ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, June 2, 1996 TAG: 9605310071
SECTION: BOOKS PAGE: 5 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: BOOK REVIEW
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY PRESTON BRYANT|
BOOKMARKS
VIRGINIA VOTES: 1991-1994. By Larry Sabato. Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. $20.
Virginia is one of a small number of states in the nation where there is an election of some kind every year - whether local, state, or federal. This keeps the state's political analysts busy. And of them all, no analyst knows Virginia politics like Larry Sabato. Nobody.
The noted University of Virginia political science professor has prepared this seventh volume in the "Virginia Votes" series and covers the voting trends and their contributing factors for the 1991 state General Assembly races, the 1992 presidential campaign in Virginia, the 1993 gubernatorial election and the 1994 U.S. Senate race.
"Virginia Votes" is more than just a book of electoral statistics. Sabato, long respected for his reliable commentary, provides insight on such peripheral but not unimportant issues affecting electoral outcomes as voter turnout, campaign finances, and demographic voting (women and minorities, labor unions and the Christian Right).
In terms of the four electoral cycles analyzed by Sabato, he tells us some simple things. The '91 General Assembly races were the state GOP's best in two decades. The '92 presidential campaign was also good for Republicans insomuch as Bill Clinton was held to winning four of 10 Virginia voters when he generally rolled over George Bush in so many other states. George Allen's '93 victory represented the best GOP gubernatorial win in 100 years. And the '94 elections were quite an anomaly given that six of seven Democratic congressmen were reelected and Oliver North lost to a "scandal-tainted" Democrat in a year when Republicans were sweeping the rest of the nation.
But he also tells us a lot of details about each of these campaign years.
And that's what makes "Virginia Votes" so interesting. For example, while the '91 legislative races gave us a 25 percent turnover in the state House and Senate (which is good), campaign spending reached an unprecedented $11 million (which is not so good). While '92 was known as the "Year of the Woman" - and nationally most women voted for Clinton - in the Old Dominion most women preferred Bush. And while Allen's '93 victory in many ways signaled significant change - he became but the fourth GOP governor this century and he received the highest vote percentage since 1961 - the year also yielded the highest reelection rate in many years for incumbent members of the House of Delegates (98 percent).
Perhaps some of the more interesting commentary comes in Sabato's rather poignant analysis of the '94 Robb-North race for the U.S. Senate. In a section entitled "How Republicans Blew a Sure Thing," he notes that the state Republican Party failed to keep its partisans on the reservation. Nine out of 10 Democrats stayed faithfully with Robb while 25 percent of Republicans failed to support North. This "turncoat factor," says Sabato, was enough to cost the GOP an otherwise sure victory.
It's truly hard to think of an issue or contributing factor to these four electoral cycles that Sabato has missed. He tells us the obvious and the not-so-obvious, and he makes us see both the forest and the trees. The supporting material is also more than adequate, with more than 100 tables and maps accompanying Sabato's commentary.
"Virginia Votes" is not for everybody. It's purely for those who have a keen interest in Virginia politics, academic or otherwise, and want to know why these elections turned out the way they did. And, truly, there is no one better to learn it from than Larry Sabato.
Preston Bryant is a Republican member of the Virginia House of Delegates. He lives in Lynchburg.
The Christian Right comes of age
REVIEWED BY PRESTON BRYANT
SECOND COMING: The New Christian Right in Virginia Politics. By Mark J. Rozell and Clyde Wilcox. Johns Hopkins University Press. $32.95.
The Christian Right has become vitally important to Virginia Republicans. Over the past half-dozen or so years, it has become the party's mainstay, its reliable, hearty meat-and-potatoes.
But the formidable twist facing the party is this: while Virginia's Republican candidates running statewide may have a difficult time winning without the Christian Right - activist social conservatives - they have an even tougher time winning statewide if that's all they've got.
Mark Rozell and Clyde Wilcox examine this very challenge to the state's Tories in "Second Coming." They look at two races in particular where fundamentalist Christians were a major force in the nominations of statewide candidates - that of conservative home-schooling activist Mike Farris for lieutenant governor in 1993 and Iran-Contra figure Oliver North for the U.S. Senate in 1994 - only to see them lose in their respective general elections.
In both instances, social conservatives packed the GOP nominating conventions - even setting attendance records - and propelled Farris and North to clear victories. But in the general elections, Rozell and Wilcox contend, each was a victim of not only a general uneasiness toward them by the broader electorate but also damaging levels of defection from within the Republican Party.
The very conservative Farris, described as a "first-wave organizer" but a "second-wave candidate," saw voters overwhelmingly support his ticket-mates, George Allen for governor and Jim Gilmore for attorney general, while he ran 12 points behind them. North also suffered a three-point general election loss as a sufficient number of party turncoats bolted to an admittedly not-very-well-liked Chuck Robb in a year when Republicans were cleaning house nationwide.
Rozell and Wilcox focus on these two case studies for most of "Second Coming," but they also relate them to a larger historical picture, much to their credit. They go all the way back to the emerging-but-disorganized late-70s fundamentalist movement in Virginia politics (the "first coming") to set the stage and then venture to the more sophisticated machine-like politics of the Christian Coalition in the 1990s (the "second coming") that so greatly influenced the Farris and North nominating conventions and campaigns.
Their research is based in part on in-depth interviews and surveys of convention-goers, Republican Party of Virginia Central Committee members and other party activists. They don't rely on lots of tables and charts, though they do include a few when necessary.
"Second Coming" is a fairly scholarly but readable review of how the Christian Right - described as "a social movement in the process of transformation" - came of age in Virginia politics, and it offers a not implausible view of what lies ahead for the movement in the years ahead.
Preston Bryant is a Republican member of the Virginia House of Delegates. He lives in Lynchburg.
New Civil War era books
REVIEWED BY ROBERT HILLDRUP
IMMORTAL CAPTIVES. By Mauriel Phillips Joslyn. White Mane Publishing. $29.95.
THE DULANYS OF WELBOURNE: A Family in Mosby's Confederacy. By Margaret Ann Vogtsberger. Rockbridge Publishing. $32.
The proliferation of new Civil War books testifies not only to the continuing popularity of their subject, but also to the wide divergence of research that is still going on.
Leading the current group is Joslyn's story of 600 Confederate officers, captured by the North, and of the effects of what she contends was a deliberately punitive prisoner-of-war policy.
Several things commend this book. One is the balance it gives to the continual howling over the treatment of Union prisoners at Andersonville, the Georgia prison whose commandant was hanged by the North for alleged war crimes. Joslyn suggests that the North's deliberate neglect and mistreatment of many Confederate prisoners came as a reaction to reports coming out of Andersonville.
No prison was any picnic, but what was overlooked, in the opinion of many Southerners, was that a South whose own soldiers were near starvation could hardly provide very well for prisoners. To support this position, Joslyn even quotes Union survivors of Andersonville to the effect that their treatment was the best that could have been expected under the circumstances.
Her book is no polemic. She has arranged it in a highly readable manner, blending quotes from various prisoners at various camps to make a comprehensive tale.
Margaret Ann Vogtsberger's book is a particularly interesting work because it brings to light the rarely seen diaries and letters of Col. Richard Dulany whose estate, Welbourne, near Middleburg, was at the heart of a portion of Virginia known as Mosby's Confederacy because of that Confederate leader's striking success against Union occupiers and armies.
Overall, this is a contribution to the literature of the war, and its effect on specific families of wealth who found themselves at the heart of events beyond their control.
Robert Hilldrup is a Richmond writer and former newspaperman.
BOOKS IN BRIEFS
THAT DAY THE RABBI LEFT TOWN.
By Harry Kemelman. Fawcett. $22.
Rabbi David Small is back with us after a near-decade lapse in the pleasing series started by Harry Kemelman in 1964 with "Friday the Rabbi Slept Late."
The mysteries unraveled by this spiritual shepherd of a small town flock near Boston are constructed of precise character development and cerebral convolutions on the part of our hero. In this one, the rabbi retires from the Barnard's Crossing Temple and embarks on a new, academic career. There is a murder, and the rabbi is especially concerned by suspicion involving his successor.
Don't look here for violence, sex, or gore.
McNALLY'S PUZZLE.
By Lawrence Sanders. Putnam. $24.95.
This sixth novel in the McNally series continues the development of central character Archy McNally. McNally describes himself as a "bon vivant, dilettantish detective."
What can you expect of a detective who concludes that his attire and accouterments are "a bit twee but not too," and who says that his slow-witted budding Watson is so obsessed with centerfolds that he wouldn't date a woman unless she had a staple in her navel?
McNally fans will have no doubt that Archy will solve the murder of an eccentric, wealthy widower and parrot entrepreneur, even though the net of suspicion is thrown over nearly all the victim's family, business associates and other Palm Beach elements.
HOPE.
By Len Deighton. HarperCollins.$24.
Bulldog tenacity has been a primary characteristic of Len Deighton's much-abused British spy, Bernard Sampson, through all of the nine novels in which he has appeared. Sampson's creator displays similar dedicated perseverance in continuing to pursue his Cold War course (not exclusively, fortunately) while other espionage writers have been busy latching on to new fields.
This is the second volume in a third Sampson trilogy. You'll revisit the usual gang. You'll follow Sampson from London through two Germanys and into a gloomy Poland in the winter of 1987-88 in pursuit of his wealthy brother-in-law, George Kosinski. George purports to doubt the death of his wife at the hands of the East German Stassi. But, what really makes George run?
Paul E. Fitzgerald is a recovering journalist who lives on a farm, overlooking Fincastle.
LENGTH: Long : 203 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. FILE/1992. Larry Sabato\Why Virginians vote the wayby CNBthey do. 2. (headshot) Deighton.