Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 5, 1995 TAG: 9511060072
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Virginia's most expensive and partisan campaigns for the General Assembly finally come to a close Tuesday amid signs that voters may turn out in record numbers for what have been billed as the state's most historic elections in this century.
At stake is more than just which candidates win the right to hold a part-time job in a legislative body that many voters admit they don't pay much attention to.
What's really on the line Tuesday, partisans on both sides agree, is the direction of state government - a decision that could wind up affecting the amount of taxes you pay, what your kids learn in school, perhaps even the types of jobs that are created in the state in the years to come.
Says the Rev. Tyler Millner, pastor of the Morning Star Holy Church in Martinsville and chairman of a statewide network of African-American ministers who are taking to the pulpit today to urge their congregations to vote on Tuesday: "This election provides the greatest choice relative to where we're going to go in the future."
It's a choice that some voters, unaccustomed to having their local balloting scrutinized for evidence of a statewide mandate, say they're intimidated by. "It's something I have agonized with the past few weeks," says Frances Little, a graphic designer and single mother from Daleville. "I keep going back and forth trying to decide what to do ....
``It's what the news people call a referendum. I don't know if the voters would call it that. But when the outsiders started coming in and start paying attention, and you have it not just in the local news, but in the national news, it's like, `Let me take a look at this again.'''
When she takes that second look, here's what she sees:
All 140 seats in the legislature will be up for grabs and, for the first time since the Democrats took control following Reconstruction, Republicans have a realistic chance of winning a majority. After making gains by fits and starts over the past two decades, the GOP now needs to pick up just three seats in both the House of Delegates and the state Senate to win control.
An all-out assault
More than anything else, that prospect has transformed this year's Virginia elections beyond recognition.
In the past, elections to the legislature were relatively docile affairs, dominated mostly by local issues and personalities. Four years ago, Republican Malfourd "Bo" Trumbo of Fincastle and his main rival for the state Senate spent much of their campaign debating who was more in touch with their rural constituents - by arguing over who was the most comfortable operating a chainsaw.
This year, Gov. George Allen, a fiery partisan who blasts the Democrats as "oligarchical elitists" and who once invited fellow Republicans to help him kick the Democrats' "soft teeth down their whiny throats," has gambled his governorship by declaring these midterm elections to be a referendum on his conservative administration.
To back him up, Republicans have mounted what might qualify as the most concerted assault on Richmond since Ulysses S. Grant led the Army of the Potomac - fielding candidates in districts that haven't seen a contested election in years, and raising more money than ever before.
"No governor has ever gone to this length during a midterm election; never before has a midterm election been perceived as a referendum on the governor," says University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato, the state's foremost observer of election trends. "Never have we had a legislative election with this much competition. And the tide of money is unprecedented."
And perhaps irreversible.
"This is the beginning of a new era in state legislative elections," Sabato says. "It now costs $100,000 just to run for the House of Delegates. God help us all."
Three races in Western Virginia stand as prime examples of the GOP strategy to attack on all fronts:
nTwo years ago, Del. Richard Cranwell, D-Roanoke County, faced an unknown, underfunded opponent; now he's forced to deal with Trixie Averill, a Republican activist so well connected that she's been able to call in nearly as many fund-raising chits around the state as Cranwell, the House majority leader.
nDel. Clifton "Chip" Woodrum, D-Roanoke, hadn't drawn an opponent in a decade and that was little more than a token challenge; now he's facing Roanoke physician Newell Falkinburg who has more cash to spend than Woodrum does.
nState Sen. Madison Marye, D-Shawsville, hadn't had to worry about re-election in 12 years; now he's being hard-pressed by Blacksburg real estate magnate Pat Cupp, who has poured $84,000 of his own money into the campaign.
It's a storyline that is repeated all across Virginia. "The Republicans have a target-rich environment," Virginia Commonwealth University political analyst Bob Holsworth says. By contrast, there are only a relative handful of races where Democrats have concentrated their resources on trying to take out incumbent Republicans.
Two of those, however, are in Western Virginia, where well-known Democrats are trying to oust GOP freshmen who were surprise winners last time out.
Democrats, many of whom privately concede they'll lose some seats elsewhere, have pinned their hopes on retaining control of the Senate on whether Roanoke Vice Mayor John Edwards can upset state Sen. Brandon Bell, R-Roanoke County. Likewise, Democrats believe Claude Whitehead's challenge to Del. Allen Dudley, R-Rocky Mount, is one of their best chances to reclaim a House seat.
Western Virginia is also as good a place as any to examine the escalation of campaign money - and what it's meant:
nBetween them, Cranwell and Averill have spent more than $430,000 - which makes theirs the most expensive House race in Virginia history (although there's another one in Newport News that may wind up being even more costly).
nOne way Averill and Falkinburg have been able to mount such well-funded challenges - they'll probably wind up being the two best-funded House challengers in the state - is the Via family's entry into politics. Roanoke millionaires Edward and Peter Via have contributed $80,000 each to both of the GOP candidates; Edward Via has kicked in another $50,000 to Allen's political action committee, which has been buying ads of its own. Together, the Via brothers have contributed more than $210,000 to this fall's campaigns.
nEven without the Vias, there's just a lot more money being raised this year. Four years ago, Brandon Bell spent just under $57,000 to win a state Senate seat; this year, he's already raised more than $200,000 to defend it.
As a result, what's happened is that campaigns for the state legislature, which once were friends-and-neighbors affairs, have been turned into mini-congressional campaigns, complete with pollsters, consultants, and a heavy barrage of sharply worded (opponents say "distorted" ) direct mail in the final days, most of it from Republicans. "The mail may be the unwritten story of this campaign," Sabato says.
That mail also has become an issue Democrats have tried to turn to their advantage. "The choice in this campaign," Edwards told a rally in Vinton Saturday, "is whether a positive campaign can defeat a negative campaign."
Finally, there's just the sheer spectacle of it all. Averill supporters paraded through Vinton Saturday, led by a dumptruck that had been painted to declare: "Dump Dickie Cranwell." Just a few blocks away, former Gov. Gerald Baliles told Democrats that Tuesday's elections "are the most important in a generation in Virginia." His qualifies as understatement: Roanoke's Republican congressman, Bob Goodlatte, has called them the most important elections for the General Assembly in this century.
Uncertain electorate
Political analysts shy away from making predictions about who will win, despite two polls last week that showed a Virginia electorate considering itself more Republican than ever before. The most complicating factor may be the voters themselves. Fewer than one-third of the likely voters in a recent VCU poll could correctly identify which party now holds a majority in the General Assembly.
Furthermore, despite all the efforts to turn these 140 legislative races into a single statewide choice, many voters steadfastly refuse to see things that way. Nearly half of those surveyed in the VCU poll - 47 percent - said Allen's agenda won't be a factor in the way they vote. Only 31 percent said it will be, and they appeared to be evenly divided about which way Allen was pushing them.
Little, the Daleville voter, worries that by emphasizing statewide issues, candidates on both sides will wind up being more beholden to their parties than to their constituents. "I'm going to look at it as a local election," she insists. "As a result of that, it's not going to be a straight party ticket."
There's also uncertainty about just how many Virginians will actually vote.
Usually, only about half the state's registered voters bother to go to the polls in this election cycle.
But registrars in Roanoke, Roanoke County and Montgomery County report that absentee voting, usually a strong predictor of how many voters will show up on Election Day, has been running unusually strong in the past week.
All three predict that turnout Tuesday may surge into the 60 percent range - about what it usually is when there's a governor's race on the ballot.
Whatever the turnout, Republicans point to electoral trends throughout the South that show the region realigning in federal elections and insist a GOP takeover at the state level is inevitable. "History is on our side," says Del. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, who has no opposition. "It's going to happen, if not this year, then in 1997."
Indeed, Virginia's demographics appear to favor the Republicans in the long run. The VCU poll showed that while lifelong Virginians were evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, non-natives broke toward the GOP by a margin of 47 percent to 31 percent. In a state that's one of the fastest-growing in the nation, that's worrisome for Democrats. Perhaps mindful of those trends, Cranwell told former Republican legislator-turned-syndicated newspaper columnist Ray Garland last year: "If we lose, it's because we could never win."
Allen as an issue
Nevertheless, with the combative Cranwell eclipsing the lower-key Lt. Gov. Don Beyer as the party's spiritual leader, Democrats have waged a spirited counterattack to Allen's attempt to frame the campaign around him. They've zeroed in on Allen's proposed budget cuts, which would have slashed $92 million in education funding and reduced or eliminated other state funds that many Virginians have come to expect for local projects.
At one campaign event this fall, Cranwell read off a list of Roanoke Valley projects that Allen's budget had targeted for cuts - the Hotel Roanoke conference center, Center in the Square, Virginia's Explore Park. "If George Allen had had his way, that money would have been gone," Cranwell said, ripping up the sheet of paper. Garland warns that Allen may have unleashed a "countervailing force" from constituencies who would have seen funding for their projects cut.
If Democrats prevail, even in only one chamber, their victory would doubtless be interpreted as a repudiation of Allen and his attempted makeover of state government. Wags already joke about how he'd become Virginia's first "half-term" governor.
If the Republicans triumph, the Old Dominion would become the first state in the South where the GOP controls both chambers of the state legislature, and Allen's national star would shine bright. Cranwell already grumbles that Allen wants to make a name for himself so he can win the vice presidential spot on next year's national ticket.
A Republican takeover also would do more than change the partisan scoreboard, however. It would would dramatically shift legislative power to the suburbs that have powered GOP voting trends since the end of World War II. In particular, if a Republican-led General Assembly sticks with the seniority system, the chairmanships of the key committees that deal with the budget, schools and roads would be taken over by Northern Virginians, many of whom have already talked about how they'd use their new-found power to shift more funding to their part of the state.
More importantly, though, a Republican General Assembly likely would signal a distinct philosophical break with the way Virginia's state government has been run.
Democrats are cast in the role of traditionalists, insisting they've run a frugal operation that has kept taxes among the lowest in the nation. But Allen and his Republican allies talk about bringing to Richmond the same kind of conservative "revolution" Newt Gingrich has brought to Washington; they vow to cut the size of state government and introduce "innovations" such as allowing school boards to contract with private groups that want to set up publicly funded "charter schools."
"Let's make history," Allen urges supporters. But where Republicans see an opportunity Tuesday, Democrats see a threat. "The Commonwealth has earned the right to be considered progressive," says Millner, the Martinsville minister. "I think it's important to stay the course to a degree."
General Assembly lineup
House
Democrats 52
Republicans 47
Independents 1
Senate
Democrats 22
Republicans 18
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB