Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 24, 1994 TAG: 9404240173
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID M. POOLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
He began reading aloud from North's account of offering to resign from the Marine Corps after the Iran-Contra scandal erupted in 1986, then paused. He wiped his eyes.
"Sorry," Hagan said, "I get choked up."
A former Marine whose father, son and grandson have sworn allegiance to the Corps, Hagan has had a soft spot for North since the retired lieutenant colonel's famous appearance during televised congressional hearings in 1987.
The Chesapeake resident was so moved that he wrote several $100 checks to help cover North's legal expenses, and he started stockpiling newspaper articles about the legendary Marine.
Now, at 74, Hagan is ready to charge up the hill for North in June when Virginia Republicans gather in Richmond to select a nominee for the U.S. Senate seat held by Democrat Charles Robb.
"I support him every single way," Hagan said.
Hundreds of political newcomers who share a bedrock faith in North's conservative ideology and magnetic personality will march into the Richmond Coliseum on June 4.
North's army will be outnumbered by the more than 10,000 GOP regulars who are expected to attend the convention. But their single-minded determination is one reason political analysts give North the edge over Jim Miller, who served as budget director under President Reagan.
A similar phenomenon worked last year when home-schooling advocates and conservative Christians carried Michael Farris to the party's nomination for lieutenant governor.
North's supporters are a more diverse lot. But they are united in one place: a computer database of contributors to his legal defense fund, donors to his conservative foundation and supporters encountered during his many recent travels across the state for local GOP candidates.
"I have great confidence in the outcome of the process," North said, "because the people who are coming to the convention for me are coming committed."
Kelli Bills didn't fit in as a student at Northeastern Illinois State University in Chicago.
While classmates hung out and drank beer, Bills was a straight-arrow kid, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
She transferred to a university in Utah, where she was surrounded by other Mormons and met her future husband, a dental student named Gary.
The couple now live in Buena Vista, where her husband is working to establish his dental practice and Kelli Bills stays home with their three children, ages 2, 4 and 6.
At 31, Kelli Bills still feels alienated from many of the institutions around her.
She is committed to keeping her children out of public schools, teaching them herself with help from the growing home-schooling movement.
She canceled her subscription to the Roanoke Times & World-News because she considered it a liberal mouthpiece. She tuned out local and network news because she felt they beat up on home-schooling advocate Farris during his bid for lieutenant governor.
Bills keeps herself informed through conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, the Christian Broadcasting Network and a home-schooling newsletter.
She connects with the conservative agenda advanced by North: limited government, opposition to abortion, term limits and a strict reading of U.S. Constitution.
Bills takes comfort in her belief that North would follow his ideological compass when confronted by complex, ambiguous situations.
"I like that he's very rigid," she said. "I know where he stands and I know he's not going to compromise on it."
Bills got politically active last fall during the tail end of the Farris campaign. In talking with her neighbors and friends, she found that the biggest obstacle was overcoming the way the media portrayed her candidate.
"People are listening to the news. They said, `Farris tried to ban books.' I said, `No, he didn't.' Now they say, `North lied to Congress.' I say, `No, he didn't.' "
As do many people drawn to North, Bills feels she is part of history in the making.
She and her husband, who both signed up as GOP convention delegates, plan to bring their children to witness the launching of a political movement that could land North in the Senate and, maybe one day, in the White House.
"We are going to make our one family vacation out of it."
Most days, Hoyt Fowler can be found puttering beneath the shade trees in his back yard or tending to the Bermuda grass out front. The thick carpet of grass is what sets his place off from the other tidy brick ranchers in the Churchland area of Portsmouth.
Fowler and his wife, Joan, bought the house in 1968, when he finished a 20-year hitch as a Navy technician and took a civilian job in the defense industry that fuels the Hampton Roads economy.
Until this year, Fowler, 64, never saw much need to get involved in politics. He has been retired for more than a decade.
"I didn't want to get that involved, to tell you the truth, because I'm not that energetic," the slow-talking Oklahoma native said.
Fowler's blood has been pumping faster since North jumped into the Senate race. He believes that North has what it takes to shake sense into members of Congress who have made a career out of politics and, in the process, lost touch with everyday Americans.
"It just makes me mad as hell, to tell you the truth," Fowler said. "I just can't believe those suckers You can say what you want about him, that he lied to Congress. But it doesn't mean anything to lie to that bunch up there. Hoyt Fowler Believes North has what it takes to shake sense into members of Congress any more."
Fowler grins as he recalls how North sent Congress running for cover during the Iran-Contra hearings.
"I thought they had enveloped this guy with all their attorneys and politicians," he said. "I thought they were going to eat him up. But I guess he told the truth."
Fowler is untroubled by North's three criminal convictions related to his role as an aide in the Reagan White House from 1981 to 1986. North oversaw the diversion of profits from Iranian arms sales to help Contra rebels fighting to overturn the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
In 1989, a federal jury convicted North of two counts of lying to Congress and one count of receiving an illegal gratuity, a $14,000 security fence around his Northern Virginia home. The convictions were overturned when an appeals court ruled that his testimony before the Iran-Contra panel, for which he'd been given immunity, could have influenced the jury.
"You can say what you want about him, that he lied to Congress," Fowler said. "But it doesn't mean anything to lie to that bunch up there."
In his view, it was more important to fight communism than to worry about congressional mumbo-jumbo or academic objections to covert operations carried on without congressional oversight.
"I think those commies are the scourge of the Earth," Fowler said.
Foster has signed up to be a North delegate in Richmond, the capital that, during his three decades in Virginia, he has visited only once.
"I'm going to take the wife and see the sights," he said.
The air inside the hotel ballroom was stale and hot, but that didn't bother the 30 people lined up beside North's table.
As soon as the 17th Annual Republican Dominion Dinner in Fredericksburg was over, many of the 400 or so participants streamed into the cool air of the lobby.
But several dozen people were in no hurry to leave when they had a chance to shake North's hand, get his autograph for their children or snap his picture.
North greeted people for nearly an hour. The line never seemed to get shorter.
Those who hadn't met North acted as if they knew him, proof of the power of his performance at the Iran-Contra hearings.
North is no less charismatic in person. He looks people dead in the eye and leans forward as they speak. If they ask for an autograph, North has them turn around so he can write on their backs, like old friends.
North has a habit of winking, particularly at women of a certain age.
"You're wonderful," 75-year-old Virginia A. Garrison beamed as North took her hand at the Fredericksburg appearance.
"Thanks," North said, with a wink.
"I can't stand the way they talk about you," Garrison said.
"Don't worry about it. If The Washington Post was for me, you would be against me."
Flashing his familiar gap-toothed grin, North asked Garrison to keep the faith through all the attacks on his character.
"I wouldn't change for the world," she said.
The attacks keep coming. But to the faithful, a Reader's Digest article accusing North of lies and embellishments is just a liberal slip in an otherwise conservative publication. When Virginia's Republican Sen. John Warner calls North "unfit" to serve in Congress, Warner is branded a turncoat. A critical letter from Reagan, the father of the modern conservative movement, is written off as a stunt by the Miller campaign.
Many of North's faithful believe he has been crucified for his conservative beliefs.
"I love him. I just think he's great," said Anna Boyer, a 68-year-old retired federal worker from Stafford County who attended the Fredericksburg dinner.
"The more they run Ollie down, the more I'll stand up for him."
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB