Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 27, 1995 TAG: 9503270075
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: WARREN FISKE AND DALE EISMAN STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, D. C. LENGTH: Long
When U.S. Sen. John Warner attends formal events of the state Republican Party these days, he is greeted with the eerie silence of one who has been drummed out of the corps.
At a March fund-raiser in Richmond, U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas never acknowledged Warner's presence as Gramm sought support for his presidential campaign in a speech before more than 500 GOP activists.
In January, state GOP chairman Patrick McSweeney omitted Warner from a list of dozens of Republican politicians he introduced at a party unity dinner in Charlottesville. Warner quietly rose from his table in the rear and left in a huff.
Payback time has begun for scores of Republican activists who are outraged by Warner's refusal to support two recent party nominees - Oliver North for the U.S. Senate in 1994 and Mike Farris for lieutenant governor in 1993. Both lost general elections, and Warner drew a share of the blame.
Warner faces re-election next year. And many GOP leaders are pledging an all-out effort to deny the three-term senator the party's nomination.
At issue is whether Warner's rejection of candidates is an expression of statesmanship by a senior Republican deeply dismayed by the state GOP's drift to the right, or an act of supreme selfishness by a politician who has received support from the party and offered nothing in return.
Although party leaders say they will wait until after November's General Assembly races to publicly wage their war against Warner, behind the scenes the battle already has begun. Former federal budget chief Jim Miller has announced plans to oppose Warner for the nomination, and McSweeney says he also may run.
"We have one goal, to eliminate John Warner from the U.S. Senate," said Peter Flaherty, chairman of the Conservative Campaign Fund in Fairfax County, which is raising money nationally for a "Dump Warner" campaign. "We are dealing with someone whose constant lack of loyalty suggests a very low character."
GOP leaders are discovering, however, that although they can make Warner leave a room, they can't make him disappear.
Unapologetic and openly defiant of his critics, Warner is arming heavily for his first serious challenge since he was elected to the Senate in 1978. On April 10, former President Bush will be the guest speaker at a Warner fund-raising dinner in Richmond. An influential network of conservative state business people and moderate Republican politicians have vowed support for Warner's campaign.
And much to the dismay of party honchos, Warner has insisted on holding a primary election next spring under a little-used state law allowing incumbent office holders to dictate the method of their nomination. GOP leaders had been hoping to hold a convention, where the wrath of the several thousand activists may have made it all but impossible for Warner to win.
In an interview last week, Warner, 68, expressed exasperation over his predicament. He said he has been a loyal Virginia partisan for more than 30 years, stressing that he helped elect three Republican governors in the 1970s and that throughout the 1980s he held highly successful party fund-raisers at an estate he owned in Middleburg.
He said many of the hard-line conservative leaders who have seized control of the state party in recent years and who now criticize him - including North, Farris and Miller - are new to Virginia politics and lack institutional memories. "Where were these people 35 years ago when I was helping Richard Nixon run for president, or 25 years ago when I was helping Linwood Holton become governor?" he asked. "If someone can point to any of my opponents who have conducted similar activities over such a period of years, I challenge them to come forward."
Warner said the rigid structure of the state party today fails to give Republicans the freedom to express dissent in matters of conscience. "I have to be my own man or I can't feel good about my work," he said. "I have to be allowed to put the good of the nation and good of the state above the good of the party."
In the case of Farris, a former Moral Majority organizer and outspoken lawyer for evangelical concerns, Warner said he didn't know enough about the candidate's history to bestow an endorsement. Warner branded North a liar for his role in the Iran-Contra affair. Warner's rift with the party in last year's U.S. Senate race was so profound that he virtually sponsored the independent candidacy of Marshall Coleman.
Warner seemed confident that Republicans will exonerate him next year. "There are maybe 500,000 voters who consider themselves loyal Republicans and, of those, maybe 50,000 have some direct connection to the state party," he said. "As I travel about the state and talk directly to people, I don't pick up a drumbeat" of opposition.
Many Republican activists say they would have been understanding of Warner's rejection of North if he had simply remained quiet and refused to participate in the campaign. But his vocal opposition and support for Coleman, they say, was a direct affront.
"There must be a higher standard of loyalty from people who use our party to get elected," said Miller, who lost to North in the 1994 Senate primary. "How can you build the morale of thousands of hard-working party activists when the senior Republican officeholder in the state betrays them every time he doesn't like a decision?"
Tensions between Warner and the conservative leadership of the state GOP have been brewing since 1987, when Warner cast a critical vote against the failed nomination of Judge Robert Bork for the U.S. Supreme Court. Warner, a moderate on social issues such as abortion rights, has always had a strained relationship with evangelical Republicans.
"He's never made a gesture to Christian conservatives and that reverberates strongly among our ranks," said Mike Russell, a spokesman for the Christian Coalition headed by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson in Virginia Beach.
At the same time, many of the conservatives criticizing Warner acknowledge that his Senate voting record in recent years has been pretty good. The Christian Coalition says Warner supported their positions 71 percent of the time last year. Miller, on behalf of a conservative public interest group he once headed, presented Warner this winter with a plaque for a perfect voting record on economic issues. And Farris recently sent Warner a letter of congratulations for his opposition to a United Nations Bill of Children's Rights.
"I have to say he's been voting pretty well lately," said Farris. Nevertheless, Farris added: "I'm talking about doing everything I possibly can to deny John Warner the nomination because I believe loyalty is a two-way street."
Many suggest that Warner's problems at home have cut into his effectiveness in Washington. This winter, Warner was defeated in a bid to attain the chairmanship of the Senate Rules Committee by a 39-13 vote of Senate Republicans. Although Miller says the vote reflects "a lack of respect for Warner in the Senate," Warner insists that he lost to Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska only because Stevens had longer continuous service on the panel.
In January, Warner was embarrassed by news stories suggesting he had tried to grab the chairmanship of the Senate Armed Services Committee by forcing out 92-year-old Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. He denied any plotting against Thurmond, but tacitly acknowledged that they've had a rocky relationship.
Warner continues to be one of the committee's most influential members. "I haven't seen any noticeable change in his stature on the committee," said John Luddy, a defense analyst for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington.
And many of Warner's colleagues are actively supporting his re-election bid. Seven Republican Senate stalwarts - including Thurmond, Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas and party whip Trent Lott of Mississippi - were cohosts of a $1,000-a-plate luncheon on Warner's behalf earlier this month.
"We will work overtime to assure the senator's re-elected," said Gordon Hensley, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which helped organize the event. New York Sen. Alphonse D'Amato, the committee's chairman, "has made it very clear that Sen. Warner's re-election is a top priority," Hensley said.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB