Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, August 6, 1994 TAG: 9408080050
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HARDY LENGTH: Long
Oliver North went fishing Friday.
He didn't have much luck as an angler; in an hour of trolling Smith Mountain Lake, he barely got a nibble - even with Buck McNeely, the host of a Missouri-based syndicated television show on hunting and fishing, advising him on casting techniques.
The one striper North did land, he judged too puny and tossed back.
But even as North and his flotilla - one boat for the candidate, one for the media, one for the staff - bobbed along the waters off Indian Point, the Republican Senate nominee was trying to reel in an even more elusive trophy: "the Bubba vote."
For North, it was The Week of the Gun.
A few days before, he'd been in Northern Virginia, decrying gun control laws. In the Washington suburbs, his eye was on female voters, who polls consistently show are less likely to back him than their male counterparts. There, North stood alongside three pro-gun women who talked about why they need guns to defend themselves against big-city crime.
Friday, North journeyed to Smith Mountain Lake to cast a line for the hunting-and-fishing crowd. Standing on the dock of the Indian Point Marina, the khaki-clad North talked about how he'd "grown up with a fishing rod in one hand and a hunting rifle in the other."
He declared that he counted himself as someone who "prefers the great outdoors to a great cocktail party."
And he spoke grimly of a "cultural war" being fought in the United States, one that pits the "radical environmentalists and gun grabbers" of the Clinton administration against hunters and anglers.
"There are those in Washington who don't want you or future generations to hunt or fish anymore," North said. "These are the ones I have called the twentysomething staffers with an earring and ax to grind. They seem to think fur is murder, hunting is immoral and fishing is cruel and unusual punishment."
As evidence of this alleged liberal assault on fishing, North shook a Rat-L-Trap lure before the television cameras. The Environmental Protection Agency - which North dubbed the "Extremist Pandering Agency" - has moved to ban lead fishing lure and sinkers, saying they kill waterfowl that swallow them.
"This is looney," North said.
The proposed ban is backed by the Izaak Walton League of America, one of the oldest and largest outdoor groups in the country. And some companies already have started marketing environmentally friendly, albeit more expensive, sinkers and lures made out of tin.
But North charged the proposed lead sinker ban is just the first step toward "denying us the opportunity to hunt and fish."
"As your United States senator, I will get the truth out," North said. "They may stick me in the furtherest corner of the U.S. Senate, but my voice will be heard."
It was heard Friday by a dozen or so sportsmen - and sportswomen - at the marina. They were delighted by what North had to say. "I want him to be president," said Virginia Ratliff, the marina's owner. "Because I think what we've got in there now is trash. I think Bill Clinton is not for the people that are common."
That's precisely the point of North's emphasis on hunting issues, observes Virginia Commonwealth University political analyst Bob Holsworth. "What's unusual is his willingness to declare he's a partisan in this cultural war. In most campaigns, you try to minimize those issues. But in a four-way race, he feels it's very important to tell people who he's for."
And one key constituency is rural voters for whom hunting and fishing are cultural touchstones.
"North's campaign is modeled in part on what George Allen did last year," Holsworth said. Allen, perhaps more so than any other statewide candidate in recent years, spent time organizing "Sportsmen for Allen" groups in rural Virginia and emphasizing his opposition to gun control during his successful campaign for governor.
But North is turning up the volume on his rhetoric even more.
"North is going to audiences other candidates don't ordinary talk to and saying, 'I'm going to defend your way of life.' These cultural appeals are ultimately the root of North's campaign," Holsworth said. "There's very little about economics, other than 'I won't tax you.'
"North's ability to utilize this cultural conflict is quite important. For North, it appears quite authentic. ... He has been very successful at portraying himself as an ordinary guy with ordinary likes. He doesn't even mention the other three candidates, but somehow paints Robb in the corner of being with the crowd who wants to take your fishing line away."
Indeed, Robb spokesman Bert Rohrer didn't even want to acknowledge North's comments Friday. All he would say was "Senator Robb has never voted for nor will he be in favor of taking away anybody's right to hunt or fish."
That's just the kind of boilerplate statement North wanted him to say, Holsworth contends. "North, more so than the other candidates, is giving people a reason to vote for him. North is lining up constituencies."
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB