Terry began running ads on issues, principally gun control.
Meanwhile, Allen was boosted by an unheralded $100,000 loan from Richmond financier and GOP benefactor Lawrence Lewis. The money got Allen onto statewide television in June with a message that, in advertising lingo, was "warm and fuzzy," highlighting his smile, his family and the Virginia countryside.
Terry's advisers hint that they feared a strong attack so early in the campaign would be disastrous, in part because voters traditionally are less willing to accept negative campaigning from women than from men.
They also stress an oft-repeated Terry theme, that her goal throughout the campaign has been to "talk about the future, not the past."
Focusing on the future appears to have been Terry's strategy for avoiding voter discontent with Wilder and Robb. But what puzzles some political observers is that she also failed to talk extensively about past Democratic achievements, including her own.
For instance, one Republican strategist acknowledged the Allen camp's surprise that Terry's ads never mentioned Virginia's two-years-in-a-row selection by Financial World magazine as the nation's best-managed state. Nor did viewers see much about her work in the 1980s toughening drunken-driving laws or her selection by her peers as the nation's best attorney general.
Most puzzling to one Terry adviser was the failure to develop a meaningful theme.
"The message was very poorly defined. [Former Gov.] Jerry [Baliles] had the `New Dominion.' Doug [Wilder] had the `New Mainstream.' Mary Sue didn't give us anything but `Mary Sue.' "
Instead, it was Allen who coined the single most-memorable phrase of the campaign: `No parole.'
In recent weeks, Terry's message has crystallized around support for abortion rights and a five-day waiting period on handgun purchases and opposition to private school vouchers. Polls suggest all those positions are popular, but it is unclear how deeply they resonate with voters this year.
Perhaps the boldest move, given Terry's traditional support in rural and Western Virginia, was her embrace of gun control. Selection of that issue was governed partially by the view that women lose if they appear soft on crime.
As a former attorney general, Terry brings stronger anti-crime credentials than most women to the debate. But Allen, bolstered by an endorsement from the Fraternal Order of Police, has aggressively countered with the argument that gun control is window-dressing compared to eliminating parole.
The National Rifle Association, which has put at least $70,000 behind Allen's candidacy, is pushing a similar message in fighting gun-control laws nationally.
While gender could prove pivotal to Tuesday's outcome, it has had little overt role in the campaign. Terry spoke at her nomination of the hope that a state named for a woman was at last ready to elect one, but little of that talk has been heard since.
Although Terry and her top aides handle the subject cautiously, many Terry supporters are furious at what they believe has been an unfair focus on her unmarried status and lack of children.
Beginning with the GOP's publicizing of a special phone number for collecting "intelligence" on Terry, and continuing through U.S. Senate candidate Oliver North's comments that the governor's mansion should be home to a man, a woman and their children, "there's been a sleaze factor we've never seen before in Virginia," complained William Wiley, a Democratic activist.
Others, however, suggest that the focus on Terry's personal life has been a second-tier issue.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB