Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 20, 1995 TAG: 9501200099
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG SCHNEIDER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
The Republican governor's approval rating has dropped steadily since last year, with 48 percent judging him to be doing an excellent or good job in a survey of 809 registered voters conducted Monday through Wednesday.
In September, that number was 53 percent, and last March it was 57 percent.
The number of voters giving Allen a poor rating has jumped to 17 percent, more than doubling the 8 percent mark of September.
Thursday's poll was conducted by Mason-Dixon Political/Media Research Inc. of Maryland and was paid for by the Roanoke Times & World-News and other media outlets statewide. It has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.
Democrats pounced on the numbers as proof that Allen's ambitious cocktail of $2.1 billion in tax cuts over five years, $403 million in spending cuts next year and $2 billion in prison construction over 10 years is too harsh for the public to swallow.
"I thought George Allen had overreached. I thought he was bleeding pretty badly, because I think he pushed it beyond what's credible," said House Majority Leader Richard Cranwell of Roanoke County. "My mail's running about 100-to-1 against the governor's proposals, and phone calls about the same."
The governor's office is not hearing from the same people.
"I think, by and large, the general public favors the overall efforts of downsizing state government and of making state government less costly and making it run more efficiently," said Ken Stroupe, Allen's press secretary.
The negative numbers, Stroupe said, are simply the result of taking bold action and then weathering criticism from Democrats. "It's never easy when you go about changing the big-government-knows-best attitudes, which have prevailed here in the state for decades," he said.
According to the poll, almost three-quarters of voters oppose Allen's plans to reduce funding for mental health facilities, senior care facilities and local police departments. Almost two-thirds of those surveyed opposed eliminating Medicaid coverage for low-income teen-agers.
The only cuts that drew more support than opposition - by slim margins - were reducing aid to public television and lopping 1,100 positions from the state work force.
Support for cutting taxes was tepid, with 45 percent favoring the notion and 38 percent opposing. Allen's specific tax-cut plan posted an almost even split: 41 percent in favor, 39 percent against.
House Speaker Thomas Moss, D-Norfolk, said he once feared Allen's proposal would be too popular to fight in a year that will see all 140 General Assembly seats come up for election and with Republicans poised to take control of the legislature.
But Moss, Cranwell and other party leaders have grown increasingly confident in their resolve to fight Allen, and seemed giddy over the poll results, which they rushed to photocopy and share.
"The public is catching on. [Allen] is the most blatantly political governor we've had since I've been up here," said Moss, first elected to the House in 1966.
"It's not easy to oppose a tax cut," Cranwell added. "If anybody told you we weren't concerned with what the governor said from a political standpoint, they were being disingenuous. But what we're seeing now, I think the Republicans are starting to feel the heat."
Stroupe's heat was more in the form of anger at Democrats, who have grown harsher by the day in their attacks on Allen's budget plan. "The public clearly is not on their side, because they have not told the truth on this budget," he said. "They have perpetuated every falsity they could possibly present on the budget ... The voters will not stand for being lied to. And it's unfortunate they would take pleasure in their misleadings."
If Democrats want to oppose specific program cuts, they should offer alternatives, Stroupe said. Otherwise, he added, "it's full steam ahead."
by CNB