Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 19, 1994 TAG: 9406240008
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Margie Fisher
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
AS THE TRAIN pulled out of Charlottesville, a tape of Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again" blared through Pullman cars filled with his high-spirited supporters. Probably because I was an aging reporter who had covered his two previous statewide campaigns, Marshall Coleman invited me to sit a spell in his private compartment and hear how he planned to win the governor's office this time.
Yes, yes, he vowed, he would run in 1989 as the "old" Marshall - the moderate mountain-valley Republican who had appealed across party and philosophical lines in '77 to win the attorney general's office and become the wunderkind of the Virginia GOP. He acknowledged mistakes he'd made in '81. He had brought in national advisers who'd tried to fit him into a mold that wasn't him. This time, he was running as his real self: wiser and older, but a still-young "old" Marshall.
Minutes later, at a campaign whistlestop in Lynchburg, Jerry Falwell's hometown, Coleman stood on the platform at the back of the train and took such a rigid-right stand against abortion that it made my jaw drop. Once the train pulled out, heading for Bedford, I asked him how it squared. He muttered fuzz words.
That was the last I heard of the "old" Marshall until this past week when I called Anson Franklin, Coleman's campaign manager in '77, to ask him what he thought about Coleman's latest outing: an independent bid for the U.S. Senate. Well, said Franklin, Coleman had just persuaded him to leave his job in Washington to manage his Senate race. Yes, yes, promised Franklin, in '94 we would see the "old" Marshall.
One wag I know describes Marshall Coleman as a total bionic man who has put bits and pieces together to form a political colossus. I don't know about colossus. I think he's more a Rubik Cube, who keeps turning and twisting himself trying to get it right.
His puzzle is that he is, indeed, all the bits and pieces that have shown up during his long political career: moderate, liberal, conservative, progressive, populist, idealist, pragmatist, pugilist, egotist. Almost anything you'd want to call him, I'd agree with.
Except "loser."
I don't think he deserves that tag even though he did lose his first governor's race to Democrat Charles Robb in 1981, and even though he lost his second governor's race to Democrat Doug Wilder in '89. People shouldn't forget that he made a remarkable political comeback in '89, winning an upset victory in a bruising three-way primary race for the GOP nomination. Nor should they forget that, in the general election, he won in nearly every locality of Virginia, losing to Wilder by less than 7,000 votes out of 1.8 million cast.
Or "quitter."
Nobody can accuse Coleman of shying away from a political fight, even when he's not in a campaign. During the Chuck Robb-Jerry Baliles era in Richmond, Coleman's was usually the lone voice upbraiding the Democrats. (``Usually," I say, because I'm not forgetting Wilder.)
Still, there's no denying that Coleman has an image problem. How, pray, could a guy who successfully courted black voters in '77 in his election as attorney general come to call it "a bum rap" in his race for governor in '81 that he'd been labeled a moderate Republican?
And let us not forget it was Coleman who paid Oliver North to come to the GOP state convention in Roanoke in 1988, who praised North's "realistic views of world affairs," and who stood beside North at a fund-raiser (for Coleman) while Republicans chanted "Run, Ollie, Run!" for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated that year by a North critic, Republican Paul Trible. The crowd, incidentally, booed Trible, whom Coleman would defeat the following year for the governor's nomination.
To be sure, Coleman is a conglomeration, a rogues' gallery of himself. Probably no other politician in Virginia, save Wilder, stirs such a mixture of passions. Like Wilder, he is an absolute charmer who can easily convert strangers and enemies into friends and supporters - and who has a knack also for turning friends and supporters into enemies. Like Wilder, he has unbelievable political moxie and campaigning skills.
In fact, though they ran against each other in '89 for governor, these war horses have often been much more in sync with each other than with many in their own parties. (I can't prove it, but I suspect it was partly because Wilder gave the nod that Coleman was able to garner considerable black support in 1977.)
This year, of course, Coleman and Wilder will be on the road again against each other - as well as against Robb, the incumbent and Democratic nominee for the Senate, and North, the Republican nominee.
I'm not sure Coleman really wants to go to the U.S. Senate. I'm not sure. either, that he's driven by a desire to save Virginia, or the Republican party, from North. More, I think, he's running for redemption from past mistakes and past sins. But then aren't also Wilder and Robb? (North, apparently, does not need redemption because he has announced that God is on his side. Isn't it good that we now know how God votes, even in Virginia where there's no registration by party?)
But I'm also not sure Coleman won't be elected, even though many Republicans say it's inevitable that he will lose again, and many Democrats say he'll inevitably just muck things up enough so that nobody but North can win.
With Coleman, as with Wilder, it is useful to keep in mind British economist John Maynard Keynes' point: "The inevitable never happens. It is the unexpected always."
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