Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 30, 1995 TAG: 9508300057
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEDFORD LENGTH: Medium
Anita Garner's a poet, not a politician.
That's why you won't see her organizing fund-raisers or hiring consultants to get Bedford and Bedford County residents to vote for consolidation.
``Campaigning means funds, money, drives. We can't do all that,'' Garner said.
The haiku author and her husband started a petition last year that forced Bedford and Bedford County to come up with a merger proposal for voters.
Tuesday, a three-judge panel approved the consolidation referendum and ordered it placed on the Nov. 7 ballot.
Now that she has what she wants, Garner sees her role in the merger as secondary.
``We're hoping from the news coverage and the meetings over the last two years that people will be able to make up their minds,'' she said. ``We don't do whistles and balloons and T-shirts. We tried to appeal to the intelligence of the voters of Bedford by giving them straight information all along the way.''
And with the exception of an occasional letter to a newspaper editorial page, her pitch for consolidation has been pretty quiet.
It's certainly nothing like the 1990 campaign mounted by consolidation advocates in Roanoke and Roanoke County. They raised more than $225,000, ran television ads, and hired paid staffers and a nationally known political consultant to coordinate their unsuccessful merger campaign.
Merger opponents mounted a modest yet emotional grass-roots campaign that raised less than $20,000.
But in Bedford County, pro or con, the campaign just never has started.
``There's a lot of opposition out there, but it's all individuals,'' said consolidation foe and former Bedford Mayor Tom Messier. ``I'm not aware of any organized opposition.''
Messier was one of seven Bedford business and civic leaders who tried to challenge the legality of the Garners' petition last year. The group withdrew its lawsuit after city and county officials said they would proceed with consolidation talks regardless of the petition.
Since then, they've been pretty quiet, too.
No members have changed their minds, apparently, but they haven't discussed consolidation since they banded together to file the suit.
Some of the group members say they may not need to campaign to kill a proposal that already may be dead. ``I think the people are going to be smart enough to reject it,'' said Dave Ballard, a retired city employee. ``Eight out of 10 people I talk to are against it.''
But a political science professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, Nelson Wikstrom, says Bedford County voters may not have seen the last of campaigning over consolidation.
Wikstrom, who's writing a book on consolidation and annexation, said it's not unusual for consolidation opponents to mount last-minute campaigns.
``Generally speaking,'' he said, ``pro-consolidation forces have been much more deliberate and strategic, providing information throughout the process, where the anti-consolidation forces have been later organizing their ranks, and are less strategic, and more impulsive and emotional.''
Virginia voters are probably more open to mergers and reductions in local government than they've ever been, he said, but he warns it could be ``ruinous if [merger advocates] presume it's a done deal. I think they have to keep up the information campaign, as it were.''
by CNB