Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 30, 1994 TAG: 9412240008
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: G1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Party: Republican
Residence: Roanoke
Age: 42
Occupation: Lawyer
Political background: First elected in 1992
Rep. Bob Goodlatte enjoys a unique distinction this fall: He is the only member of Virginia's House delegation who is running unopposed.
Some of his Republican colleagues - Tom Bliley of Richmond and Frank Wolf of Fairfax County - face only token opposition from fringe candidates. But Goodlatte managed to avoid even that.
Not bad for a freshman who two years ago endured a hard-fought campaign to reclaim a seat that had been in Democratic hands for a decade.
How did Goodlatte get off so easy this time? It appears to be a Republican year, for one thing. More important, though, the 6th District has historically leaned GOP. It first went Republican in 1952, in the initial wave of GOP victories in modern Virginia history, and stayed that way for another 30 years. When Caldwell Butler retired in 1982, Democrat Jim Olin won. But in many respects, Olin's victory may have been a fluke - the result of an unusual convergence of a Democratic tide nationwide, a strong Democratic candidate with ties to the Roanoke business community, a divided Republican Party and a little-known GOP contender from the "wrong" end of the Roanoke-anchored district.
Goodlatte's convincing 60 percent-to-40 percent landslide over Steve Musselwhite last time probably didn't hurt, either.
During Goodlatte's two years in office, Democrats have been surprisingly muted. The worst they've said is he's, well, a Republican.
Goodlatte had been pegged as a policy wonk. So he surprised even fellow Republicans by his lobbying skills. Those became apparent not long after he was elected, when Goodlatte persuaded the GOP leadership to award him a better set of committee assignments than either of his predecessors had enjoyed. Goodlatte, like Olin before him, took a seat on Agriculture, a nod to the farming interests that dominate the northern third of the district. But he also gained a seat on Judiciary, which had been Butler's main committee.
In that same vein, two of Goodlatte's most high-profile successes have come by working with members on the other side of the aisle. He joined with Democrat L.F. Payne in the 5th District to secure House approval for $5 million to study a proposed interstate highway between Roanoke and Greensboro, N.C.; he worked with Democrat Nick Rahall of West Virginia to get the House to pass $8 million to study another proposed interstate, the so-called Trans-America Highway, from Beckley, W.Va., to Lynchburg. Both measures, though, died in the Senate, so Goodlatte says he'll have to start over in the next session. "The money is probably as attainable," he says.
Back home, Goodlatte has quietly emerged as a behind-the-scenes player.
He's taken an interest in the proposed "smart road" from I-81 to Blacksburg, a project outside his district but one important to Roanoke's business community. He helped arrange the meeting between smart-road boosters and the new Republican administration in Richmond, a conference that resulted in Gov. George Allen agreeing to ante up partial funding for construction if the project won a key federal grant - which recently it did.
Goodlatte was among those who persuaded the Hanover Direct mail-order firm to put its new distribution center in the Roanoke Valley.
And he mediated what had appeared to be an intractable environmental dispute in Amherst County. Environmentalists and county officials wanted part of the national forest there set aside as a "wilderness area" to protect the municipal watershed; timber interests didn't object to protecting the watershed but vehemently opposed the "wilderness" designation for fear it might lead to other areas of the forest being put off-limits to logging. Goodlatte found a middle-ground status that suited both sides, and even got a bill passed creating the Mount Pleasant National Scenic Area. "That's fairly unusual for a freshman member of the minority party," Goodlatte says.
Goodlatte ran on a reformist platform and has made a point of running a frugal operation. He's only spent 75 percent of the office expenses he's allowed, and just half of the money he's allotted for postage. He proudly ticks off a bevy of awards from conservative watchdog groups: Concerned Citizens Against Government Waste named him a "Taxpayers' Hero" and the National Taxpayers' Union designated him as a "Watchdog of the Treasury." On many of those scorecards, he got a more frugal ranking than any other Republican from Virginia. He considers that a point of honor. "Bliley managed to tie me on one," Goodlatte says, "but he didn't beat me."
- Dwayne Yancey
WHAT OTHERS SAY ABOUT THE INCUMBENT
Congressional Quarterly's "Politics in America": "Like so many first-year members, Goodlatte supports a balanced-budget amendment and a presidential line-item veto. Yet unlike most freshmen, Goodlatte opposed all budget plans offered on the House floor in March 1993, including a Republican substitute by John Kasich of Ohio that received the support of all but 41 Republicans but which Goodlatte believed did not go far enough in reducing the deficit.
"Goodlatte backs term limits and was among a group of GOP members who pushed through a rule prohibiting anyone in the Republican caucus from holding any top committee post for more than six consecutive years."
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB