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

DATE: TUESDAY, August 9, 1994                   TAG: 9408090113
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NORTH DEMANDS JOBS FOR THE STATE'S POOR

And while most people in the neighborhood favored former Gov. Douglas Wilder, an independent and one of three opponents North has in the U.S. Senate race, a minister who supports Wilder had to admit North was on target.

``You're in Democratic country. This is Wilder country,'' the Rev. Anthony Paige of the First Baptist Church of Lamberts Point told North. ``These voters are deeply in love with Doug Wilder.''

But, he continued, ``these people need jobs. The man who talks about jobs is the man with the solution.''

North, the Republican nominee, and Jack Kemp, a 1996 GOP presidential hopeful who was President Bush's secretary of Housing and Urban Development, strolled through the housing development and past nightclubs featuring exotic dancers.

The two held an impromptu news conference by a cluster of small houses where residents complained that more than half of the young men in the mostly black neighborhood are jobless and the children have no play equipment.

Kemp and North said Washington Democrats were to blame.

``This is a community that is under the thumb of the other party's liberal wing,'' North said.

Kemp said North is trying to spread the word to blacks and other traditionally Democratic voters that the GOP is ``the party of opportunity, not welfare'' that can combine government aid to communities with private-sector jobs.

``What Ollie is saying: `Let's do things differently,''' Kemp said.

In Richmond, Democratic incumbent Charles Robb won the Virginia Coalition of Police and Deputy Sheriffs endorsement and talked about his support of gun control and the crime bill pending in Congress.

``Obviously, this is not going to do all that we need done,'' Robb said at a police station. ``It just means there won't be a legal way for criminals to buy handguns.''

Dan Niedhammer, a Richmond patrolman and legislative director of the 4,000-member state AFL-CIO affiliate, said Robb's support of the Brady bill, tougher sentencing and community policing led to the endorsement.

Robb said he favors the crime bill largely because it provides $9 billion to put 100,000 more officers on the streets.

Kemp, however, called the crime bill ``pork barrel'' and said what communities need are more jobs and educational opportunities, not officers.

Wilder continued his automobile tour of the Virginia mountains, stopping in a Collinsville restaurant where the late House of Delegates Speaker A.L. Philpott endorsed his candidacy for lieutenant governor nine years ago. Wilder, who went on to win that campaign and was elected governor four years later, was then known as a firebrand state senator from Richmond. But Philpott's backing helped him overcome resistance within the political old guard to having a black candidate for statewide office.

``When A.L. Philpott died, I lost a great friend, and Virginia lost a great friend,'' Wilder said.

The other independent candidate in the four-way Senate race, former Republican state Attorney General Marshall Coleman, concentrated Monday on private fund-raising efforts, spokesman Anson Franklin said.

Keywords:
POLITICS