Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 30, 1994 TAG: 9410310066
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID M. POOLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
After $23 million, five months and thousands of miles of campaigning, Virginia's U.S. Senate race remains defined more by fear and anger than by any other factors.
Recent interviews with voters around the state suggest that no candidate taps into those emotions better than Republican nominee Oliver North.
People either love him or despise him; they insist he is a national hero or a national disgrace. There is no middle ground.
North's notoriety from the Iran-Contra scandal, his undeniable charisma and his record-shattering campaign expenditures have combined to make him the dominant figure in the race.
Even incumbent U.S. Sen. Charles Robb has admitted that the race amounts to a referendum on North. Many who support Robb feel little connection with the scandal-weary Democrat; they simply want a vehicle to defeat North.
"It's more of a vote against North than for somebody," said Mary Hodges, a 76-year-old retiree from Norfolk. "I can't vote for [North]. It's just the whole Iran-Contra thing, and the fact that he doesn't seem to know the truth when he sees it."
But those who support North do so absolutely. "I'm voting for North because he's got the guts to stand up for what he believes in," said Sandy Bays, who lives on a farm in Bedford County. "After all that stuff he went through in court, they still can't make any dirt stick to him."
Those views were repeated this week in interviews with more than 60 voters in three precincts in disparate parts of the state: a rural stretch of Bedford County, a commuter suburb in Fairfax County and a blue-collar neighborhood in Norfolk.
Each is strategically important in the campaign. North needs to run strong in rural areas where his defiance of the U.S. Congress strikes a populist chord. Robb needs to offset North's downstate appeal by rolling up big margins in the voter-rich suburbs of Washington, D.C. Working-class neighborhoods - home to Reagan Democrats - could be up for grabs.
Interviews in the precincts, while not scientific, seemed to echo the findings of most recent polls: It's going to be a close race between North and Robb.
Bedford County is a picture-perfect stretch of rolling farmland between Lynchburg and Roanoke, with the Blue Ridge Mountains to the north and Smith Mountain Lake to the south.
The county's Sign Rock precinct, just south of Bedford along Virginia 122, mirrored the statewide rural voting pattern in last year's gubernatorial election: Republican George Allen whipped Democrat Mary Sue Terry by a more than 2-to-1 margin.
North is hoping to do even better this year, counting on the increasing disaffection of rural Virginians who feel betrayed by urban politicians.
Mark Hubbard, who owns a photography studio, said he normally supports the man, not the party. But, this year, he is going Republican because he thinks North will shake up Washington.
"I think the Republicans just have better ideas this year. I don't trust the Democrats," he said. "I think it's time for a change all around. The guys who are in office now have proved themselves unreliable."
But even on what should be friendly soil, North can't shake his polarizing effect.
Voters were sharply divided over North's role, as a White House aide in the mid-1980s, in diverting profits from Iranian arms sales and funneling the money to anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua at a time when such aid was illegal.
Carpet store clerk Janet Rainey: "I think Ollie North is one of the biggest liars that ever hit Virginia ... I figure if you'll sell out your country, then you'll sell our state out, too."
Veteran W.B. Coleman: "There's been a lot of lies told about North. I think he's gotten a very raw deal. I'm 100 percent behind him."
Retired Air Force Master Sgt. Gary Overstreet: "North? He's another liar, that's all. He's been hiding behind his uniform and the flag since he started."
Farmer Donald Bays: "I think he's honest. I think he was just doing what he was told on that Iran-Contra thing."
Northern Virginia is the biggest prize in Virginia politics, home to one in every three state voters. Robb is counting on a big showing in solidly Democratic Alexandria and Arlington, and even in increasingly Republican Fairfax County.
Last year, with Republicans carrying 52 percent of Fairfax County in the gubernatorial election, the Freedom Hill precinct was almost perfectly split: 729 votes for Allen, 730 for Terry.
Freedom Hill is bordered on the north by the glass-skinned office towers of Tysons Corner and on the west by the Capitol Beltway. The precinct is being transformed, with developers bulldozing bungalows on one-and-a-half-acre lots and replacing each with five $400,000 single-family homes.
Voters interviewed here were uniformly sour on the election, and more invoked independent candidate J. Marshall Coleman than in either of the other two precincts.
Monica Hufnagel, 34, summed up what was a recurring theme in the precinct: North is too conservative. Robb is, well ... "He hasn't given me any reason why I should vote for him," she said.
Hufnagel, who supported H. Ross Perot in the 1992 presidential election, said she plans to vote for Coleman as a protest against the Robb-North barrage of negative TV ads.
Several others complained that Coleman is a worthy candidate but has no chance of winning.
"I would like to vote for Coleman, but I'm afraid that it would put my vote down the tube," said Jerry Robarge, a retired federal worker who said he usually votes Democrat.
Vicki Brubaker, a 31-year-old homemaker, isn't going to let her doubts about Coleman stop her from voting for him. She discounted Robb because of his admitted marital indiscretions. Even though she agrees with North on many conservative social issues, she is troubled by the Republican's ties to leaders of the Religious Right.
Voting for Coleman, Brubaker said, is better than not voting at all.
As the biggest metropolitan area outside Northern Virginia, Hampton Roads will be a critical battlefield in the Senate race.
The Tarrallton Precinct of Norfolk is a white, middle-class area of no pretensions and small, established homes. The district gave George Allen nearly 64 percent of its vote last year.
Virtually all of the two dozen people interviewed in Tarrallton said they were voting based on character, not issues. Most said that standard works in North's favor.
"I'm going to have to vote for North, the lesser of three evils,'' said James Norris, 49, a supervisor at Newport News Shipbuilding.
"Think about it. Robb was down here in Virginia Beach with all those parties and drugs, and then he says he didn't know anything about it, right? If he's not smart enough to know what's going on at his parties, then he sure ain't smart enough to be up there in Washington.
"And maybe I don't have a whole lot of intelligence, but when somebody tells that deal up in the hotel room and says nothing happened, that's insulting to me."
As governor in the mid-1980s, Robb attended parties at Virginia Beach where cocaine allegedly was used. Robb has denied any knowledge of drugs. He did admit getting a nude massage - and nothing more - from a former beauty queen in a New York hotel.
Robert B. Fitzgerald, a 70-year-old retiree, was bothered more about North's lies in the Iran-Contra affair than about Robb's private life.
"Robb's not my ideal, but I don't mind him going to those parties with cocaine. So what? And that girl giving him a massage? Hell, I could have used that," Fitzgerald said.
"I retired from the Navy and I wouldn't want anything to do with North, all that lying he's done. At least with Robb you know what you've got. Sure, I'd like to see something better come along. But I haven't seen it yet."
Ines Thomas, 52, is so disgusted with the candidates that she may shirk what she considers her civic duty on Election Day.
"I usually vote, sure. But this time I just don't see anybody up there who I think can do the job. You hear so much garbage all the time; this time, I just might not vote at all."
The interviews for this story were conducted by staff writers Richard Foster in Bedford County and David M. Poole in Fairfax County, and Robert Little of Landmark News Service in Norfolk.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB