ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, March 1, 1996 TAG: 9603010011
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
IN ADDITION to the mayor's post, four Roanoke City Council seats are up for election this spring. Democrats held their nominating convention Thursday night. But, to date anyway, the only announced Republican candidates are Jeff Artis and Alvin Nash.
Besides being Republican, both men are black.
For Roanoke, that isn't as big a deal as it might be in some places. The local GOP's receptivity more than a quarter-century ago to putting a man named Noel Taylor on its council ticket nurtured a tradition of black Republican political activity that elsewhere had been all but extinguished.
Taylor is no longer mayor, of course, but Mac McCadden, who is black and Republican, remains an incumbent on council.
Even in Roanoke, though, Democrats often take the black vote for granted. It is healthier for all when both parties compete for votes from all major segments of the electorate - none of which is monolithic.
It is healthier, too, to move past ster-eotyping that is as obsolescent as it is simplistic.
If for no other reasons than these, the candidacies of Artis, a substitute teacher who ran unsuccessfully for the House of Delegates in November, and of Nash, director of housing programs for Total Action Against Poverty, are a positive sign.
Artis is steeped in a libertarian philosophy of self-help.
Nash is a welcome newcomer to electoral politics, bringing impressive experience from his work with the Roanoke-based community action agency. He is also, like Artis, a self-described conservative.
"I chose the party that was more in line with my conservative and common-sense approach, and, most important, I chose the party that would allow me to be more of a statesman than simply a politician," Nash said when he announced his bid.
Democrats should take pause.
LENGTH: Short : 43 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICS CITY COUNCILby CNB