Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 7, 1993 TAG: 9311070118
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Nevertheless, Virginia will have its own political odd couple in Richmond for the next four years. For only the third time this century, the Old Dominion will have a governor and lieutenant governor from different parties.
What will this mean? For starters, the best political drama in Richmond may be watching to see how a Republican Gov. George Allen and a Democratic Lt. Gov. Don Beyer get along.
Beyer, always the optimistic sort, is taking a conciliatory approach - for now. "I really do want to work with Governor Allen as much as I possibly can," he says, "but I won't hesitate to speak out when I see Virginia needing a different direction."
But Allen's advisers are taking a much more aggressive stance toward Beyer, who now emerges as the Democrats' most likely candidate to reclaim the governor's mansion in 1997.
"Inasmuch as he is willing to work with Governor Allen, we'd appreciate support for Governor Allen's proposals," says Allen spokesman Ken Stroupe in his boilerplate assessment of the Allen-Beyer relationship.
Hold on, though, because here comes the not-so-veiled warning: "If he chooses to stand in our way, we'll go around him."
Allen himself, both in his election-night victory speech and his day-after news conference, made a point of directing some strong words Beyer's way.
Allen described Beyer's campaign against Republican Mike Farris as "based on assassinating his record" and said, "I hope there won't be any tie votes in the Senate, so we can get bills through without having to work with the lieutenant governor."
Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political analyst, sums up Allen's attitude toward Beyer this way: "He's thrown down the gauntlet to Beyer. They're going after him from Day One. George Allen will not make the John Dalton mistake."
That came the last time a Virginia election produced a governor and lieutenant governor from different parties - 1977, when Republican Dalton took the governorship, and Democrat Charles Robb was lieutenant governor.
Dalton decided the best thing to do was to be nice to Robb, even inviting him to sit in on Cabinet meetings.
At the time, Dalton faced a situation Allen won't - big Democratic majorities in the General Assembly. "Dalton needed all the friends he could get," remembers Ray Garland, a former Republican state legislator who is now a newspaper columnist.
Dalton thought co-opting Robb, whose only duty as lieutenant governor was presiding over the state Senate, would be a way to win Democratic cooperation. Unfortunately, Garland says, "Dalton fell into the trap of making a pet out of Chuck Robb."
Years later, Dalton admitted he'd made a mistake. Instead of finding that his nice-guy approach to Robb made it easier to work with a Democratic legislature, Dalton found he had inadvertently built up Robb's stature, which the Democrat then used to seize the governorship back from the Republicans four years later.
Don't look for Allen to repeat that error. "It'll be pitched battle for four years," Sabato predicts.
Allen and Beyer may find issues on which it's convenient for both of them to put partisanship aside, suggests Tom Morris, an Emory & Henry College political analyst. One likely candidate: welfare reform, an issue in which both share an interest.
Ultimately, though, the two men will find themselves pitted against one another. "Allen and Beyer are now competitors for party-building," Morris says.
Allen will be looking for ways to position the Republicans, who fell just short of seizing a majority in the House of Delegates on Tuesday, to finally cross that threshold in the 1995 elections.
Beyer, meanwhile, becomes the titular leader of a state Democratic Party reeling from Tuesday's election debacle. He'll be the guy expected to put the pieces of the shattered Democratic coalition back together.
If that weren't a daunting-enough challenge - especially with Robb and outgoing Gov. Douglas Wilder on the verge of making the state a free-fire zone as they battle for the Democratic Senate nomination next year - Beyer faces other political problems.
"Beyer's still a ghostly presence to most Virginians," Garland says. "He won by defining Farris, not by defining Beyer."
And the way he did it - by portraying Farris as a religious zealot who would impose his beliefs on Virginia - may linger in voters' minds, some analysts believe.
"He's in deep trouble for the future," Sabato says. "He's eliminated his nice-guy image."
Beyer, not surprisingly, disagrees. "I don't think there's any lasting baggage," he says.
He says he'll set out soon to meet with grass-roots party workers around the state - many of whom felt shut out by Mary Sue Terry's highly centralized campaign - to see what went wrong in 1993 and how the party should retool itself to win in the future.
"There's a symbolic role for me to play," he says. "I very much want to be a healer in the party. I don't feel all the responsibility is on my shoulders, but I'm looking forward to rebuilding the party."
Garland believes Beyer should concentrate on that kind of private groundwork and avoid getting into high-profile confrontations with Allen and the Republicans - at least initially. Otherwise, he says, Allen will savage him.
"Beyer will sensibly lay very low for the first year or two or three" of the Allen administration, Garland predicts. As the next governor's race approaches, that's when Beyer should start laying out a rationale for a return to Democratic rule. "Until then," Garland says, "he should say as little as possible; and when he does say something, it should be nice."
by CNB