Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 23, 1994 TAG: 9410240066
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
But the six-term Democrat from Abingdon shrugs off the label, even as he regularly earns high grades from liberal interest groups and correspondingly low marks from conservatives. He votes with President Clinton 85 percent of the time and proudly cites Clinton's accomplishments at a time of broad unpopularity for the president.
Ever since he upset an incumbent from his own party in 1975 at the politically tender age of 28 to join the state Senate, Boucher has claimed that effectiveness is more important than ideology. Before he ran for Congress in 1982, he described himself: "I don't consider myself philosophical at all. I consider myself practical."
Boucher, now 48, still uses that approach, and it may account for his staying power in a historically volatile district. Practicality has led him to focus on economic development and jobs.
"It is the greatest concern of Southwest Virginia," Boucher said. "This is what [residents want] their government at all levels to help them with. The federal government has the greatest ability to assist them with this need."
When he took office, fewer than half the counties and cities in the 9th District - encompassing most of Southwest Virginia - had industrial parks. Today, all 23 jurisdictions do, most built with the help of federal funds.
Practicality led Boucher to begin pitching the district in late 1987 to business leaders who came to lobby him because of his post on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He called the program "Showcasing Southwest Virginia"; he took business and government executives on tours of various development sites across the 200-mile-long district. Boucher cites companies in Montgomery, Pulaski and Smyth counties that are there because of the tours. And a new federal prison is set for Lee County, at the very tip of the state, because federal Bureau of Prisons officials came along, Boucher says.
Fast, like 1992 Republican candidate Gary Weddle, says Boucher is taking credit where it isn't due. "The real fact is that other people do the work at the local level and then a certain person flies in and takes the credit."
Again, Boucher is unruffled. "I don't blame my opponents for being upset about this," he said. "They all know that this addresses the foremost problems of Southwest Virginia."
Blacksburg's Del. Jim Shuler opened his remarks to the 150 party faithful at the Montgomery County Democratic Committee's fall dinner by poking fun at how much he'd adapted to the politician's uniform since being elected to the General Assembly a year ago. He noted his dark suit, conservative tie, white shirt and something else: "You have to look up close, but I have little glasses just like Rick Boucher's."
Boucher projects the no-nonsense image, of being the kind of guy who wears heavily starched shirts and enjoys it. His dress is crisp, his demeanor precise, his diction perfect.
He doesn't speak off the cuff. When he talks about an issue, he speaks in detail, whether it's the various types of coal-cleaning technologies, the future of telecommunications or the qualifications for new wilderness areas in the Jefferson National Forest.
Boucher is a fourth-generation politician. His maternal great-grandfather and grandfather, both Democrats, served in the House of Delegates. His late father, a Republican, served as commonwealth's attorney of Washington County. His mother, Dorothy Boucher, a Democrat, still practices law in Abingdon. In religion, he is a Methodist.
Boucher followed politics from the get-go. He fondly remembers seeing former President Harry Truman stump for candidate John F. Kennedy at the 1960 Acres of Democrats rally in Abingdon. He graduated from Roanoke College in 1968 and the University of Virginia School of Law in 1971. A bachelor, he practiced law for two years on Wall Street before returning to Abingdon.
After working for gubernatorial and congressional candidates in '73 and '74, Boucher challenged and defeated an 11-year Democratic state senator in 1975 for the party nomination, then won the general election. He quickly established a reputation for being a nuts-and-bolts legislator who enjoyed remarkable success in pushing reform legislation through the General Assembly.
When he defeated former Rep. William Wampler in 1982, it was by the narrowest of margins. Wampler demanded and received a recount. But 7,000 votes in the coal counties of Buchanan, Dickenson, Wise, Lee and Russell provided the winning edge. In 1984, he beat Pearisburg Del. Jefferson Stafford by 4 percentage points, this time aided significantly by a 14,000-vote margin in the coalfields. That year he added Montgomery County and Bristol, along with Craig County and Norton, which also voted for him in '82.
In 1988, against Bristol's Del. John Brown, Boucher won 63 percent of the vote. Brown won only Washington County and his hometown. Against Weddle in 1992, Boucher swept all 23 counties and cities, even Weddle's hometown of Radford.
This time out, Boucher expects to do better than his 26-point margin over Weddle. With a paid election staff of eight and many volunteers at work, he sees nothing to worry about in the vocal support for Oliver North. He predicts Southwest Virginia will go for incumbent Sen. Charles Robb and expects internal polling taken Wednesday night to confirm that hunch. Moreover, he sees ticket splitting. "I see a lot of yards with North and Boucher signs in them. Our polling shows that, too."
Boucher sponsored three measures in the last session of Congress that he cites as examples of practical legislation: a comprehensive reform of telecommunications law, a bill to improve patent protection for the biotechnology industry and a bill to give localities the power to veto the importing of out-of-state garbage into private landfills.
All three died in the waning days of the session, the victims of parliamentary holdups in the Senate, where Republicans quashed any legislation that could be helpful to Democratic re-election chances. Boucher calls the Republican filibustering and maneuvering "the most cynical thing I've seen in my years of public life."
The communications bill would have eliminated government regulations that prohibit the cable television and telephone industries from going into each other's business. It would have created market incentives, Boucher says, to spur capital investment in the most modern electronic networks. Eventually, it would have aided Southwest Virginia both through the networks' usefulness in education and through residents' improved access to information.
All three measures enjoyed bipartisan support in the House, Boucher says. He plans to reintroduce them in January.
Boucher said he supports modest health reform, including a ban on excluding coverage because of pre-existing conditions; medical malpractice reform; and providing broader incentives to encourage private-sector development of voluntary, managed-care networks.
Boucher, with a congressional staff of 18, is known for focusing on a few key areas of legislation, most highly technical. But he says that's primarily a matter of giving the people what they want: The biotechnology legislation was inspired by suggestions from researchers at Virginia Tech; the garbage bill came in the wake of the environmental disaster at the Kim-Stan landfill in Alleghany County.
"Virtually everything that I've done, in terms of legislation, is done because of a constituent problem that has been presented to me," he said. "The work that I've done enjoys broad support across the 9th District."
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB