Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 14, 1995 TAG: 9502140135
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
A political action committee mailed 25,000 letters this month announcing a Dump Warner Campaign, while Fairfax County organizers began recruiting volunteers for RAW - Republicans Against Warner - with the goal of chapters in Virginia's 20 largest localities.
Warner, a Republican who says he will seek a fourth term next year, alienated conservatives by opposing home-school champion Mike Farris for lieutenant governor in 1993. Last year, Warner helped the independent Senate candidacy of Marshall Coleman, who was running against Republican nominee Oliver North.
``John Warner is a rich dilettante who has made a career of betrayal and character assassination,'' the fund-raising letter says.
Peter Flaherty, the chairman of the Conservative Campaign Fund, a group in Tysons Corner that sent the letter, said Warner made a mistake.
``Warner should have kept his mouth shut,'' Flaherty said. ``Instead, he went on the warpath against a conservative hero.''
Warner was booed and heckled when he tried to speak at November's victory party for Rep. Tom Davis, R-Fairfax County.
At a Republican fund-raising reception at a fire station in Annandale last month, a dozen demonstrators wore their overcoats inside out to brand Warner a ``turncoat.''
During last weekend's Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual event that drew 2,000 activists to Washington, D.C., Warner took a pasting from the podium and in the crowd. Orange ``Goodbye John'' buttons were almost as popular as the ones that said, ``If Nicole Simpson Had a Gun, She'd Still Be Alive.''
``What Warner did is unforgivable sin,'' said Bryan Wilkes, 27, of Arlington, a member of the board of Young Americans for Freedom. ``He was a traitor to the party.''
Ralph Reed, executive director of the Chesapeake-based Christian Coalition, cited Warner's opposition to Farris and North and said, ``He, more than anyone else, bears the responsibility for their defeat.''
Warner's chief of staff, Susan A. Magill, said the senator had expected a tough nomination fight.
``He's doing the work the taxpayers elected him to do, not spending a lot of time bickering about 1996,'' she said. ``Virginia Republicans should keep their eyes on the goal, which is to keep this Senate seat in the Republican category in 1996.''
Republicans have not decided whether to have a convention, where party regulars decide the nominee, or a primary, where any registered voter can have a say.
Flaherty, the fund-raiser, said his group was founded in 1988, collected about $250,000 last year and has a full-time staff of three. He said this month's national mailing was a test.
Eugene Delgaudio said his RAW members would go to every announced Warner appearance ``as a sort of vigil at John's wake.''
Delgaudio gives converts lyrics to be sung to the tune of ``Anchors Aweigh'': ``John Warner, go away.''
A new blue-and-white bumper strip says ``Dump Warner'' in the lettering used for ``Ollie'' stickers. But North himself is staying out of it.
``You will never see me having ever said an unkind thing about another Republican, and I'm not going to start now,'' North said.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB