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

DATE: FRIDAY, August 5, 1994                   TAG: 9408050074
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PAT JENNINGS

THE DEATH on Tuesday of W. Pat Jennings, at age 74, has taken from Southwest Virginia's Fightin' 9th Congressional District a symbol of the district's political character: a two-party system in which Democrats and Republicans not only competed vigorously, but also did so as faithful members of the national parties with which they were aligned.

Jennings, who died from injuries suffered in a tractor accident while mowing the grass behind his auto dealership in Marion, was on the Democratic side. A liberal by Virginia standards, his hallmark was loyalty to the national party at a time when the state party was tightly controlled by the political machine of conservative Harry F. Byrd Sr.

For much of the time that Jennings served as the 9th District's representative in Congress, from 1955 to 1967, he waged spirited battles against the machine, and in 1964 played a memorable role in its unhinging. At the Democrats' state convention that year, when the question of endorsement for Democratic President Lyndon Johnson's election arose, Jennings issued his famous rallying call:

"Let's be Democrats from the courthouse to the White House!"

In an unprecedented rejection of Byrd's policy of "golden silence" - which in effect usually meant Virginia Democrats' support of Republican presidential candidates - the '64 convention endorsed Johnson.

Jennings' words were more than just convention rhetoric. He had actively supported John F. Kennedy in 1960, at a time when many Virginia Democrats were wary of Kennedy and his Catholicism. To Byrd's disgust, Jennings became a part of both JFK's and LBJ's inner circles. As a congressman, and later as clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives for eight years, the tall Southwest Virginian hobnobbed with the likes of the late House Speaker Tip O'Neill.

Jennings proudly wore the badge of "national Democrat," even when national Democrats were regularly cursed by Democrats in other parts of the commonwealth. After retiring from active politics and returning to his Smyth County home, Jennings continued to be regarded as a Washington insider.

Jennings lived to see genuine two-party politics come to the state as a whole, and to see an end to the days when Virginia Democrats played coy in any but their own elections.

Ironically, however, death came to Jennings - whose sobriquet was "Mr. Democrat" and whose creed was party loyalty - in a year when a U.S. Senate race would rip asunder both parties.

The work of Jennings and other party-builders on both sides of the aisle is not inconsequential. Without healthy parties, there cannot be a healthy two-party system. Without a healthy two-party system, America suffers.

by CNB