Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 3, 1993 TAG: 9311030427
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LON WAGNER and ADRIENNE PETTY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
With 40 of 40 precincts reporting.
Wes Naff (D) 9,670 (48.2 percent)
Allen Dudley (R) 9,831 (49.0 percent)
Jerry Johnson (I) 426 (2.8 percent)
Republican Allen Dudley won the 9th District House of Delegates seat Tuesday night in a race in which every vote counted.
Dudley's garnered just 161 more votes than Democrat Wesley Naff III in a contest in which more than 20,000 votes were cast.
The results were so close that Dudley both the Dudley and Naff camps were left recalculating their numbers until 11 p.m. - and even then were hesitant to comment on the results.
Early in the evening, it appeared that Naff would have a landslide victory. Naff swamped Dudley in Franklin County, gaining nearly 60 percent of the vote in the heavily Democratic territory, the results that were posted first.
The Associated Press at 9:30 p.m. declared Naff the winner with 24 of 39 precincts in; but as the evening wore on, the votes for Dudley rolled in from Republican strongholds in Floyd, Pittsylvania and Bedford counties.
Shortly before 11 p.m., both camps were waiting for results from the tiny Bedford County precinct surrounding Moneta. Dudley got 594 votes to Naff's 282, and that put the Republican over the top.
"The figures we have indicate we didn't quite win by a landslide," Dudley said, "but we're proud we brought the first Republican victory to this district in 25 years."
Naff had little to say. "I congratulate him and thank all the people that have helped us," he said. "I was very pleased with [the results in] our home area of Franklin County."
The seat opened up this spring when Rocky Mount lawyer Willard Finney announced he was stepping down after 12 years in the General Assembly.
The race pitted the two Rocky Mount businessmen - Naff, 38, runs a real estate company, and Dudley is a banker - who brought markedly different styles to the area's political scene.
Naff mixed a nice-guy, aw-shucks demeanor with his Virginia Military Institute background.
Dudley was a hard-charging, take-no-prisoners campaigner, who perhaps is better characterized as a "conservative" than a Republican.
Both candidates listed their top priorities as job creation and improving education. With Naff espousing fiscal conservatism, Dudley often took the offensive in the campaign in trying to give himself an upper hand in the traditionally Democratic district.
Apparently, Dudley's aggressive campaigning did the trick.
Keywords:
ELECTION
by CNB