Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 26, 1995 TAG: 9509260093
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SHAWSVILLE LENGTH: Long
Madison Marye stood in the driveway of his farm wearing navy blue coveralls and cowboy boots. Not the fancy-type boots sported by a certain governor, but worn, slightly muddy ones.
"There's always an emergency on a farm," he says walking to the old GMC pickup. It's fall calving season and a cow had just had twins, but had rejected one of them.
So, for a time, talking about his effort to win re-election to a sixth full term in the state Senate comes second to trying to save a little gray calf that's too weak to stand.
Half the way out to the herd, Marye passes his wife, Charlotte, coming the other way on a small ATV that's towing a trailer. Inside, part-time farmhand David Smith of Riner sits beside the calf. Charlotte Marye explains they're taking the animal to administer a colostrum mixture that's crucial in the first 12 hours of life if the calf is to survive.
"A lot of cattle farmers wouldn't mess with twin calves," Marye says moments later, letting the remark trail off.
A lot wouldn't, but you get the sense Marye and his wife do just because the odds are against the newborn.
In his 22-year political career, Marye has often portrayed himself as the champion of the little guy. He is an unabashed populist who is known as one of the Senate's most colorful storytellers. Yet, Marye has tempered his mirthful reputation in the past five years with important positions on the powerful Senate Finance Committee and as chairman of the General Laws Committee.
Last winter, he had one of his most visible sessions since his annual, ill-fated crusades for the so-called "bottle bill" in the late 1980s. He almost single-handedly killed the riverboat gambling proposal. He took a highly visible stand against the bill that made concealed weapon permits easier to obtain. He emerged as a vocal critic of Republican Gov. George Allen's budget-cutting and prison-building plans, particularly with regard to higher education.
"I just think my district took a beating the last time," Marye says. "Things I'd worked for for years suddenly disintegrated."
With rumors going around last winter that he would be retiring and with Republicans only three seats short of capturing their first-ever Senate majority, there was no dearth of potential challengers. By the time Marye accepted his party's nomination in June, he was down to just one opponent, Pat Cupp, his first in 12 years.
Initially, Marye seemed to be running more against the governor than against Cupp. He said Allen's failed initiatives during this year's General Assembly session "kind of got the adrenaline flowing in my veins."
Through June and July, Marye employed the incumbent's usual ignore-the-opponent strategy. Then, in a joint appearance in August before the New River Valley Association of Realtors, a group Cupp once headed, Marye went on the offensive. He questioned Cupp's independence from the governor on a string of positions. The broadsides continued in later appearances.
"I would rather control the campaign," says Marye, a retired Army officer and World War II veteran. "I guess maybe that's the military in me. If you get yourself in the position where you're defending yourself all the time, I don't think that's good."
During their several joint appearances, Marye has usually ignored Cupp's attacks on his record. He'll just smile and shake his head while Cupp is speaking, then make his own point later. He and his aides chuckled about Cupp's charge that his "political handlers" were preventing him from engaging in a true debate (they are to meet in an Oct. 10 debate that is to be broadcast live on WVTF-FM). But during an interview, Marye took pains to say that he did support welfare reform, that he has voted with Allen on enterprise zones and other programs and that he did differ with former Gov. Douglas Wilder on many occasions, all responses to different Cupp allegations.
Marye brushes aside Cupp's contention that he's inaccessible to and out of step with the people he represents. "I believe I represent the majority opinion in my district," Marye says. "If I haven't, then I won't be re-elected."
The senator says he spends about four hours a day on off-season legislative business - making and taking phone calls, drafting letters and so forth. He says he's "more accessible than many members of the legislature."
Still, he has a farm to run when he isn't driving up to Richmond, Northern Virginia or elsewhere for a committee meeting outside of the normal 60- or 45-day winter legislative sessions.
"I think anyone that runs for the General Assembly soon has to realize that [either] he has to be a very wealthy person and then he can spend all of his time going around campaigning for the next election, or, if he's a person who has to work or has a business that requires his time, you've got to devote a certain amount of your time to that business," Marye says. "I don't think it should be just a place for rich people to go."
Marye is obviously no stranger to the rough-and-tumble of politics. He lost a House race before he first won his Senate seat in a 1973 special election. Then he defended it in three straight elections, including 1979, when he won by just nine votes. A year after winning re-election to his present term, he suffered a major heart attack that sidelined him for much of the 1993 session. He really didn't get back into form until the '94 session, when he reaped headlines for his failed effort to rewrite the racially offensive lyrics to the state song.
Today, he says he has the stamina to go another four years. He'll turn 70 in December. "I do take care of my health, I do my exercises. I try to follow the doctor's instructions. I feel better than I've felt in years," Marye says.
Some Republicans, though, wonder aloud if Marye is as sharp as in the past. He takes long pauses during his speeches and sometimes appears to get lost in his rhetoric when he's trying to make a point, as he did during his closing remarks at a recent League of Women Voters forum in Blacksburg.
Marye is running on the platform of restoring funding for higher education and increasing spending for secondary and elementary education. He links education to economic growth and many other issues. Not surprisingly, he's been endorsed by the Virginia Education Association.
"You walk down the street and you look at people you see ... and you wonder what the future holds in store for these people who obviously don't have the foundation to prepare them to secure a job that will keep them off of welfare, out of drugs, happy in family life, out of prison," Marye says. "I think education is the key to our future as a nation."
He's also concerned about the environment and says transportation will be another big issue that needs to be addressed on a statewide basis again, as it was during the administration of former Gov. Gerald Baliles.
Marye concedes that his district may lean a little more Republican than it did before the 1991 redistricting, but he seems warily confident. "I always run a little bit scared because anything could happen in a political campaign," he says. "I wouldn't have run if I didn't think I stood a very good chance of winning."
Later, the interview concluded, the senator walks into the kitchen and asks his wife about the calf. It took the formula through a feeding tube, but she doesn't know yet if that will do the trick. (Three days later, the veterinarian has been to the farm and the calf is doing OK.)
"What would I do without you?" Marye mused.
His wife of 45 years shot back: "Sometimes I wonder, myself."
MADISON MARYE
Party: Democrat
Age: 69
Occupation: Cattle farmer
Residence: Shawsville
Family: Married, two children
WHAT THE CANDIDATE SAYS ABOUT HIS:
CORE VALUES: "Sometimes, you certainly compromise because a half a loaf of something is better than no loaf at all, and if you don't accept what you can get, then you are not an effective legislator at all. But by the same token, on social matters, I think that I have to vote my conscience on them and I think I do."
INDEPENDENCE: "If he's got something that I think is good, I vote for it," Marye says of Gov. George Allen. "I like to listen to debates and decide what I think is the best way to go. What's prudent. I like to use the prudent-man rule."
VISION: "I am deeply distressed at what I see happening ... what has been attempted toward education, particularly in Southwest Virginia. ... I'm not trying to sound corny or anything, I just think that's the future of our entire state."
Keywords:
POLITICS PROFILE
by CNB