Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, June 5, 1994                   TAG: 9406050088
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DAVID M. POOLE and ALEC KLEIN STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium

NORTH EXCITES BACKERS RURAL SUPPORT KEY TO HIS NOMINATION

"Washington," North said, "has gutted our nation's defense and surrendered our sovereignty to the United Nations."

"Yes!" Quillen cried.

"This is wrong," North said.

"Yes, it is!" Quillen said.

"Now it is time to stand for what is right."

"This is it!"

"But it won't be easy."

"No, it won't."

Quillen was so swept up in the moment, it seemed he might cast aside his walker and dance a jig to the Marine Corps Hymn.

All around him it was the same, a barely controlled revivalistic fervor that ultimately swept North to the Republican U.S. Senate nomination in a crusade to overthrow what his followers see as a morally and philosophically bankrupt U.S. Congress.

Nowhere was emotion stronger at the GOP convention than in rural delegations from areas west of Richmond.

In fact, North would have lost the nomination to Jim Miller if not for a 941-vote margin in Southside, Shenandoah Valley and far Southwest Virginia.

Quillen, who has been coming to GOP conventions since Ted Dalton created the modern Republican Party in the 1950s, said he had never been so excited by a candidate.

"Liberalism needs to be put down," he said. "We can change this thing. We'll stop it. We'll change it. Ollie can put down those liberals."

North's army of supporters wore their allegiance like a badge of honor, or, in the case of 59-year-old Vietnam veteran Glyndon A. Logsdon, as a sticker on the forehead.

"I would get in a foxhole with this guy, I trust him," said the Virginia Beach resident. "He's got the pulse of the guys in the trenches. He thinks like us."

World War II veteran Charles McKenna of Fluvanna County walked around with an orange North bumper sticker across the back of his sport jacket. "Miller's a good man, but he's a Washington insider," McKenna said. "That's what we don't need. [North's] for the little man, the hard-working people."

Raved Danielle A. LaFrance, 25, of Chesapeake: "I think Ollie North sticks to his guns. He does what he thinks is right, no matter what the consequences are. He's a Christian. He's a real family man."

Which is far from how the conventioneers viewed leaders in the Democratic Party, including incumbent Sen. Charles Robb, North's likely adversary in the fall.

"I think there's a basic bottom-line character flaw in Robb's personality," said Patrick J. McKenna, 37, an attorney.

While vendors hawked "Rush Limbaugh for president" T-shirts down the convention aisles, others outside the Coliseum were capitalizing on disgust with the First Family with an "Impeach Hillary" T-shirt and red bumper sticker that read: "CLINTON'S THE ANSWER? IT MUST BE A STUPID QUESTION."

"This is anti-Clinton," said Catherine M. Wallin, 36, of Roanoke. She called the whole convention "a statement about how we feel about Clinton. I'm going to support the nominee of the party, period. I'm going to work my legs off. We're going to beat Chuck Robb. It's time to send Bill Clinton a message. We're going out here united. We agree in this room more than we disagree."

Not all Miller supporters saw the common ground. Few stayed around to hear North's victory speech or Miller's appeal for party unity, streaming out of the muggy Richmond Coliseum after the final vote was announced. Many said they were uncertain if they could support North in November.

"It's going to be awful difficult to keep the party united," said Mike Alford, former Portsmouth schools superintendent. A North supporter who switched to Miller, Alford said he didn't know how he would vote now: "I've got to think about it."

Such disaffected Republicans were met outside by volunteers for Democrat Virgil Goode, the state senator from Rocky Mount who is challenging Robb in the June 14 Democratic primary.

One Miller supporter, Greg Eanes of Crewe, already had donned a Goode pin and was handing out press releases announcing that Republicans had "dug the grave of their own party" by nominating North.

Eanes, the GOP chairman for the area around Nottoway County, predicted that North's three felony convictions from his role in the Iran-Contra affair will sink him in the general election, even though the convictions were overturned on a technicality.

"That's just like a rapist who wasn't read his rights - guilty but free," Eanes said. "The party turned its back on me by nominating a common criminal."

Keywords:
POLITICS