Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 11, 1995 TAG: 9506120086
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
When Republican candidates for the General Assembly gathered in Richmond last month for a fund-raiser sponsored by Gov. George Allen, one candidate received more applause than any dignitary present, except maybe for the governor himself:
Trixie Averill.
What prompted Republican contributors to applaud this Roanoke County homemaker so vigorously? Because she has taken it on herself to challenge the Republicans' No. 1 enemy this fall - House Majority Leader Richard Cranwell of Roanoke County.
"They're just really excited about him being opposed," explains Chris Nolen, who runs Allen's political action committee. Or, as Del. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, puts it: "Dickie Cranwell is perceived as being so nasty that everyone in the Republican Party wants to see him challenged."
Now that moral support for Averill is turning into money.
The latest round of campaign finance reports, filed last week, shows that 56 percent of Averill's contributions greater than $100 are coming not from the Roanoke Valley district she hopes to represent, but from Republican office-holders around the state and Richmond-based GOP donors closely identified with Allen.
It's not unusual, of course, for Democratic incumbents in Virginia - especially those in leadership positions - to raise most of their campaign funds outside their districts. Businesses and political action committees representing industries affected by state policy are typically generous with legislators from the party that controls the General Assembly.
So it's not surprising that Cranwell has already raised more than $60,000, or that 67 percent of his contributions of more than $100 come from outside the Roanoke Valley - mostly from businesses and PACs based in Richmond.
But it is unusual for challengers to be able to raise much money from outside their own communities, especially so early in the campaign.
"Normally, a challenger has to prove he or she is competitive" before donors elsewhere are willing to contribute, says University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato, the state's foremost observer of campaign trends. "But that isn't the case here. [Averill's] job is to tie Cranwell down, to drain Cranwell's time on the road, to keep him from campaigning for other Democrats. They want to make her competitive enough to worry Cranwell."
They're doing that. So far, Averill has raised $22,000 - about what most other challengers in the Roanoke Valley, Democratic and Republican, have raised. But it's not the amount she's raised that's so curious, it's the origin.
"This comes from Allen," Sabato says. "This has all the markings of an orchestrated contribution scheme. It clearly demonstrates the depth of enmity between Cranwell and the Republican leadership. The governor's office despises him."
Republicans hold Cranwell responsible for frustrating most of Allen's agenda in the past General Assembly session, when he rallied Democrats to kill the governor's proposals to cut taxes, cut spending, allow experimental "charter schools" and speed up prison construction.
"Dickie chose to be the one to lead the charge to protect the status quo," says Ray Allen, who was political director of the governor's 1993 campaign. "He has defined himself as the single biggest agent of stopping change."
Now Republicans statewide are mobilizing in a visible way on behalf of Cranwell's challenger.
On June 2, Susan Allen, the governor's wife, headlined a Roanoke fund-raiser that organizers say netted Averill's campaign an additional $5,000. The next day, two well-known Republican operatives who hold top posts in the administration - Ray and Melinda Allen, no relation to the governor - held a fund-raiser for her in Chesterfield County.
On Tuesday, former U.S. Attorney Richard Cullen, who hopes to be his party's candidate for attorney general in 1997, will be host of another fund-raiser for Averill in Richmond. The governor himself is supposed to come to Roanoke on her behalf this summer.
In short, the impending Cranwell-Averill contest shows all the signs of spinning into a miniature statewide race, at least the way Republicans see things. "It is the hottest race in the state," declares Ray Allen, who now heads the state Department of Professional and Occupational Regulations. "I talk to Republican unit chairmen around the state every day, and always the first question they ask is, "How's Trixie doing?'''
Averill's popularity with rank-and-file Republican activists across Virginia can't be underestimated. "Trixie has been a loyal, true-blue volunteer for a number of candidates over the years," says John Metzger, another former Republican strategist who is chairman of the state Parole Board. "She's so well-known throughout the state."
But the depth of Republican animosity toward Cranwell shows up even in the dry accounting of a campaign finance report. At the Chesterfield County fund-raiser aimed at those who worked on Allen's gubernatorial campaign, the minimum amount was $101. Why such a curious figure?
"There are a lot of people who want to be on the record on this one," host Ray Allen says. "At $100, you don't report it [under Virginia campaign finance laws]. At $101, you do. So someone who sends a check for $101, they're definitely making a statement."
Among those who wrote checks for the odd-numbered amount was Allen's chief-of-staff, Jay Timmons. Some weren't content with that. Winchester state Sen. H. Russell Potts upped his check to $105, just to be on the safe side. "I wanted to make sure everybody knew," he says. "I will fight Cranwell to my dying breath."
Metzger was even more flamboyant, penning a check for $234.56. "That's my John Hancock," he says, referring to the Declaration of Independence signer who wrote his name large to make sure the king saw it. "I want to know 'Cranwell the Conqueror' gets my message."
Cranwell suggests Republicans are fixated on "punishing" him. "My opponent is sending out statewide fund-raising letters. You'd think I was the anti-Christ."
Averill, though, says she's finding it remarkably easy to raise money statewide, which she says is a "direct result" of Cranwell's role in "obstructing" Allen's program.
At the May fund-raiser for Allen's political action committee where Averill was applauded so loudly, she had hoped to circulate among the crowd during intermission. Instead, she says, "I didn't even get to leave my chair, because there was a line of businessmen standing there to give me their business cards, saying call me the next day."
Most of the donors who have shown up on her list so far, though, are ones who are clearly identified as Republican donors - such as Alan Kirshner, chairman of the Markel Corp., an insurance company in suburban Richmond, whom Allen appointed to the State Council of Higher Education. "She's a very personable lady and articulates well what she stands for," says Kirshner, who has donated $250.
Averill's contributions from around the state remain relatively small, too, considering that Virginia places no cap on campaign contributions. The biggest is $2,500 from Virginians for a Republican Majority, a political action committee set up by Northern Virginia businessman Coleman Andrews, who hopes to be his party's 1997 candidate for lieutenant governor. Most are for $500 or less.
But Republican leaders predict the flow of money from around the state into Averill's campaign will rise to a flood as the campaign goes on. "I think you're going to see money from Republican legislators who are unopposed given to her," says Nolen, who heads Allen's PAC. "I think Trixie will be one of the top recipients of that."
Democrats say they figure her campaign even could attract national donors.
Says Jeff Link, director of the House Democratic Caucus: "I wouldn't be surprised if GOPAC [a fund-raising group founded by U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich] contributes to her, if the Republican National Committee contributes to her, if Gingrich himself contributes to her. Because the Republicans want to keep Cranwell at home, because they know he's good at going out and firing up the troops."
Democrats contend that the heavy dose of contributions to Averill from Republicans across the state obscures what they consider her major weakness. "There's more support for Trixie Averill in Richmond than there is in Roanoke," Link says. "The Republicans will want to make it into a high-profile race, but when you get down to it, it'll be a local race decided in Vinton and the rest of the district."
House Republican Leader Vance Wilkins of Amherst agrees, up to a point. There's no way Averill can hope to match Cranwell's fund-raising totals, he says. She doesn't need to. She just needs to raise enough to get her message out to voters in a district that cast nearly two-thirds of its votes for Allen in 1993, Wilkins says.
"I don't want to get caught up in the money thing and the media thing. We want to do enough, but we don't want to forget about the grass roots. If Trixie puts the grass roots together, she can win it. If not, she won't."
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB