Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 9, 1994 TAG: 9406090038
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WOOLWINE LENGTH: Long
From the church social to the neighborhood grocery, Aylees C. Turner has made the rounds of her mountaintop community this spring to talk up Virginia's first statewide Democratic primary in 17 years. Not that she's had to do much persuading, mind you.
"From the way you hear people talk at the service station, you'd think everybody was going to come out and vote," the retired schoolteacher says.
And in this rugged corner of Patrick County, there's little doubt - at least in Turner's mind - about just how those folks will vote. Why, for their state senator, Virgil Goode, of course.
"So many people here, even if they don't know him personally, he's like a family person," Turner says. "We have people back up in these mountains who don't vote too often. I went to visit one man last week and he'd been to re-register to vote so he could vote for Virgil."
In fact, Turner says, Goode is so popular in these parts that it's not just the Democrats who plan to turn out next Tuesday to vote for him in the party's primary against U.S. Sen. Charles Robb and two other lesser-known rivals.
"I'd bet we have as many Republicans at the polls as Democrats," Turner says. Take the operators of a local lumber mill, for instance. "They've been out soliciting votes for Virgil and they're about as dedicated Republicans as we have around here."
Here in the legislative district Goode has represented for more than two decades, the excitement surrounding Tuesday's Senate primary has reached the fever pitch of a November election.
Blue Goode-for-Senate signs sprout from yards and cover the windows of country stores. By all accounts, voter turnout there will be "heavy" - local officials guess that more than half the registered voters will cast ballots.
Trouble is, outside Goode's legislative district, it's as if Tuesday's election doesn't exist.
From Norton to Norfolk, Democratic Party leaders suspect probably no more than 10 to 15 percent of the state's 2.9 million registered voters will bother to vote. In Arlington, county Treasurer Frank O'Leary, who fancies himself as much an expert in counting votes as counting tax dollars, projects only 8 percent of the voters in that Northern Virginia suburb will show up.
What's the problem?
"People are unaccustomed to voting in a primary," says former state Sen. Jack Kennedy of Wise County,
Since 1970, Virginia has held only two such elections to nominate a party's candidates for statewide office. Even the fireworks of the 1989 Republican primary for governor won by Marshall Coleman brought out less than 14 percent of the registered voters. You have to go back to the 1977 Democratic primary for governor to find a turnout that came close to 25 percent.
Many Democrats say another reason for the expected low turnout is that this year's campaign has done little to stir partisan juices. As O'Leary puts it, the Democrats he knows are "apathetically, overwhelmingly for Robb."
Party leaders say they're unconcerned about sparse attendance at the polls. "In a primary, you expect a low turnout," says Gary Waldo, a Roanoke teachers' lobbyist.
Indeed, some analysts see a low turnout as one of the keys to Robb's renomination. Ordinary voters "are not captivated by the inside politics of a primary," Kennedy says. "It's only the insiders who will vote, and they will get their friends to vote." And for the most part, those Democratic insiders are sticking with Robb.
To counter that, Goode has embarked on a novel strategy. In a state whose elections are increasingly decided in the populous suburbs, Goode has focused his campaign on lighting a brushfire of indignation toward the incumbent in rural areas.
The Rocky Mount legislator has made a show of winning support from local officials, a classic technique in rural communities where courthouse leaders often serve as conduits for mobilizing voters. And this week, Goode won the endorsement of a group whose embrace is as potent in rural Virginia as it is poison in the suburbs - the National Rifle Association.
In a fall election, where voter turnout is usually consistent from one end of the state to the other, Goode's emphasis on barnstorming Virginia's countryside would be a quixotic gesture.
But for Tuesday's primary, Goode is hoping for an unusually lumpy pattern of voter turnout - low in the suburbs, high in rural areas - that would carry him to an upset.
Mathematically, it's possible. After all, rural voters still comprise about 25 percent of the state's total. In a way, says Del. John "Butch" Davies, D-Culpeper, rural voters now function much like another minority - black voters. When they vote as a bloc, they have more clout.
Goode does appear to be succeeding in the first phase of his strategy - consolidating support in rural areas outside his base in the Blue Ridge foothills. In Isle of Wight County, a peanut-and-pork county on the edge of Hampton Roads, Goode seems to be well ahead, says Commissioner of the Revenue Gerald Gwaltney.
Why?
"Probably character," Gwaltney says. "I think when you get into rural areas, family values and tradition are a little bit bigger priority."
In his Piedmont region, Goode also appears to be leading, Davies says. Many longtime Robb supporters, he says, were turned off by stories about Robb's fast-lane social life at sex-and-drug parties at Virginia Beach during the 1980s.
Also, Davies says, "I think some of the positions Chuck Robb has taken in the past six months are making people very uncomfortable in rural areas." Topping the list, he says, is Robb's support for gays in the military.
Yet for all the inroads Goode may be making in rural areas around the state, there's little indication that voters in the country will turn out in more significant numbers than their city counterparts.
Even next door to Goode's legislative district, Del. Ted Bennett, D-Halifax, says he's seen "no organized effort for anybody."
But here in Goode-land, the campaign appears to be building with the furious pace of a bluegrass breakdown. At the Crossroads Foodmart between Ferrum and Endicott, it's the main topic of conversation among customers.
"They make little remarks like 'He'd be a good one to have up there,'" says clerk Carol Castle. "They don't really stand around and say much. But you know they're interested. Yeah, they're gonna vote."
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB