Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 26, 1995 TAG: 9510260028
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY AND BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
If politics were a wrestling match - and sometimes the two are indistinguishable - Del. Morgan Griffith would be the tag-team partner who charges into the ring when least expected, clamps a headlock on the opponent and holds down the unlucky rival so his side can get in a few more licks.
Heck, Griffith might even throw a punch or two himself, if he gets a chance.
The Salem Republican may be unopposed for re-election this fall, but he's still been one of the most energetic campaigners in Western Virginia - much to the chagrin of Democrats who have found themselves battling their formal opponents and Griffith, as well.
Del. Jim Shuler, D-Blacksburg? Griffith, at a candidates' forum in the New River Valley, goaded his Democratic colleague into committing a gaffe that Shuler later had to try to explain away. Griffith has become such a persistent presence in the race between Shuler and Republican challenger Larry Linkous that Democrats have complained Griffith is orchestrating Linkous' campaign "like a director at a play."
House Majority Leader Richard Cranwell of Roanoke County? For some time, Republican challenger Trixie Averill had been warning that Cranwell's influence would be "kaput" if Republicans win control of the General Assembly.
Griffith went one step further, taking it upon himself earlier this month to declare that not only would victorious Republicans freeze Cranwell out of the legislative process, they'd boot him off his major committees and "punish" him by exiling him to insignificant panels.
Then there are those television commercials - the generic Republican Party ads running on Roanoke Valley stations that feature the grainy pictures of Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton, linking them to the Democrats in Richmond. Griffith is the ad's local sponsor.
"Frankly, I've been a little surprised at how aggressive a role he's taken," Virginia Tech political analyst Bob Denton says. "Here's a relatively new delegate playing a role usually played by someone with more seniority and more political capital."
The 37-year-old lawyer and freshman delegate is so energetically partisan that he can't help himself.
"Obviously, I enjoy good intellectual debate," Griffith says, "but I also feel there's going to be a new majority and no matter what happens in the Roanoke Valley, the Republicans are going to be in control." He says he's just trying to help out fellow Republicans so he'll have IOUs he can call in during the next session. "Maybe the public doesn't like that, but it's human nature and it's politics," Griffith says.
And then there's the drama of it all that appeals to Griffith's competitive instincts. A historic election is going on around him, and it's killing him that he doesn't have a part in the action. Says Averill: "Morgan likes to mix it up."
Does he ever. He's mixed it up mostly in the campaign where Linkous is trying to unseat Shuler.
Griffith's district rambles into Montgomery County, so he's often invited to candidate forums in the New River Valley. At one in Dublin last month, Griffith verbally beat up on Shuler - charging that the tight discipline within the Democratic caucus meant Shuler was nothing more than a rubber stamp for his party's leaders.
Shuler responded by saying he's not part of a caucus and votes his convictions.
Griffith, delighted by Shuler's obvious misstatement about not belonging to a party caucus, responded by faxing out a barbed news release that charged Shuler was lying to voters. "I find it absurd that Del. Shuler would tell the voters he doesn't belong to a caucus," Griffith wrote. "Jim, where were you going each day during the last legislative session?..I'm pretty sure I saw you follow Del. Dick Cranwell into House Room 4 for each Democrat caucus."
Shuler was forced to concede that he misspoke. "He was trying to tie me as just a puppet of the caucus," Shuler said. "My point was the caucus doesn't own me. If Mr. Griffith wants to show where he felt that I changed a vote because of caucus pressure, I can show him where he changed his vote because of gubernatorial pressures."
But Shuler was clearly irritated at having to fend off Republicans on two sides. "Morgan doesn't have a race to worry about ... so he's been sort of the administration's handmaiden to help Larry run his race."
Griffith, though, may have gone too far when he showed up at a recent debate between Shuler and Linkous before the Virginia Tech Faculty Senate. There was a particular point about Virginia Tech funding he'd been trying to get Linkous to make earlier in the campaign - but the candidate wanted to wait until he was before a faculty audience to raise it.
"I probably showed I have a face that doesn't hide emotion very well," Griffith says. "I was gleeful he finally said it."
So gleeful that a Shuler supporter wrote a letter to the editor poking fun at him. "Griffith was right there in the audience monitoring Larry's every word like a director at a play," Jim Marchman charged.
After the forum, Griffith, in an interview with a reporter, backed up Linkous' contention that Shuler threw a "temper tantrum" on the House floor that put restoration of Tech's Cooperative Extension funding at risk.
"Morgan apparently felt the need to help explain Larry's distortions of Jim Shuler's record...just in case Linkous hadn't read the script just right," Marchman wrote. "We don't need someone in Richmond who has to have his strings pulled by Morgan Griffith or any other George Allen stand-in."
Griffith's help was so overbearing that Linkous felt compelled to distance himself a mite from his fellow Republican the day after publication of Marchman's letter. "Delegate Griffith has never written one word of any of my speeches or choreographed any part of my campaign," he said.
Griffith concedes his exuberance that night went too far, and he should simply have let Linkous respond on his own. A more restrained, but no less exciting, campaign experience for Griffith - and he says he spends six to seven days a week helping fellow Republicans in Western Virginia - came when Cranwell and Averill debated before the Fort Lewis Civic League.
When one of the residents present asked about why his child's school didn't have enough money to afford more computers, Averill responded with her standard line about how the state should turn over lottery proceeds to local governments. But Cranwell spotted a blackboard and a stick of chalk, and proceeded to scribble the state's arcane funding formula like a mad scientist - making the case why the Republican plan wouldn't do much good.
It was an impressive performance, one that a challenger without number-crunching experience in Richmond couldn't hope to match. But then Griffith - who sits on the House Education Committee - rose to Averill's defense. He strode to the blackboard, took a meaty fist and pointedly rubbed out one of Cranwell's figures. "You got this number wrong," he told Cranwell - and proceeded to outline the GOP version of school funding.
Touche.
"I really enjoyed that moment," Griffith says. "That was fun. Not in the sense of being something negative to Cranwell, but I'm learning the process, and here's something I know about the numbers, that Cranwell, with all his knowledge, didn't know...It's not often a freshman gets a chance to show up the House majority leader."
Cranwell grumbles that it's not a fair fight when Griffith shows up. "It would be better odds if I didn't have to take on the entire constabulary of the other side," Cranwell says. "I told him if you're going to join in the debates with me, I'll find you an opponent."
Griffith says he takes that as a threat the Democrats will be gunning for him in two years, and even fellow Republicans warn he's made himself into a target. "He's taken a big chance for retribution," says state Sen. Malfourd "Bo" Trumbo, R-Fincastle.
Adds Denton, the Tech analyst: "You know he's got Cranwell's attention, to say it politely."
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