ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, June 28, 1996 TAG: 9606280054
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DEMOCRAT MARK WARNER says he'd use the U.S. Senate as a "bully pulpit" to promote Virginia as a leader in high technology.
Elizabeth Lindsay Neill is confused about Mark Warner. It's not that the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate shares the same last name as the Republican incumbent - the retired Roanoke teacher has the whole "Mark-not-John" thing figured out.
From Warner's television ads, she's gleaned his life story, an uplifting account of how in the early 1980s he could fit everything he owned into his '65 Buick - but in the decade that followed he made a fortune in the cellular telephone industry.
Instead, what confuses Neill is she doesn't have a handle on what the 41-year-old Alexandria telecommunications entrepreneur stands for.
"He's an unknown quantity to me," Neill says. "He's been a successful young man and wants others to be successful. What that has to do with public policy, I don't know."
It's a question Warner is attempting to answer as he crisscrosses the state in the wake of his formal nomination earlier this month - a journey that brought him this week to Roanoke
It was an appearance that may have been the quintessential Mark Warner campaign talk - distinctly apolitical, with an emphasis on how technology is changing the world and how government policies need to keep up with those changes.
At times, he sounded more like an economic developer pitching Virginia as a good place to do business than a candidate for U.S. Senate. He rattled off facts and figures about how Virginia is emerging as a high-tech leader and how Blacksburg has the world's highest concentration of Internet users. He mentioned how the Roanoke Valley has the nation's third-highest concentration of fiber-optic cable companies and how Northern Virginia ranks behind only Silicon Valley in its concentration of high-tech businesses.
"We are truly the hub of the emerging information technology business," he said. "The picture we have to paint, that hasn't been painted, is that Virginia can be an absolute leader in this technology."
Yet, to paraphrase Neill and other Virginians wondering the same thing, just what does Warner's success in high-tech mean for voters? He answers this way: His success in business shows he understands the future and is better equipped than incumbent John Warner to make that future work for ordinary Virginians.
So what does Mark Warner's vision of the future look like? Here's a sample:
n"I believe if we had a policy that envisioned within five or six years [that we would have] 30 percent of our work force telecommuting, with two-income families where mom or dad could stay home one or two days a week, that's probably the best family values program around, and it doesn't cost the government a cent."
n"What is the No.1 industry in the Roanoke Valley? It's health care. Suppose we took the wireless technology developed at Virginia Tech and took the nurse practitioners produced at the College of Health Sciences and put them together in a mobile medical van - all of a sudden you have the ability to export your biggest industry. This is the way we need to be thinking."
And just how does he intend to accomplish this? After all, another question that comes up about Mark Warner - as it did this week when The Roanoke Times assembled a group of randomly selected voters to talk about the upcoming Senate race - is that of inexperience vs. seniority.
"Mark Warner, he's a very knowledgable person, young and energetic," said Jeff Borthen, a Roanoke small business owner. "But if he goes into the Senate as a junior senator, he'd have no pull whatsoever. What could he do?"
Plenty, Mark Warner says. "Under that analogy, we'd have a Senate full of Strom Thurmonds," he says. That's the standard answer challengers give, but he adds an urgency to it. "Yes, Mark Warner will fight for defense, for agriculture, for tobacco farmers, for mining. But the decisions we make over the next five years will determine whether Virginia becomes the high-tech leader we want it to be. We can't wait."
Besides, he says, "a lot of what I'm talking about isn't legislative. From a public policy perspective, my view of the role of Senate is more than voting yes or no. It's to use the bully pulpit."
And he says he'd use that "bully pulpit" to promote Virginia as a high-tech center - and to encourage businesses to adopt some of his ideas. "I think I would have more credibility with the business community than anybody else," he says.
This is not standard campaign fare, and Republicans contend it's designed to "hide" Warner's liberal viewpoints - they attack him as a "Clinton clone" and point out how he once was a fund-raiser for the national Democratic Party.
But Mark Warner contends the pitch that he understands the economy of the future is the one that will persuade voters to choose him over John Warner in November. "The normal whack-whack against him isn't going to work," he says. Still, he expresses a frustration: "A lot of what I'm talking about doesn't fit in a sound bite."
Got a question for the candidates for Congress? Let us know so we can follow up. In Roanoke, call 981-0100. In New River, 382-0200. Press category 7821.
Want more information? You can check out our on-line guide for voters at: http://www. infi.net/roatimes/.
LENGTH: Medium: 99 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Mark Warner KEYWORDS: POLITICS CONGRESSby CNB