Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 19, 1995 TAG: 9510190061
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY AND KIMBERLY N. MARTIN STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
On the steps of the Roanoke courthouse, the Virginia Police Benevolent Association on Wednesday issued endorsements to three local Democratic General Assembly incumbents and one challenger.
"This is for John Edwards, Dick Cranwell, Vic Thomas and Chip Woodrum," said Dick Mays, executive director of the PBA. "The Police Benevolent Association does not endorse a party. We endorse candidates."
The PBA counts as members about 200 Roanoke police officers and 60 others in the valley outside the city's limits, Mays said. The organization's executive board unanimously endorsed the four Democrats based on responses to questionnaires candidates filled out.
Mays said the survey addressed issues such as victims' rights and job benefits for law enforcement officers.
One theme of the campaign event was budget cuts to law enforcement proposed by Gov. George Allen this year. Democrats defeated the state funding cuts, which they said could have forced laying off seven police officers in Roanoke and two in Roanoke County.
"These law enforcement officers put their life on the line every day. We just ask that citizens support us for what we do," Mays said. "... We don't want any law enforcement officers cut. That's why we're supporting these candidates."
Three of the four Democrats were present for the announcement, and all said they were pleased with the endorsement. Cranwell was absent.
Edwards, Roanoke's vice mayor and a former U.S. attorney for Western Virginia, used the event to take a jab at his Republican opponent, state Sen. Brandon Bell, R-Roanoke County.
"Not only does my opponent have no law enforcement experience," Edwards said, "but he has been the chief sponsor of no bill involving law enforcement which has been enacted into law."
Bell campaign manager James Faulkner called Edwards' support for the law enforcement community "questionable at best."
He noted that as a defense attorney in 1994, Edwards represented a man in Rockbridge County who was convicted of verbal assault for threatening a Buena Vista police officer's life.
After the trial, Edwards called the two-month jail sentence his client received "unduly severe."
Meanwhile, Bell picked up his own law enforcement endorsement Wednesday from the Falls Church-based Law Enforcement Alliance of America, which bills itself as the "nation's largest coalition of law enforcement officers, victims of crime and concerned citizens."
The group praised Bell for, among other things, opposing the "disarming of law-abiding citizens."
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB