ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, May 5, 1996 TAG: 9605040008
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
VIRGINIA Democrats squabble, it tends to get personal. Virginia Republicans squabble, it tends to get ideological: One conservative Republican denouncing another conservative Republican for insufficient devotion to the cause.
A case in point: The charge that U.S. Sen. John Warner, under challenge from James Miller in an upcoming GOP primary, is but an "occasional Republican." Why, suggests a recent Miller-campaign circular, you might even say Warner is an "all-too-frequent Democrat."
The basis for the anti-Warner wrath of some Virginia Republican activists is a few high-profile stands - his vote during the Reagan administration against Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, for example, and his opposition to Oliver North in the 1994 Senate contest - in which he broke with the GOP line. But Warner's overall Senate voting record is hardly that of a closet Democrat.
According to figures reported in the 1996 edition of Congressional Quarterly's Politics in America, a nonpartisan publication, the senator from 1989 through 1994 averaged a party-unity score of 79 and a conservative-coalition score of 88.
In an average year during that period, in other words, Warner voted with his fellow Republicans on 79 percent of those votes in which a majority of Republicans voted on one side and a majority of Democrats on the other. He voted an average of 88 percent of the time with Republicans and Southern Democrats when a majority of that coalition voted on one side and a majority of Northern Democrats on the other.
Warner's party-unity scores are in the middling range for senior Senate Republicans - lower than Majority (then-Minority) Leader Bob Dole's 92 average, for example, but higher than New York Sen. Al D'Amato's 69. Truly maverick Republican senators, like Oregon's Mark Hatfield and Rhode Island's John Chafee, averaged in the 40s and 50s.
The Virginia senator's conservative-coalition support also was a bit less than some other Republicans. But it was marginally more than such GOP stalwarts as Alaska Sen. Frank Murkowski, New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici, South Dakota Sen. Larry Pressler and Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar.
If Warner is an occasional Republican, those occasions are many.
LENGTH: Short : 47 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICS CONGRESSby CNB