Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 5, 1995 TAG: 9509060124
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BUENA VISTA LENGTH: Long
Gov. George Allen urged Virginians on Monday to consider this fall's legislative elections as a referendum on his Republican administration and warned that Democrats will "backslide" on tough new welfare rules and parole abolition if they stay in power.
"I'd like it to be a referendum, not on me personally, but more on my ideas," Allen said at Virginia's traditional campaign kickoff in this small industrial city at the foothills of the Blue Ridge.
If Republicans fail in their bid to win control of the General Assembly this fall, Allen said, "all I'm going to be doing [during his final two years in office] is vetoing their backsliding."
Allen raised the specter that Democrats, most of whom voted to go along with his plan to abolish parole, are now ready to invite early releases of criminals by not building enough prison space. "There are those who want to backslide," he said.
Allen also singled out House Majority Leader Richard Cranwell by name, saying the Democrat from Roanoke County "wants to backslide, wants to rework things" in the welfare reform plan that the governor pushed through the legislature this year.
But Lt. Gov. Don Beyer, responding for the Democrats at the annual Labor Day celebration marked by political speechmaking by both parties, said Allen's depiction of the voters' choices this fall bore little resemblance to the truth.
"For the record," he said, "I don't know anybody in the Democratic Party who wants to roll back welfare reform. For the record, I don't know anybody in the Democratic Party who wants to let loose murderers and rapists."
Beyer faulted Allen for being shortsighted and failing to focus on the issue he said mattered most to Virginians this Labor Day - job security. "Even with 84,000 new jobs, more people are concerned about losing their jobs than at any time in our history," he said.
Beyer said Virginia needed to make "fundamental investments" - in education, in transportation - to create a high-wage economy based on workers with improved skills. However, under the Allen administration, he said, "we're in a period of benign neglect."
Between their two speeches to more than 200 citizens gathered beneath the picnic shelter at Glen Maury Park and their follow-up comments afterward, the Republican governor and the Democrat who hopes to succeed him outlined their two parties' differing approaches to the problems facing Virginia. Mostly, that meant Allen talking tough on crime and welfare, with Beyer emphasizing the need to spend more on education.
Allen used the Buena Vista appearance to harken back to his Labor Day speech there during his 1993 campaign for governor - ticking off the things he promised then and reviewing his attempts to deliver on them.
In the past two years, he said, he has succeeded in abolishing parole, toughening welfare rules and cutting the state payroll. But he blamed "obstructionist" Democrats in the legislature for blocking tax cuts and other conservative initiatives.
Without naming names, Allen also delivered a pointed warning to a Northern Virginia-based group of business leaders - many of them prominent Republican contributors - who have been urging legislators to support a tax increase to raise more money for the state's colleges and universities.
"I'd veto any sales or income tax that came across my desk; and we don't need to be jacking up the gas tax, either," Allen said. "Anyone who wants to lie in that bed can explain why they're for it. If they think they're going to roll me, or if anybody thinks my principles are for sale, they don't know me very well."
The heart of Allen's address dealt with crime. He again attempted to portray those who oppose his prison-building program as being willing to release violent criminals early. "I challenge them to suggest to us which prisoner they would release early. Is it a rapist, who's raped two or three times? Is it a murderer who's killed a police officer? Would they suggest a constituent in their district who would like to take that prisoner in? Or would they like to rent out a room in their own house so a prisoner could be released early?"
Actually, the two parties generally agree on the number of prisons Virginia needs to build between now and 2001. Their disagreement is primarily over how to finance the prisons - with Allen and the Republicans favoring debt, and Democrats favoring more cash up front.
Allen also plugged his proposal for the state to turn over lottery proceeds to localities as a way for citizens to exert more local control over how revenues are spent. Beyer dismissed the proposal as insignificant. "Whether it's good or bad, it does not change the world," he said. "You're taking money out of one pocket and putting in another."
Allen appeared to win warm applause from about half the audience; the crowd thinned somewhat by the time Beyer took to the podium, and his strongest ovation came from a group of party activists sitting in the front rows. By the time a half-dozen General Assembly candidates started to speak, few in the crowd appeared to be paying much attention.
Many of the voters who were paying attention already had their minds made up. "I think Allen's great," said Joyce Lemmon of Glasgow. "I'm as conservative as you can get. I'm certainly in favor of anything that keeps the government out of our lives."
But Marian Weaver of Lexington thought Beyer made the stronger case for his party. "Apparently, Allen thinks everything happened since he's been in there. I think he took too much of the credit."
Some of the contrasts between the state's top Republican and top Democrat cropped up in the ways they approached the same issues:
On education, Allen emphasized his administration's effort to toughen academic standards and to give parents and school boards more control over schools. "Money is not the only solution," he said. Beyer talked about Democratic efforts to increase funding for rural school districts and to provide more computer technology in schools.
On jobs, Allen stressed how 84,000 new jobs have been created in his term, which he credited to his administration's "pro-enterprise" efforts. Beyer said most of those jobs would have been created anyway. He said Allen was wrong to focus on a simple head count, and instead should focus specifically on creating high-wage jobs.
On taxes and spending, Beyer claimed many of those jobs were coming to Virginia because the state government, under Democratic leadership a decade ago, had launched a major program of building new roads, airports and ports. Allen chided Beyer for giving credit to the government for infrastructure improvements: "This stuff about the government building roads - [the funding] doesn't come from the government. It comes from the taxpayers."
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB