Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, October 27, 1995                   TAG: 9510270064
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MARYE TAKES OFFENSE AT CUPP'S AD ARSENAL

The Shawsville Democrat said Cupp, a Blacksburg Republican, is distorting his record, whether it comes to Marye's alleged lack of support for welfare reform (he said he voted for it in 1994 and this year) or his supposed enthusiasm for new taxes.

Flush with more than $50,000 received this month - twice what he'd raised before Sept. 30 - from the Joint Republican Legislative Caucus, Cupp began running an ad on Roanoke TV stations over the weekend. He's previously aired a radio spot and started a new one Thursday.

"They're impact advertisements," Cupp said Thursday. "They're trying to make a point."

Marye responded to the TV spot, to the first radio spot and to two of the three direct-mail items sent out in the past week by the Republican Party of Virginia. The last one's colored a highly seasonal pumpkin-orange.

Even some local Republicans acknowledge that one of those mailers is a bit on the cheesy side. It shows a photo of a cash-stuffed wallet with the text "This is your wallet." Flip the page and a second photo shows the wallet empty, with text: "This is your wallet on $enator Madison Marye. Any questions?"

"All he has done throughout this campaign is find fault," Marye said in a written statement his campaign handed out Wednesday.

"Does he have anything positive to offer the people of the district? The people deserve to know the facts about issues and positions," Marye said. "I have always tried to make sure my positions are known and have been straightforward."

"The problem is he hasn't been straightforward," Cupp charged back. "He'll tell you one thing one time and something else the next."

Marye's rebuttals deal with his low ranking on the "Allen Support Index" (he says it's based on only 14 out of 2,000 votes); his lack of support for Allen's prison-building agenda (he said he doesn't support borrowing money to build prisons when neither site nor plan is in place); his refusal to go along with the governor's plan to return lottery profits to local governments (Marye said localities would lose more than they would gain); and host of other specific tax and policy issues, each footnoted in the Cupp fliers to a specific Marye vote.

Cupp's TV ad shows Marye, frozen in video footage with a silly expression on his face, beside a 1990 quote: "It's hard to vote against a person who contributes to your campaign, especially one who was a major contributor."

Then Cupp recounts his three-point plan and says "I'll tackle the hard issues, and I won't be checking my contribution list before I vote. That'll be real change."

Marye said the quote, from an editorial in The Roanoke Times, was taken out of context. He said he sponsored legislation supporting campaign finance reform and, prior to this election, has not spent more than $30,000 in a single campaign (though his 1979 nine-vote win over lawyer Ed Stone set a regional record for that time).

Cupp said he's standing by the ads. "He is ashamed, I think, of his voting record," Cupp said. "I think that is part of the problem. He keeps trying to dance around it and he won't give straight answers."

Keywords:
POLITICS