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

DATE: SUNDAY, June 12, 1994                   TAG: 9406270134
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: E-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CLUTE

SYLVIA Clute deserves a better campaign than she has run. To be sure, it was unlikely that the Democratic Party establishment - mostly sticking with incumbent Sen. Charles Robb or, in some cases, flirting with state Sen. Virgil Goode - would throng to her side. It was predictable that she wouldn't be able to raise a lot of money.

But Clute's soft yet firm voice has left even less of an impression than it might and should have.

Relying on grass-roots volunteers, lacking both experience in public office and a professional campaign staff and strategy, Clute has failed to win a wide airing of her views and record, and this is unfortunate.

To listen to this compassionate woman speak quietly, reasonably about issues is to feel the power of common sense wedded to a passion for justice. Clute says political leadership should be a tool not for dividing people, but for bringing citizens together on common ground. An unusual notion.

Clute has proposed an economic-development strategy featuring aggressive efforts to attract environmental-technology industries to Virginia, as a major jobs-provider of the future.

She recognizes the connection between social and economic development and international security, and has called for a foreign policy that encourages collaboration and problem-solving in the service of "an open economic system, non-proliferation regimes, peace and human rights."

Whatever one thinks of a Canadian-style single-payer system of health care (as opposed to the managed-care alternative favored by the Clinton administration), Clute makes a sophisticated argument for it. She also favors more assistance for family-based long-term care for the elderly and disabled.

Clute's resume is as interesting as her proposals. Before entering law school, she spent two years in the Peace Corps teaching English in a remote village in Nepal. In the 1970s, she formed Virginia's first women's bank, later acquired by First Virginia Bank. She tirelessly promoted the Equal Rights Amendment.

A mother of three, she has been a successful lobbyist on behalf of women's and children's issues in the General Assembly. She helped reform state divorce laws in the 1980s. Largely as a result of her efforts, Virginians this year will vote this fall on a constitutional amendment allowing adult survivors of child abuse to sue their molesters.

Clute, in short, is a refreshing figure in Virginia politics. She is more than Ms. Clean in a sullied pool of candidates. It is too bad, but some of it's her fault, that she hasn't made more of a splash in this mucky pond.

Keywords:
POLITICS

by CNB