ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, May 12, 1996 TAG: 9605130107
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
6TH DISTRICT DEMOCRATS nominated Jeffrey Grey for Congress, and talked up their candidate's blue-collar resume.
For Virginia Democrats, their long-shot game plan for taking back the 6th District seat in Congress looks something like this:
Talk up their candidate's blue-collar, family-man credentials.
Paint the Republicans as the party of corporations and the rich.
Play up incumbent Rep. Bob Goodlatte's work as a key lieutenant to GOP leader Newt Gingrich and supporter of the Republicans' "Contract With America."
Those were the themes many 6th District Democrats talked about Saturday in Roanoke as they nominated a young political unknown for what promises to be an uphill fight against a well-funded two-term incumbent.
Jeffrey Grey, a telecommunication repairman and union leader from Rockbridge County, won the Democratic nomination Saturday without a fight.
Grey, 31, who is married and has two children, promised his campaign would bring Democrats "a sense of enjoyment and sense of excitement that this district hasn't seen in a long time."
Grey acknowledged Goodlatte, a Roanoke lawyer, would be a tough opponent.
"He has the name recognition, although his record is not as well-known as I would like it to be," Grey said. The crowd responded with cheers.
The odds are against Grey. Incumbents usually win re-election, and the 6th District - which stretches from Lynchburg to Roanoke to Harrisonburg - is considered solid Republican territory.
However, his supporters include Jim Olin, who confounded the odds by holding the seat as a Democrat from 1982 to 1992.
"This young man has the heat in his belly," Olin told the crowd of 130-plus Democrats. "I'll tell you: The fire's there. He knows why he's running."
Grey's backers hope he can take advantage of what opinion polls indicate is a growing dissatisfaction with Gingrich and the Republican Congress.
Republicans say their legislative priorities, listed in their "Contract With America,'' will get government off businesses' backs, free up the economy and restore moral values. But Democrats have taken to calling it a "Contract On America" aimed at improving corporate profits at the expense of the environment and programs for the elderly and working families.
Olin, himself a retired General Electric executive, said Grey "may not get too many votes from the CEOs of businesses, but the people who work for those businesses are going to listen when he talks."
In his speech nominating Grey, state Sen. John Edwards, D-Roanoke, lambasted the "new breed of right-wing Republicans in Congress, followers of that great high priest, Rush Limbaugh. ... Their zeal knoweth no bounds."
He said the district needs to elect "a clear-thinking Democrat and not a Gingrich Republican."
Of 10 delegates interviewed at random as the convention broke up, two indicated their support for Grey was, at best, lukewarm. But the others said they were fired up about him.
"He's down with the working class of people," said Geraldine West, a hairdresser and Democratic activist from Amherst County. "He knows where he's from."
Will she work for him? "Yes, indeed. I'll do everything I can for him."
Maggie Morgan, a former Amherst Democratic chairwoman, also was excited by Grey. "He's for the elderly. That's the main dish - when you wear those shoes."
Morgan pantomimed rolling up her sleeves and said Amherst Democrats would do the same get-out-the-vote work that helped U.S. Sen. Charles Robb take a surprise win in the county in his 1994 race against Republican challenger Oliver North.
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Grey. color. KEYWORDS: POLITICS CONGRESSby CNB