ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, May 13, 1996 TAG: 9605130141
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-2 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: & now this ...
How were Democrats able to pick up two seats to expand their Roanoke City Council majority from 4-3 to 6-1? Simple: Democrats turned out to vote, and Republicans didn't.
While overall voter turnout in Tuesday's election was down significantly from four years ago, when 47 percent of the city's registered voters went to the polls to pick a successor to retiring Mayor Noel Taylor, it was pretty much the same as it was in council elections in 1994, 1990 and 1988 - about 30 percent.
What made Tuesday's turnout different from those elections was who voted and who didn't.
Compared with this same election cycle in 1988, turnout was down in five precincts, which just happened to be among the city's most Republican-leaning: South Roanoke No.1 and No.2, and Raleigh Court No.3, No.4 and No.5.
Sometimes it was down rather significantly:
In 1988, for instance, 44 percent of the registered voters in Raleigh Court No. 5 cast ballots; this year, only 36 percent did - a drop of eight percentage points.
Those also were the precincts where Republican council candidate Alvin Nash ran strongest; presumably, if more people there had bothered to vote, he might have picked up the votes necessary to win.
By contrast, turnout was up in Democratic-leaning precincts, especially in Northeast and Northwest Roanoke, where eventual Democratic winners Jim Trout and Carroll Swain ran strongest.
In some precincts, turnout was up by five or more percentage points from 1988. The biggest increases came in Washington Heights, where turnout surged from 18 percent to 25 percent; and in Eureka Park, where turnout climbed from 33 percent to 39 percent.
- DWAYNE YANCEY
Anyone lose a `Pugsy'?
Count on the Roanoke Valley SPCA for a good wayward animal tale.
But rarely do the tales (``tails?'') wander outside the valley, much less the state.
This one took Al Alexander, the SPCA shelter's executive director, to a U.S. Army post in the state of Washington.
Two weeks ago, an animal control officer brought a 6-year-old male pug into the shelter. The dog's tags told Alexander where it had received its last rabies shots - Fort Lewis, Wash.
Alexander tracked down the phone number of the veterinarian at Fort Lewis. He asked the vet if he knew who the dog was registered to. Turned out the dog was registered to a Randy Fair, who had been transferred from Fort Lewis to Germany, the vet told Alexander.
But the veterinarian would not tell Alexander how long Fair had been stationed in Germany - or where in Germany.
So Alexander, who served in the Navy, put his military instincts to work and called the Department of the Army in Washington, D.C. He was stonewalled again. Only in the event of a personal emergency would it divulge specifically where Randy Fair was stationed and how long he'd been there.
Alexander said he has no idea how the dog - named "Pugsy," according to the Fort Lewis vet - wound up in Roanoke. His best guess is that Fair left the dog with friends or relatives who live in the Roanoke area.
"The dog certainly couldn't have walked from Washington to Roanoke," Alexander said.
Know Pugsy? Call Alexander at 344-4840.
- LESLIE TAYLOR
Falling into gender gap
Aaron Smith and a political action committee of the Salem Taxpayers Association didn't affect Salem City Council elections quite the way they wanted. The candidate they endorsed, John Moore, fell 261 votes short of being elected.
They also ticked off several women in Salem.
When they sent out the association's newsletter, The Beacon, they used a mailing list generated by a mail service company that gave names and addresses of heads of households. So most of the newsletters were mailed to men.
Incumbents Alex Brown and Howard Packett, who won back their council seats, caught on to the mailing oversight.
When they sent out a flier in The Roanoke Times the day before the election, rebutting several allegations Smith made about City Council in The Beacon, they also asked why women were excluded from the taxpayer association's mailing list.
One upset woman wrote a letter to the editor to The Roanoke Times and the Salem Times-Register. Others made phone calls a few nights before the election to raise the issue with other women.
Smith said newsletters were sent to women who were considered heads of their household, but he didn't know how many. The group didn't mean to slight women, he said. It sent out 7,500 copies of the newsletter and had to buy a mailing list to get that many names.
"We felt like this was probably a mistake and, in the future, the list will include both males and females when we have the information," he said.
Brown admitted that the flier was inaccurate when it accused Smith of excluding all women voters. He said he and Packett were only trying to refute false claims Smith made about the city's government.
- S.D. HARRINGTON
And around the city...
Frank Roupas didn't get the lowest-numbered city decals for his antique cars this year. Roupas showed up to get in line at 7 a.m. on the first day they were issued, only to find he got beat there by another guy, who arrived at 5:30. Roupas even tried to buy them off the other man, but he was turned down.
Roanoke has got to be the only place in the country to organize something called the PMS Festival.
``PMS'' stands for Progressive Music Spectacular, according to a release from the Parks and Recreation Department.
Whatever it's called, the event has been canceled as a result of Laban Johnson's retirement as the city's director of special events.
- DAN CASEY
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