Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 8, 1994 TAG: 9404080100
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: Medium
While campaigning in Hampton Roads, Goode said he has 12,000 signatures and is optimistic he will get more than 20,000 by the April 15 filing deadline. Candidates need 15,000 signatures of registered voters to get on the primary ballot but often get more in case some are invalid.
Goode announced March 23 that he would try to unseat Democratic Sen. Charles Robb. Also challenging Robb for the nomination are Richmond lawyer Sylvia Clute and Lyndon LaRouche follower Nancy Spannaus.
Goode, a Franklin County lawyer, has been traveling around Virginia to collect the signatures required from each congressional district.
Spannaus already has filed her petitions with the state Board of Elections.
Clute said Thursday that as of a week ago, she had collected about 10,000 signatures. She was unsure how many signatures have been collected since then but said the drive "is going very well."
Goode said that his primary goal is a balanced-budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But he resisted being compared to former independent U.S. Sen. Harry Byrd, another balanced-budget advocate.
"His financial philosophy was good," Goode said on WTAR Radio. However, "the Byrd machine pushed hard for massive resistance" to racial integration, and that was wrong, Goode said.
In another development Thursday, a mental health group criticized the two Republican Senate candidates for trying to play down their own mental health treatment.
The Mental Health Association of Virginia said Jim Miller and Oliver North showed "appalling ignorance of mental disorders and treatment."
Instead of playing down their own mental health treatments, the candidates should have pointed out how the treatments made them more fit for public office, the association said in a news release.
North was hospitalized for depression 20 years ago, and Miller consulted a psychiatrist about mood swings after his father died.
The treatments became a campaign issue after Miller released information about his finances and background Tuesday and urged North to do the same. The move was widely seen as an effort to draw attention to North's hospitalization in 1974.
However, Miller did not reveal his own mental health counseling until he was questioned by reporters.
North, who detailed his treatment in his 1991 autobiography, accused Miller of trying to make mental health a campaign issue. Miller said he was concerned only about whether North had disclosed the treatment when he went to work for the Reagan White House.
"I got burned by a set of events that I had no control over," Miller told The Washington Times.
A North spokesman said Miller was practicing "panic-city spin control."
"Jim Miller tripped and fell into his own mud puddle, and he knows it," Dan McLagan said.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB