Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 22, 1994 TAG: 9407220124
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium
``Bring Bill Clinton to Virginia Beach and ask him as president of the United States to take action'' to resolve the Lake Gaston impasse, Coleman said at Mount Trashmore, the resort city's landfill-turned-park.
Robb has said he expects Clinton to campaign for him. But Coleman, an independent who ran twice for governor as a Republican, said Robb should call on his fellow Democrat in the White House to visit the city whose Lake Gaston water supply project has gotten snarled in a maze of environmental reviews.
``I know he likes to come to Virginia Beach,'' Coleman said of Robb, an apparent reference to parties Robb attended in the city when he was governor. Reports during Robb's 1988 Senate campaign said drugs were used openly at some of those parties. Robb denies seeing such activity.
Meanwhile, former Gov. Douglas Wilder, the other independent in the four-way Senate race, added his own twist to a suggestion by North that the candidates hold Lincoln-Douglas-style debates with no moderators or panels of questioners.
While North wanted all four candidates to debate at once, Wilder said they should have one-on-one debates. He and North should go first, Wilder said.
Wilder said the round-robin format is basically the same one high school debaters use.
``If teen-agers can debate issues of substance with intelligence and candor, so too should candidates for the U.S. Senate,'' he said at a Richmond news conference.
``I'm glad he's responding,'' North said at an appearance in Colonial Heights. But he said he hoped Wilder would focus on issues and not act like ``a media star trying to hog the show.''
Robb and Coleman also have said they would be willing to debate, although they have not committed to a specific format. The four candidates have appeared together twice, on CNN's ``Larry King Live'' and before the Virginia Bar Association.
The Lake Gaston pipeline, sought by Virginia Beach as a long-term water source, has been tied up by various federal reviews and court challenges since it was approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1984.
``What's happening with respect to Lake Gaston is a perfect example of what is wrong in Washington,'' Coleman said.
He said Robb - ``part of the Democratic establishment'' - needs only to call Clinton to get regulators to move things along.
However, he refused to say whether Republican Sen. John Warner, a chief backer of his campaign, should have done the same thing for the pipeline before President Bush left office.
``I think all of us believed that the project was coming to a conclusion'' then, Coleman said.
Bert Rohrer, a spokesman for Robb, said more progress has been made on the pipeline in the past 18 months ``than the two preceding administrations made in eight years.''
Both Robb and Warner support the project. Its chief opponent is North Carolina.
Later Thursday, Robb's office released a letter from Virginia Beach Mayor Meyera Oberndorf supporting Robb.
``No one can blame you for the inertia caused by administrative stonewalling that we have been particularly vexed with of late; however, it is only through your efforts ... that we have moved ahead,'' she said in the letter to Robb.
Coleman's attention on Clinton comes after he and North, the GOP nominee, spent the early part of the week courting Republicans in Congress.
Despite his attacks on ``Washington insiders,'' North stumped Monday in Williamsburg and Norfolk with Texas Sen. Phil Gramm. Coleman said Wednesday that Warner and Missouri Sen. John Danforth will sponsor a fund-raiser for him next week.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB