Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 13, 1995 TAG: 9503140020
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOHN GOOLRICK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
If Republicans, now three votes short in the House of Delegates and the state Senate, take control of one or both of those bodies, Allen will be in a strong position to push through some of the tax and spending cuts squashed by Democrats during the General Assembly session.
In that event, Attorney General Jim Gilmore would probably be the unchallenged Republican gubernatorial nominee in 1997.
But if the GOP fails to gain ground in this fall's election - or loses ground, as some think may be the case - Allen will be the lamest of ducks for the next year, and some elements of the party may look to someone other than Gilmore to be their nominee for governor.
That someone could be state Sen. John Chichester of Stafford who, while outwardly loyal to much of the Allen program, has privately expressed thoughts that Allen mistakenly advanced too ambitious a program in too confrontational a manner. Chichester, and many other GOP legislators, think Allen's chief advisers have shown that while they may be successful on the campaign trail, they are rank rookies when it comes to the business of governance.
Chichester was the party nominee for lieutenant governor in 1985 and barely lost to Democrat Douglas Wilder. Since then he has become the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee and, in the eyes of many observers, has grown tremendously in legislative and communications skills.
If Republicans took control of the Senate, Chichester - who has been a senator since 1978 - would take over the Finance Committee, one of the legislature's most powerful units, and would be unlikely to let his name be advanced as a 1997 gubernatorial prospect.
Otherwise, he might be strongly regarded as an alternative to Gilmore, who some observers thinks lacks the necessary charisma to defeat Don Beyer, the probable Democratic nominee.
The problem for those who might seek an alternative, however, would lie with how to deny Gilmore the nomination. The attorney general has curried lots of favor with the party's right wing, which in recent years has shown itself able to dominate state nominating conventions. The trick would be to seek ways to get the state party apparatus, now firmly in the hands of the right, to allow a primary.
A conservative of the Mills Godwin school, Chichester was among those who joined Democrats such as Earl Dickinson and Sen. Edd Houck in submitting budget amendments to restore funds that Allen wanted to take away from such institutions as Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg. He publicly criticized some of the governor's hard-and-fast line in taking on the Democratic majority and was put off by attacks on Sen. Hunter Andrews, a Democrat with whom Chichester has been friendly over the years.
A former Democrat himself, Chichester is fiscally conservative to the core, but is also a pragmatic politician. He does not seem comfortable with some of the ideologues who have been calling many of the shots in the Allen administration.
If Republicans take control of one or more of the legislative chambers, any present criticism of the governor will vanish overnight, and praise will undoubtedly be heaped on him for hanging tough and leading the charge to victory.
But defeat has few fathers, and if his crap shoot comes up snake eyes, the governor will be blamed for dragging the party down. A search for new directions will begin almost immediately. Thus, Jim Gilmore, a man in waiting for his turn at the gubernatorial plate, has a big stake in what happens on Election Day and night this November.
John Goolrick, a former political reporter, is an aide to 1st District Rep. Herbert Bateman. Opinions expressed are his own.
by CNB