Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 26, 1995 TAG: 9509260094
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
"Focus" is a word you hear a lot from Pat Cupp.
As a verb or noun, he uses it to describe what he learned as a teen working summers for his contractor father. Cupp says it again to explain how he helped stabilize and expand one business and, later, start his own real estate and property management company almost from scratch.
"The key thing in anything you're doing is focus," Cupp says.
Now, the Blacksburg entrepreneur has a new focus: unseating state Sen. Madison Marye.
Cupp, the Republican candidate, says he's running because he disagrees with the Democrat's ideology. Also, he says the 22-year senator has done a poor job of staying in touch with his district, which extends from the New River Valley to the North Carolina line.
Though Marye, like most Democrats this fall, is running on a pro-education platform, Cupp says he would do a better job of pushing the agenda of Virginia Tech, for instance, because he knows the university's needs and could do a better job of selling them to General Assembly leaders and Republican Gov. George Allen.
"I don't think that Madison's got the desire or the drive ... to go out and spend time working with these individuals," Cupp says. "There's been no leadership."
To achieve his new goal, the 55-year-old Cupp says he is using the same methods that have served him since his teens: lay the groundwork ahead of time, come up with a game plan, stick to it and work hard. In other words, focus.
"I'm looking at this as I looked at the other businesses," Cupp says. "I'm looking to win in November."
Whether the Realtor-turned-politician realizes his goal will depend on a number of variables. Those include his ability to sell Montgomery County voters on his independence from unpopular aspects of the governor's agenda, while connecting his business-oriented conservatism with the rural parts of the district.
He has the usual challenger's handicap of little name recognition outside of his home turf. Also, Cupp has never held public office and is not a naturally gifted public speaker. One-on-one, he speaks cogently and concisely, precisely the qualities that are sometimes lacking in his stump speeches or campaign-forum answers, where he sometimes wanders or repeats himself.
He's also had to learn the art of public self-promotion. "I'm used to doing something and letting the results speak for themselves," Cupp says.
Cupp was born on a farm in Ironto, the youngest of six siblings. His father, L.J. "Jack" Cupp, was a plasterer, ran a hauling company for a time and served as a construction manager for the development of Airport Acres in Blacksburg just before World War II. With the start of war and the development of the Celanese plant in Narrows, his father began building homes in that Giles County town. Eventually, he moved the family to one of the modest new homes. His hard-working mother and father guided him by example. "The influence they had ... it wasn't flashy. But they encouraged me to continue on toward higher education," Cupp says. "They didn't make me. They did it the right way, they encouraged it rather than beat it on the head."
As a teen-ager, Cupp spent summers working for his father building homes in Blacksburg. His father wanted him to become an engineer, and Cupp studied engineering when he arrived at Virginia Tech after a year at Bluefield College (though he ended up graduating with a degree in sociology). He worked throughout the 1960s to pay for college and support his then-wife and young daughter. Cupp went into business with the owners of a Christiansburg bowling alley in 1966, an association that lasted until 1979, when he left to join a realty firm for three years. He started his own brokerage with his second wife, Sandy, in 1983. That business has grown to include 16 employees.
He credits much of his business success to an ability to read and react to trends. That ability, he says, comes from paying his dues in a chosen field before expecting to achieve success. "I've always been very fortunate in catching trends," Cupp says. "There's a gut feeling you get if you work hard and you're out in ... a marketplace."
His gut feeling this time is that his message of policies that will create jobs, build more prisons and improve public and higher education is one that will resonate with voters.
Cupp's transition from building a real estate brokerage to constructing a political career started nine years ago, when he started to get heavily involved in the Greater Blacksburg Chamber of Commerce. Eventually, he served as the chamber's president. In the late 1980s and early '90s, he also assumed leadership positions in the New River Valley Homebuilders Association and the New River Valley Association of Realtors.
His involvement in the community coincided with his expanding interest in reading about politics and history. His office at BCR Property Management is packed with tomes on Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. In particular, Cupp recalls being fascinated by the family history behind President Lyndon Johnson's rise to power in Texas politics, a story he read in Robert Caro's acclaimed biographies.
"Those things got me really looking," he explains.
In 1989, he supported Marshall Coleman's unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign against Doug Wilder. He met Allen in the early '90s and "found we had a lot of common interests." In 1993, he helped organize a fund-raising event that garnered $15,000 for Allen's victory against Democrat Mary Sue Terry. (Cupp, his wife and his company gave Allen a combined $2,850.)
Earlier that year, he made his first attempt to seek office when he challenged Montgomery Supervisor Nick Rush for the GOP nomination to run for the House of Delegates. Rush, a young but experienced politician, narrowly won the nomination despite a last-minute, full-court press by Cupp to pack a mass meeting with supporters. Rush later lost the general election to Democrat Jim Shuler.
"It's no fun to get beat. ... It taught me to get things in order," Cupp says. "I hadn't paid any dues. I wasn't entitled to anything."
Early the next year, Montgomery Republicans needed a leader after their chairman left the area to work on a congressional campaign. Cupp took the job. "We took the party and solidified it and did it in a year," Cupp says.
Meanwhile, by late last year, at least two Republicans were eyeing the nomination to challenge Marye, who was said to be considering retiring from politics. Gary Weddle, a clothing store owner, had started recruiting supporters as early as January 1994. Jimmy Turk, a trial attorney, was readying a campaign. Cupp belatedly announced his interest, but delayed a decision because he was still county chairman and the U.S. Senate and House races were still going on.
In January, Weddle announced his nomination bid and, shortly after, Turk announced he would not run for the Senate seat once held by his father, now a federal judge.
"I did not decide what I wanted to do until March," Cupp says. At the end of that month, more than 150 New River Valley Republicans, including Turk, gathered to applaud Cupp's campaign announcement. A month later and just three weeks before the mass meeting to choose the party's candidate, Weddle withdrew from the contest to take care of increased demands at his business.
Cupp had the field to himself, and the rest of the spring and summer to start getting out to fairs, festivals, Fourth of July parades and high school football games across the district.
He also, with Blacksburg House candidate Larry Linkous, brought in Allen for a fund-raising lunch during the governor's July RV tour.
Since then, he's criticized Marye for being an election-year-only friend of education, for having an anti-business voting record, for not supporting Allen's parole reform legislation and for otherwise working to thwart the governor's "common-sense, mainstream agenda," as he said in July. Lately, he's said Marye has grown isolated from the people he's elected to represent. On the hustings, Cupp says, many everyday people don't know Marye is their senator, or if they do, they haven't seen him in years.
Over the years, Cupp, because of involvement with the state Realtors political action committee, has visited Marye and other legislators during General Assembly sessions.
"I'm not in awe of it," he says of the hubbub of Richmond's Capitol Square. To be a good legislator, "You don't have to be a nuclear physicist. You have to be a person with common sense and good instinct," Cupp says. Most legislators he's met are "high-energy, goal oriented" people.
"I think it'd be interesting to be around them for a while."
PAT CUPP
Party: Republican
Age: 55
Occupation: Co-owner of development and property management company
Residence: Blacksburg
Family: Married, one daughter from previous marriage
WHAT THE CANDIDATE SAYS ABOUT HIS:
CORE VALUES: "My freedom. Freedom to do what you want to do as long as you don't trample on other people's freedom."
INDEPENDENCE: "My independence is second to none. I wouldn't vote for anything that I didn't believe in. ... I would break with the party on any issue that I didn't believe in philosophically or that wouldn't be good for the 39th District."
VISION: Cupp says education is the key to creating jobs and maintaining safe streets. He says schools need to focus less on teaching self-esteem and more on making children earn their self-esteem. He also says teachers need relief from frivolous lawsuits to be able to restore discipline. He favors giving more power over public school policy to localities. "What's proven is what's been going on for 30 years hasn't worked. All you have to do is look at the scores."
Keywords:
POLITICS PROFILE
by CNB