Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, September 5, 1994 TAG: 9409060054
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Long
It's a familiar Republican allegation against Boucher, an Abingdon Democrat who hasn't had a serious challenge at the polls in a decade. Indeed, liberal lobbying groups generally rate Boucher highly, while their conservative counterparts do the opposite. But Boucher typically votes conservatively on hot-button issues that get voters' attention, such as gun control.
And, according to two Virginia political scientists, unless Fast more than doubles his campaign war chest, or finds a major issue with which to thrash the incumbent, Boucher once again will ride the power of incumbency back to Capitol Hill in November.
"I don't think [Fast is] competitive at this point. He's not established any one issue or set of issues that can be used as a wedge against the incumbent," said Tom Morris, president of Emory & Henry College in Washington County. "It's the classic advantage of finance, name recognition and constituent services. In one sense, this is a very typical congressional race."
Fast was upbeat at a Wednesday campaign stop. "We're very excited that we're building the kind of strength we need to get the message out [about] Mr. Boucher's liberal voting record and how I will vote differently from him in the Congress."
Boucher, though, said he has held 100 "town meetings" in the district since January and is confident that his work will show results in November. "I am not overconfident," Boucher said Friday. "I am taking nothing for granted."
Republican partisans, while acknowledging the odds, consider Fast a contender. They see a trend favoring GOP House candidates, spurred by President Clinton's unpopularity at midterm. Still, that strategy will depend on linking Boucher to Clinton, which is made difficult by Boucher's stands against controversial elements of the Clinton health reform plan and his vote against the crime bill and its ban on 19 types of assault weapons.
"The larger question is just how far Boucher will distance himself from President Clinton," said state Sen. William Wampler Jr., R-Bristol, the son of the 18-year incumbent Boucher unseated in 1982.
Moreover, Republicans acknowledge they need to boost Fast's visibility in what has been largely a low-key contest. Fast has never held elected office and has little name recognition outside of the party faithful.
"There's areas in the 9th District where you'd think there's not even a race happening," said Gary Waddell, the 9th District GOP chairman who lives in Lee County. "Other places you go, like Washington County [Boucher's home turf], I was never as shocked in my life to see as much enthusiasm for Steve Fast."
Boucher, who kicks his bid for a seventh term into high gear at 4:30 p.m. today with the "Acres of Democrats" rally in Abingdon, has decried Fast's rhetoric as negative campaigning. He portrays himself as busy with a legislative agenda highlighted by health reform, in which the House Energy and Commerce Committee on which he serves will play a significant role. He also points to a bill he has championed that would be the first major reform of communication law in 60 years. That measure has passed the House and is pending before a Senate committee.
Fast, meanwhile, has gone out of his way to catch the conservative coattails of Republican senatorial candidate Oliver North and Mike Farris, the Northern Virginia home-schooling advocate who last year won 55 percent of the vote in the 9th District in his failed attempt to oust Lt. Gov. Don Beyer. Fast, whose wife, Judy, home-schools their four boys, has appeared with North and Farris several times. Fast, too, is holding a major Labor Day rally, at 2 p.m. at Sugar Hollow Park between Abingdon and Bristol.
But even assuming North runs well in Southwest Virginia, that still might not be enough.
"For coattails to matter, a candidate has to get a majority of the vote. In a four-way race, that's considered unlikely," said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia professor who has studied Virginia voting patterns for more than two decades. Fast acknowledges that the key to making a serious run is money - money for television and radio commercials, which take on increased importance in such a large, diverse district.
Fast has raised approximately $110,000 so far, better than Radford clothier Gary Weddle did in the entire campaign two years ago. But that's nowhere near the $396,000 the late Jefferson Stafford spent in winning 48 percent of the vote in 1984, the last time Boucher had a close call. Stafford, who had been a state delegate from Pearisburg for 12 years, won most of the 17 counties then in the district, but Boucher survived by winning big in the traditionally Democratic-leaning coal counties.
Boucher this year has amassed another formidable campaign treasury: He had spent $113,000 and still had $609,000 in the bank as of June 30. Boucher reported $137,000 from political action committees, compared with $3,650 Fast had accepted from PACs as of last week.
Nationally, the average competitive congressional challenger is approaching campaign expenditures of nearly $500,000, Sabato said. But Fast could become a threat to Boucher with $250,000 to $300,000.
Neither candidate is Mr. Charisma. The 48-year-old Boucher, who seems more professor than politico, speaks in clear, modulated tones and keeps his cool, even when under fire at one of his frequent "town meetings." Fast, 33, who is on leave from his assistant professorship at the Baptist-affiliated Bluefield College, tries to inject a little more passion in his stump speaking. His skills have improved with time and experience, party regulars say.
Fast has blasted Boucher on two main issues: the now unlikely possibility of increased tobacco taxes to finance health reform; and what Fast considers Boucher's lack of firm support for gun rights, despite the incumbent's endorsement by the National Rifle Association. The smaller, more hard-line Gun Owners of America endorsed Fast. Fast accused Boucher of saying one thing to the voters back home and something else in D.C.
But on both issues, Boucher launched a strong counterattack; in the case of the crime bill, he ultimately voted the same way Fast said he would have.
Still, Fast takes credit for Boucher's crime-bill vote. "I think that the only reason Rick Boucher voted against the crime bill is because ... we held his feet to the fire," Fast said.
Boucher rejects that. "I have consistently opposed gun control. I opposed the Brady legislation. I also opposed the ban on semiautomated weapons," Boucher said. "I do not believe that gun control is a useful element of society's response to crime."
But Fast apparently believes the two issues worked for him. After a news conference in Wytheville last week, during which he described Boucher as "desperate," Fast said he had internal polling to back up his confidence. He declined to discuss details. "We do have objective reasons to be encouraged."
Fast contends that Boucher has resorted to attempting to smear his reputation by proxy, in a series of news conferences state Sen. Jack Reasor, D-Bluefield, held across the district two weeks ago. Boucher said Friday he had no connection to Reasor's statements.
Reasor pointed out that three men who appeared with Fast at an anti-Boucher rally July 22 were among four members of the Blue Ridge Hunt Club indicted Aug. 19 by a federal grand jury for conspiracy to violate federal firearm laws.
Federal prosecutors say the suspects were part of a conspiracy that planned to use paramilitary attacks on government authorities and the region's infrastructure to fight what they view as violations of their Second Amendment rights to own guns.
Fast denied knowledge of the supporters' activities and said he would repudiate their backing if they were found guilty. He said one of the men, William Darrell Stump II of Pulaski, came to his campaign only after becoming dissatisfied with Boucher's positions. He produced a 2-year-old letter showing Boucher offering thanks to Stump for his input on gun issues.
Boucher supported Reasor's comments. "Everything he said was entirely true. I think he performed a valuable public service in pointing out these facts."
Fast has stuck with the crime issue for a month, even though, statistically speaking, Southwest Virginia is a low-crime region. "All of us know that the crime that is now wreaking havoc in the big cities is the result of the liberal criminal justice systems," Fast said in Wytheville. "Those people that have brought us those liberal criminal justice systems are now in Washington, D.C., and they want to impose those liberal criminal justice systems upon places like Southwest Virginia, and I'm not going to let it happen."
The 9th District party chairmen see a spirited contest in the making.
"If the money keeps coming in at the clip that it has for the Fast campaign, and if Steve can get voters to concentrate on [Boucher's] record instead of his rhetoric, then we're liable to have an upset in November," the GOP's Waddell said.
Said Gary Hancock, the former Pulaski mayor and Democratic chairman. "I think people are going to judge [Boucher] on his record. I think it's a record of accomplishment for the 9th District."
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB