Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 9, 1995 TAG: 9504110079
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARGARET EDDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
Setting off on a Democratic tour of Virginia a few weeks ago, Lt. Gov. Donald Beyer and House Majority Leader Richard Cranwell couldn't seem to agree on tactics for crusading against Republicans.
"Counterinsurgency," snapped Cranwell when asked about the Democrats' mission. "You've got to fight fire with fire."
Beyer took a more meandering route, starting with a report that "we're excited and a little scared" about his wife's pregnancy, that she dreads labor pains, that he (at 44) is worried about being too old for midnight feedings.
"How strange and incomprehensible it would be," Beyer said, if - midway through the infant's childhood - they stopped investing in her future.
Then finally, the crux of the matter: "Virginia stands at the same crossroads" in light of GOP calls for tax and spending cuts, he said.
Five years into his tenure as Virginia's lieutenant governor, 21/2 years from the election he hopes will make him governor, Beyer stands at a crossroads of his own.
Suddenly, the whimsical philosopher-politician and nice guy disliked by almost nobody - save the religious right, whose candidate he pummeled in 1993 - is on the hot seat. On several issues, he has dismayed the Democratic Party's liberal base, focusing attention both on his philosophy and his distinctive personal style.
In a sea of political sharks, Beyer seems inclined to swim with the dolphins. It is an attitude he comes to honestly, he says. His mother's favorite Beatitude, the one she stressed to her children, was "blessed are the peacemakers." An uncle led the Quaker community in Seattle for three decades. Beyer holds dear a childhood memory in which he thought his father was St. Francis of Assisi.
But some Democrats question whether a gentle nature, five years in a part-time government post and management of a successful Volvo dealership in Northern Virginia equip Beyer to lead the party through a dangerous political time. In an era when Republicans are pushing fundamental change in the role of government, those Democrats ask, does Beyer have a clear alternative vision and is he willing to fight for his principles - or, more precisely, for theirs?
For some, the record of the past six months casts doubt.
Beyer's call last fall for denying parole to violent criminals already in prison struck many as an ill-conceived and amateurish stab at outdoing Virginia's tough-on-crime governor, George Allen. The idea drew almost uniformly bad reviews.
Next came the General Assembly session, with Allen's push for a $149 million tax cut and $403 million in spending cuts. Beyer opposed the package, but some Democrats complain that he did not act quickly or loudly enough.
And then, on the assembly's final day last month, Beyer led Democrats to a welfare reform compromise that gave Allen his only major victory of the session and Virginia one of the nation's toughest welfare laws.
The action brought a wail of protest from liberals and blacks in the Democratic Party.
"Am I satisfied with the direction he's taken the people of Virginia relative to welfare reform? No," said former Democratic Gov. Douglas Wilder, recently joining the chorus of Beyer doubters. "Gun control? No. Parole sentencing? No."
"I'm concerned how on these two most pertinent issues [parole and welfare] he has tried to out-Allen Allen. It's troubling," echoed Marty Jewell, past president of the Richmond Crusade for Voters, the capital's dominant black political action group.
Beyer and his many moderate defenders counter that liberal Democrats must adjust to changing times.
"Real liberals are not going to be totally thrilled with his positions," Democratic National Committeewoman Mame Reiley of Alexandria says. "But he's their best alternative."
Beyer describes himself as "a conservative business Democrat," one who combines a liberal social consciousness with fiscal conservatism and common sense. His larger world view - drawn from a mosaic of philosophy and psychology, literature and country music lyrics - ends up at this ultimate test of public policy: "Does it serve life?"
The question, taken from German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, is the kind of thing Beyer says without blinking.
Describing why he'd ultimately rather invest in education than prisons, despite last fall's initiative, he says, "There's a tension between the urgent and the important. ...The preponderance of the balance must be on investment."
Or when asked during last February's debate why he wanted to cut off most benefits to welfare mothers after two years, he replied: "I do sincerely believe that culture follows structure."
Or this: "People hate to acknowledge that the world is a complex place. Part of the dishonesty of political dialogue is that it wants things in black and white. I reject that. ... It would be perfectly plausible to have George Allen come back with a tax cut next year that is built on reductions in the administrative cost of government that I'll support."
That willingness to fraternize with the enemy may be sound human relations, but it's risky politics, say some who fear the consequences.
In the bartering with the Allen administration over welfare policy, "my sense of [Beyer] is that he was out of his league, outmanned," complained one Democrat who closely watched the legislative debate.
But others - including allies of Attorney General Jim Gilmore, Beyer's likely 1997 opponent - do not underestimate Beyer's personal appeal or his powers of persuasion. He is, after all, a salesman and a good one. His Falls Church dealership tops Volvo sales in a region that stretches from central Montana to southern New York to Atlanta.
If he did not move Allen in the welfare debate, Beyer did sway moderate Democrats inclined toward more gradual reform. His technique in the caucus was the same as in his showroom, he said: "'Here's the options, here's the great things about the product, here's the price. I hope you'll think this is a good family investment.' That's all I did with the Democrats."
He was happy to prevail on welfare, just as he's been proud to influence state policy on child sexual assault and child support enforcement, just as he'd be delighted to be Virginia's chief executive. But if any of those missions failed, another Beyer principle would kick in: "No victory is ever final, no defeat ever permanent."
To Democrats who are less serene, he has a bit of advice. "I'm real convinced that the time of our wisest thinkers is the long run - 50 years, 100 years, 600 years. We tend to get real agitated by what's in the paper this morning, but it's just not that important."
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by CNB