Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 9, 1995 TAG: 9511090035
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Chances are, Branscom was on that particular road within the past six months, waging an extensive door-to-door campaign that may have made the difference Tuesday in his surprisingly lopsided defeat of Commonwealth's Attorney Rob Hagan.
"My whole campaign was based on knocking on doors," Branscom, a Republican, said Wednesday. "You tend to know a road very well when you've knocked on every door on it. You know where the mean dogs are, too."
Branscom took 63 percent of the vote to unseat the one-term incumbent, winning comfortably in all 17 of the county's voting precincts.
Since June 15, Branscom - an assistant commonwealth's attorney in Roanoke for the past 10 years - has spent every evening after work and every Saturday getting to know potential voters. The only time he took a break was for several weeks in midsummer, when he was prosecuting convicted mass murderer Robert M. May.
Branscom even hoarded his vacation time and took most of October off to campaign door to door.
"It was a learning experience for me, and I've gotten to know a lot more people in the county," he said.
Branscom said he has no plans for drastic changes come Jan. 1. "I had let the people in the office know that this was not a referendum on their jobs, and I did not plan to come in and clean office," he said. "In fact, I hope to learn a lot from them."
The office consists of a secretary, a victim-witness coordinator and an assistant prosecutor - a part-time job that Branscom hopes to make full time.
Although the office is smaller than the one he is accustomed to, Branscom will have the luxury of a much smaller caseload. In Roanoke, where cases sometimes are heard simultaneously in 11 different courtrooms, he and nine other prosecutors often rush from one case to the next.
"I hope to have more time to prepare for cases than I did in Roanoke, and giving them a little bit more of a personal touch," he said.
Hagan said he is willing to work with Branscom over the next two months. "I will say we'll have a very prompt and smooth transition in the office," he said.
While acknowledging that Branscom did more door-to-door campaigning than he did, Hagan questioned how much of an impact that had on the final results.
One defense attorney speculated that Hagan may have been hurt by his hard-line stance in which every case was prosecuted to the fullest, regardless of factors that might justify a reduced charge or lighter sentence.
Branscom is better able to temper zeal with compassion, according to Thomas Roe, a Fincastle lawyer and once a fellow prosecutor. Branscom does not prosecute "just to rack up numbers, and Rob sort of did that," Roe said.
William "Buck" Heartwell, former Botetourt County commonwealth's attorney and chairman of the county's Democratic Party, acknowledged that Hagan is "a very hard-nosed prosecutor; that's his style."
"But I don't think that had anything to do with the election," he added. "Unless I'm seriously out of touch with the community, that's what people want these days."
Fincastle lawyer Harold Eads noted that Hagan had worked in the commonwealth's attorney's office as an assistant or top prosecutor since 1980, and that most prosecutors in the county have lasted about 15 years in a job that is sure to win them enemies.
"I think part of it is, after a while, you prosecute too many people's cousins," Eads said.
Reached Wednesday at his Botetourt County home, Branscom was still at a loss to explain the margin of his victory. "None of us really expected that," he said.
The first indication that Nov. 7 might turn out well for Branscom came the day before, when he returned home from knocking on his last door to find that his wife - Roanoke Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Ann Gardner - had just bagged a seven-point buck using a black-powder rifle.
"She's a darn good shot," Branscom said.
by CNB