Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 5, 1994 TAG: 9405060024
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-16 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In Vinton, both incumbent town councilmen up for re-election were defeated.
And all the while, City Council races in Roanoke - traditionally the most turbulent polity in the valley - were going more or less according to form.
Upended in Salem was 20-year council veteran Mac Green, who'll be succeeded by council newcomer and top vote-getter Garry Lautenschlager. In Vinton, incumbents Don Davis and Roy McCarty will be succeeded by Billy Obenchain, who led the five-candidate field for the two seats, and Bobby Altice, who had served on council for 16 years before losing in the 1992 elections.
The upsets did not seem to stem from any deep dislike of the incumbents, or from any cutting issues that separated the ins from the outs. Lautenschlager's open-mindedness toward looking at regional answers to social problems, noted in our editorial recommending his election, aroused criticism in some quarters, but apparently not in many. Anyway, the Republican campaigned on a call for more open and responsive government, not on regionalism issues.
Rather than out of anger or dissatisfaction, voters in Salem and Vinton may simply have been acting on the principle that occasional transfusions of new blood are good for government. As a general rule, it's a wise one - and, as the elections proved, you don't need formal term limits to enforce it.
In a number of places, of course, little was altered. For their town councils, Blacksburg and Christiansburg saw all-incumbent victories. In Radford, long-time Mayor Tom Starnes was re-elected, as was Polly Corn, the only incumbent in the contest for two nonmayoral City Council seats. A show of voter satisfaction - or apathy? Take your pick.
Nor did Roanoke voters oust any incumbents on Tuesday, though that owes a lot to developments earlier in the spring. Councilmen Howard Musser and James Harvey, and former Councilman James Trout - all high-profile veterans of city politics - either had opted not to run again (Musser) or had lost in the Democratic primary (Harvey and Trout).
In easily leading the Roanoke field, John Edwards follows the footsteps of Beverly Fitzpatrick, to whose seat Edwards was appointed after Fitzpatrick's resignation last fall. Like Fitzpatrick, Edwards ran well in both Democratic and Republican neighborhoods (helped by the fact that the GOP had only two candidates for the three four-year seats); like Fitzpatrick, he seems comfortable in the role of Democrats' economic-development emissary to the city's business community.
One-term incumbent William White finished second by getting the Democratic vote plus some (but not as much as Edwards) of the non-Democratic vote. No surprise there. All along, the battle for the third seat was expected to be fought among the three council newcomers. That's what happened, with Republican John "Jack" Parrott winning over Democrat Nelson Harris and Republican Barbara Duerk.
In one-on-one contests, partisan breakdowns are clearer. In the one-on-one contest for the two years left of an unexpired term, Democrat Linda Wyatt's victory over Republican John Voit - comfortable, but no landslide - basically reflected how the parties tend to divide among the Roanoke electorate.
Congratulations are due the victors throughout Southwest Virginia - and to those, too, who didn't win. By running and losing, contributions can also be made. All the losing Roanoke candidates, for example, made points that bear consideration by the new council - Voit with his call for a closer look at opportunities to privatize some city services; Harris with his appeal to Roanokers to put poverty issues high on their agenda; Duerk with her emphasis on quality-of-life concerns.
Nor will we be surprised when some of today's ballot-box losers turn out to be tomorrow's champs. Harris in particular ran an impressive campaign, and ought to be back soon. But, of course, you never know.
Tuesday's municipal elections hardly shook the old order to its foundations. But they did offer up enough change to show anew that politics, unlike death or taxes, is never a sure thing.
by CNB