Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 23, 1994 TAG: 9410240067
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
It's a Thursday morning in mid-October, and Fast has just pulled up to the Gables Shopping Center to talk about welfare reform at Montgomery County Republican headquarters. It's another weekly news conference in the Bluefield College math professor's campaign against Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon.
His staff sent a "Fast Fax" to reporters the day before to publicize this stop. The candidate drove alone from his home in Tazewell in his sturdy 1983 Chevrolet Caprice station wagon.
Only problem: Someone forgot to call the Montgomery Republicans, and it's a half-hour from opening time. Only one reporter shows up on time, though another straggles in minutes later after an early-bird Republican stops by and unlocks the door. But no TV news reporters show, and therefore there's no free TV exposure across a broad swath of the 9th District.
Unless you have a staff of about 16, running a congressional campaign is an exercise in mass chaos, Fast says later. "We have a staff of four. You can't possibly get everything done that you need to get done."
Though outwardly confident, Fast is by most measures facing long odds in his attempt to unseat Boucher 16 days from now. Fast has done well in raising $175,000 as of mid-month. But, with just $43,000 unspent as of Sept. 30, he lacked the money to start TV advertising until this week. Boucher, by contrast, had $558,700 in the bank and started running his third commercial Wednesday.
Fast has run the standard campaign against Boucher: Call him a liberal (also tried in '82, '84 and '92), and call for term limits, a balanced budget and tax cuts for families (tried in '92). He also has made the pitch for market-based health reform and a more sweeping reform of the welfare system than that proposed by Democrats. Though he galvanized the party faithful over the summer, he remains an unknown quantity in many parts of the vast district.
The wild cards will be what coattail effect, if any, Fast enjoys from Oliver North and how much North's U.S. Senate campaign will energize conservative Christian voters, who would seem to be natural Fast supporters.
In his favor is Mike Farris' strong showing in the 9th last year against Lt. Gov. Don Beyer. Farris won 17 of the district's 19 counties and two of its four cities, losing only Montgomery and Roanoke counties, Radford and Norton.
Boucher, however, won by a 4-point margin in 1984, when his opponent had the advantage of riding the coattails of President Reagan's re-election landslide - and nearly double the money Fast has been able to raise. Since then, 9th District Republicans have been unable to field a strong, regionally known candidate.
Fast, 33, is a bit of an anomaly: Unlike previous Boucher opponents, he has never held elected office. A conservative Christian, he hadn't even worked for a political campaign before deciding to run in December.
Fast also has shallow roots in Southwest Virginia: He moved to Blacksburg in 1987 after graduate school in North Carolina. After finishing his doctorate in 1990, he and his family moved to Tazewell. He is on leave from his job as mathematics department coordinator at the Baptist-affiliated Bluefield College.
To Fast, his lack of political experience doesn't matter. What does matter is his philosophical belief in limited government and his experiences as a young father who struggled through graduate school while supporting his growing family, which now includes four boys.
Fast is an unlikely politician. He's earnest, whether trashing a Boucher stand or explaining his own. He didn't run for local office first, he says, because men he respects fill those spots in his hometown.
"To my mind, the real political need is to capture Washington, again, for limited constitutional government."
Like a good teacher, he can explain his ideas, if perhaps a little too extensively in the age of canned replies.
It's not surprising to find that he studied philosophy at the University of Akron. He grew up in nearby Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. His father, Herbert, worked as a truck driver but was laid off in the early 1970s and didn't get back on his feet financially until 1974, when he found a stable trucking job. The Fasts were a lower-middle-class family, a status Fast refers to frequently in stump speeches.
Fast graduated from Cuyahoga Valley Christian Academy in 1979. In college, he was drawn to philosophy in order to trace the origins of ideas and explore Greek and Hebrew influences on modern Christianity.
While he was interested in economics, running for office remained a distant possibility.
"A lot of young people kick it around in their minds. I always envisioned it would be sometime later."
He and his wife, Judy, were high school sweethearts. They married between his junior and senior years of college. Fast worked for two years as a roofer and in retail sales before deciding to pursue a master's degree in math at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Fast says he has read extensively about the Austrian school of economics to formulate his belief in a low-tax state that won't damage family structure through its tax and welfare policies. Supply-side theorist George Gilder's work was a big influence, too, he says.
Fast is a member of the conservative Presbyterian Church of America, and religion plays a role in his political thinking.
"Everyone has certain presuppositions to their thought. They have certain assumptions which they don't question, they can't question," Fast said. "My presuppositions are theistic.
"I start with the presupposition that the infinite personal God has made all things."
In the past, Fast says, he was licensed by his church as a substitute preacher. He has appeared at churches on the campaign trail. "When I speak in churches, I am speaking simply as a Christian, not as a politician."
Fast even downplays the strength of the religious right. "As far as effective political units, conservative churches are not nearly as effective as some of the other substructures in our society."
The broad, national issues aren't the only ones Fast talks about. He looks to the 9th District's Kentucky-border coal counties and speaks of the need to improve roads. He talks of supporting Virginia Tech - the economic engine of the New River Valley - at the federal level.
But he bristles at Boucher's brand of bring-home-the-bacon politics, where the incumbent emphasizes the federal money he has brought to the 9th District.
"It's much, much, much more important how you're voting in the Congress with regard to economic issues than trying to be a salesman for the district," Fast said. "The idea that a congressman can attend committee meetings and do things on the Hill and at the same time is your economic development salesman is ridiculous."
That's why Fast has spent so much time blasting Boucher on national issues, attacks that Boucher has characterized as "the most negative and mean-spirited campaign in the history of Southwest Virginia" - the same charge, almost verbatim, that Boucher leveled against his '84 and '92 foes.
Fast thinks a congressman needs to do more than announce a federal grant here, a new plant there. "We have a tendency to look at specific little programs [rather] than the overall picture. You have to consider the economic ramifications of the higher taxes and the deficit that creates that small program. Higher taxes, greater deficits, more regulation. You're choking economic growth.
"It's time to set the American people free once again."
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB