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

DATE: SATURDAY, March 12, 1994                   TAG: 9403160003
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ATTENTION

Just ask Sylvia Clute.

That's Clute, not Klute or Kluge or Whatzername. The Richmond lawyer with a background in business and in women's and children's issues is a fresh and excellent candidate. She's challenging the potentially vulnerable U.S. Sen. Charles Robb in the June 14 Democratic primary. But with Clute's fund-raising in the thousands instead of millions, who's to know?

Money, though, isn't everything.

Just ask Mary Sue Terry, the 1993 Democratic gubernatorial nominee.

She spent $6.5 million to get 41 percent of the vote. George Allen, the Republican nominee, spent $1 million less to win 58 percent. Moreover, Terry's nomination was uncontested, while Allen had to use some of his money to win the GOP nod. And, as political scientist Larry Sabato observes in a recent newsletter from University of Virginia's Center for Public Service, much of Allen's money (about 20 percent) was raised after he had opened a big lead in the public-opinion polls.

In the course of his article, Sabato mentions a couple of other points.

One post-election poll found voters almost three times more likely (40 percent to 15 percent) to blame Terry than Allen for negative campaigning. (About a third blamed both campaigns.) Also, the Virginia GOP's first gubernatorial victory in 12 years was due not only to switches of allegiance but also to a higher Republican turnout and lower turnout among Democrats.

Are the money differential, the blame for negativism and the respective turnouts more than coincidental? Did the deeper pockets of the Terry campaign, buying campaign ads perceived as negative, hurt more than help her candidacy, costing her votes as well as money?

Too many factors enter into elections to isolate only one as crucial. At a minimum, though, let's say this: Political candidates need enough money to get the attention of the voting public. But once they do, what they say and how they say it are at least as important as how often they say it.

Keywords:
POLITICS