Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 6, 1994 TAG: 9409070050
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: WARREN FISKE AND DAVID M. POOLE AND GREG SCHNEIDER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
It is the day when candidates for statewide office - who usually campaign via television soundbites and 30-second commercials - harken back to an era when politicians rode in small-town parades and made speeches under picnic shelters.
This nostalgia has come to life for the last 24 years in Buena Vista, a struggling manufacturing town that sits hard between the Maury River and the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Monday, three of the four candidates in the race for U.S. Senate strutted their stuff down Magnolia Avenue along with sequined beauty queens, Smokey Bear, aging American Legionnaires and the Parry McCluer High School Marching Blues.
Former Gov. Douglas Wilder stayed home, but incumbent Democrat Charles Robb, GOP nominee Oliver North and independent candidate Marshall Coleman all provided a glimpse of the styles they will bring to the next 65 days of campaigning.
\ For North, it was the kind of day most politicians dream about.
About 250 Buena Vista residents started their morning by attending a breakfast for North at American Legion Post 126. North, in khakis and a blue dress shirt with an open collar, was greeted outside by more than a dozen cadets in full uniform from Virginia Military Institute.
"He's a great American," said Jason Harding, a freshman at VMI who was among the first to shake North's hand. "I believe the things he believes in. He'll protect our families, the Second Amendment, and he'll keep women out of VMI."
At the breakfast, North pressed his attack on Robb's character. North suggested that the questions of integrity he faces because of his role in the Iran-Contra affair pale in comparison to Robb's admitted womanizing when he was governor in the early 1980s.
"There will be a lot of folks ... who want to raise as moral equivalency what I did as a flawed human being to save human lives and the repeated behavior of other candidates," North told the crowd.
North later explained: "My motives [in Iran-Contra] were always to save the lives of other people. You'll have to ask my opponent what his motive was." Before the parade, North ducked into a local high school to change into a blue flannel shirt. He rolled up the sleeves. His media consultant, Michael Murphy, wired him with a microphone and had a cameraman present to record North's every step.
Unlike Robb, North turned down the opportunity to be driven in an antique car and walked the parade route.
Andrew Maisano, a retired local businessman whose foot was amputated last winter, hobbled onto the street with a cane to walk a block with North. North put his arm around him. "He's a great leader," Maisano said of North.
There were a few protestors in the crowd. Jon Nafziger, a local child-care administrator, marched alongside of North bearing a protest sign accusing the Republican of "shredding the Constitution." North never seemed to notice him.
The next stop was Scottsville, a hamlet about 20 miles south of Charlottesville that was celebrating its 250th anniversary. North was greeted by about 200 people at a local service station.
He was joined in Scottsville by Gov. George Allen. The two delivered stump speeches from the bed of a pickup truck. "We need warriors like Ollie North in Washington who will fight for the people," Allen said. North accused Robb of being a "liberal extremist." He mocked the record of all three of his opponents. "If their records are so doggone good, wouldn't our taxes be lower, and wouldn't our nation's defense be stronger?" he asked.
Scottsville Mayor Raymond Thacker acknowledged there was a good crowd on hand. "But I don't think everyone was here just to see Oliver North," he said. "You've got to remember that our town's 250th birthday is a big deal out here."
- WARREN FISKE\ Chuck Robb launched his re-election bid in the same way he began his three previous successful runs for statewide office - by climbing into the back of a red 1950 Ford convertible for a Labor Day cruise down the pickup truck-lined streets of Buena Vista.
While the wheels and setting were familiar, there were signs that the Democrat was venturing into uncharted territory.
Magnolia Avenue was lined with children sporting blue "North 94" bumper stickers that had been dispensed with military efficiency by Republican volunteers. There was no one handing out Robb stickers.
And the annual Democrat breakfast at Southern Virginia College for Women drew 125 people, about half the number who attended a Republican breakfast at the National Guard Armory.
Still, Robb appeared upbeat as he climbed into the convertible, slipped off his Gucci loafers and settled in next to his wife, Lynda Johnson Robb.
"Go get 'em, Senator."
"Show them which way North is!"
"We love you. We're pushing for you all the way."
"North is the wrong direction."
"Hope you win. Hey there, Lynda."
While the parade offered no opportunity to debate issues, the earlier breakfast gave Robb supporters a chance to blast North for criminal convictions stemming from his role in the Iran-Contra scandal. An appeals court later overturned the convictions.
"The people of Virginia want a candidate with strong convictions, not a candidate with a history of convictions," said Mark Warner, state Democratic Party chairman.
"We have one [candidate] who makes laws and one who breaks laws, and we don't need the one who breaks laws to be making the laws," said state Sen. Frank Nolen, D-Augusta County.
The harshest words came from Warm Springs Del. Creigh Deeds, who said that North's frequent references to Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers was mocked by his actions.
"He set up a secret government to sell weapons to the Ayatollah Khomeini and then lied to Congress, the very government established and affirmed by the founders," Deeds said. "That candidate [North] subverted the process, the very government Jefferson helped create."
At the end of the parade, Robb avoided sharing the stage with North at Glen Maury Park. Instead, the senator jumped in a van and sped to Covington, a paper mill town about 35 miles to the west.
North supporters, led by anti-abortion advocates, did an even better job of showing the GOP flag in Covington. They handed out 1,000 blue ballons, 200 bumper stickers and several spools of North lapel stickers.
"We stuffed them," said Tony Conrad, a pro-lifer for North. "I think Mr. Robb had brown underwear when he was walking down the street."
Deeds, the Warm Springs Democrat, acknowledged that he was taken aback by the North showing at a labor union event - not usually a good backdrop for Republicans. "It was depressing," Deeds said, "going through the town there throwing candy at this army of blue."
- DAVID M. POOLE\ Marshall Coleman left home in Northern Virginia at 5:45 a.m., stopped at Roy Rogers for a bite and headed down the road with his wife and campaign assistant.
At the staging area for the Buena Vista parade, Coleman shucked his gray pin-striped suit jacket and waited. A handful of reporters stopped by for quotes.
Vance Wilkins, minority leader of the House of Delegates and a Republican from Amherst County, steered wide of his former partymate. "Who do you see up there talking to him, except reporters?" Wilkins said. "Look what he's got and look what North's gonna have when he goes through." At that moment, North - looking like an ad for The Gap in his casual attire - was being mobbed by a throng of well-wishers and autograph-seekers. Coleman, a few yards away, was chatting with his wife and assistant.
Coleman said he expected to be a wallflower at this event, even though he used to represent an area including Buena Vista in the state Senate.
"It's clear [North] is a celebrity," Coleman said. "But I don't think celebrity is a substitute for character, and I don't think celebrity is going to elect him."
The former state attorney general seemed loose and wry in his role as the lonely underdog.Approached by a nattily dressed TV reporter, Coleman grabbed the man's lapels and demanded, "Is this your suit or did they just loan it to you?"
Wading into a crowd of cheerleaders from the local Parry McCluer High School, Coleman quizzed them all and then announced, "I'm happy to report not a single one of 'em wants to be a politician or a reporter."
But charm was not enough. As the parade got under way, Coleman called to the cheerleaders: "I'm counting on you girls!" They headed off without him, all but one bearing North stickers.
With North leading a swarm of sign-wielding fans and Robb perched picturesquely on the back of a vintage Ford, Coleman ambled along next to his wife and local supporter Ralph Hamlett. Hamlett's son Jake and nephew Cliff carried a Coleman banner. And that was it for the Coleman delegation.
He might as well have been Rodney Dangerfield.Brenda Rose of the town of Goshen rushed breathlessly up and asked for two autographs for her daughters. "They're collecting them," she explained.
Coleman was happy to oblige, but when Hamlett offered Rose a sticker, she drew back. "I won't wear it," she said. "It wouldn't exactly go with the others." She had a shirt full of North stickers.
At the end of the parade, Coleman and North hung around to give speeches while Robb motored to another event.
North's speech was greeted by a long standing ovation and punctuated by cheers and applause. When he finished, at least a third of the crowd left with him. When Coleman was introduced to his former constituents, there was a pause before the crowd delivered light applause.
The only other event on Coleman's schedule was a Labor Day celebration in Clifton Forge, about 45 minutes away, staged by the United Paperworkers International Union.
There, finally, Coleman got an endorsement. Sort of. Arnold Brown, the union's regional director, told a sparse crowd that Republicans were terrible on all the issues important to labor.
"But if you got to vote for a Republican," Brown said, "I ask you to vote for Marshall Coleman."
- GREG SCHNEIDER
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB