Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 29, 1994 TAG: 9405290099
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARGARET EDDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
Downstairs, the Women's Council of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee was staging its annual luncheon - and trying to distance itself from the Clute campaign.
"There's no connection" between the events, said an obviously miffed aide to the senatorial committee, which had invited Clute to last Monday's luncheon but supports incumbent Sen. Charles Robb. "There's been some miscommunication."
Less than a month before the June 14 Democratic primary, Clute's apparent failure to galvanize Democratic women epitomizes her uphill battle to win nomination in a four-way race.
By almost every objective measure, from fund raising to polls, the 51-year-old Richmond lawyer has yet to connect with the mass of Virginia voters, male or female. But the gap with women is perhaps most telling.
A volunteer lobbyist who helped revolutionize the way Virginia women are treated in marital and property disputes, Clute campaigns on a promise to bring a different - and decidedly female - perspective to a Senate that is 93 percent male.
Moreover, her quest offers an intriguing story line. It comes at a time when voters are only 18 months removed from the political Year of the Woman, so-named because of the 1992 political advances by women. And her composed, accomplished presence is a striking counterpoint to stories that Robb dallied at beach parties with young women other than his wife.
Such assets have brought Clute endorsements from the National Organization for Women and the National Women's Political Caucus. But they do not appear to have translated into widespread support - a fact tacitly acknowledged during the Hyatt Hotel news conference by Flora Crater, the dean of Virginia feminists and a former candidate for lieutenant governor.
Describing her admiration for Clute, Crater observed a tad wistfully: "Most of the women in Virginia, if they knew it, would be equally proud."
Many of Clute's admirers attribute the gap in knowledge to institutional bias against women and political outsiders. The media, they say, have largely ignored her campaign.
But others offer a variety of explanations: the difficulty of taking on even a politically damaged incumbent; the hesitancy of Democrats to risk running a political novice against Iran-Contra figure Oliver North, the likely GOP nominee; Clute's tendency to work outside established Democratic circles; and her self-confident refusal to bend to advice that she run a more traditional campaign.
"Many active women in the party have commented that Sylvia Clute has ignored them," said Eva Teig of Richmond, a former Democratic Cabinet secretary. "They could have helped her raise money, made her more credible. She's reaching out to nonparty people."
"She's not a party person," concurred Barbara Hickey, a Democratic activist in Norfolk who supports Robb. "It's like, why didn't Sylvia Clute start with the state legislature? Why the U.S. Senate?"
Few dispute that Clute has marched to her own drummer in the Senate race.
She has one paid staff worker, her longtime legal secretary. Volunteers handle every function from fund raising to strategic planning. Decisions are made by consensus. Clute herself sometimes answers the telephone at her campaign headquarters, which is also her law office.
"I came to realize very early that Sylvia had never dealt with a large organization before," said Wingate "Wink" Lucas, a former bank official who volunteered to manage Clute's campaign after being captivated by her message at a neighborhood get-together. "She's not used to delegating. No, you can't write every press release; you can't talk to every reporter."
Lucas also reflects the maverick nature of the campaign. He prefers the title "coordinator" to "campaign manager," for instance, because "a campaign manager has to have political knowledge or experience, and I have neither."
The organization functions largely through a core group of 50 to 100 volunteers, many of them linked to Clute's past ventures. Among her most ardent supporters are women who helped her found a Women's Bank in Richmond in the 1970s, worked to overturn discriminatory property and inheritance laws in the 1980s and, more recently, fought for legal protection of the adult survivors of child sexual abuse.
Her leadership on those issues helped Clute win volunteer support and some contributions from NOW and the Women's Political Caucus.
But even that backing has a tentative cast. The caucus, for instance, makes two kinds of endorsements: those accompanied by cash, and those without. Clute is in the latter group.
"The bottom line is really money," said Edythe Harrison of Norfolk, who fought her own uphill battle as the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in 1984. "It's very hard for a nonincumbent to raise money, and it's especially hard for women."
In the view of admirers, Clute makes up in personal depth for any lack of political savvy. They see in her a woman who combines the classic look of a Breck shampoo model, an almost beatific composure and the iron resolve of a Margaret Thatcher.
"Her asset and her liability are the same," said Marian McDonald, a psychotherapist who has worked with Clute on sexual abuse cases. "The reason you love her is she's so clean and straight and decent. At the same time, she's not a politician. She doesn't want to be sophisticated in how to outwit someone."
Clute says her greatest strength is as a consensus builder. But there has been nothing compromising about her commitment to improving the treatment of women.
Her voice is even and modulated, with an almost girlish lilt. But it takes on an assertive edge as she relates stories about her encounters with the male-dominated General Assembly, and speaks of the need for a greater female presence in the U.S. Senate.
"They laughed when I said some women are so dependent on their husbands that they are a target for abuse," Clute said, recalling one of her early appearances before a legislative committee. "But they don't laugh anymore."
Her voice tenses, as well, when she links efforts to admit women to the Virginia Military Institute to helping her daughter, a medic in the Army Reserves, draw up a will in case she was deployed during the Persian Gulf War.
"What more can we give than our lives to be equal citizens in this nation?" demanded Clute during a recent debate.
The mother of three children, married for more than two decades to a man she met as a Peace Corps worker in Nepal, Clute says the human side of her experience makes her better positioned than many men to understand societal inequities.
"I understand that the experiences of our children determine the profile of our adult population," she regularly notes.
The belief that many voters, and particularly women, share her views is her motivation to continue. "I have more support than when you read the news you would suspect," she said recently.
Anyone who doubts that a feminine perspective would make a difference in the Senate need only look at the debate over allowing gays in the military, argued Clute at last Monday's news conference.
Opponents claimed that gays would commit "illegal, immoral sex acts" and would subject their comrades to "unwanted sexual advances," she said.
But what about adultery, fornication and prostitution as illegal sex acts? asked Clute. And how about the fact that "most `unwanted sexual advances' are committed by heterosexual men against women?"
"Everyone missed the point," she said.
If that proves true of voters as well, it does not deter Clute from her self-appointed mission: to prod the powerful to see in a different way.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB