ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, August 16, 1996 TAG: 9608160075
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Convention Notebook
DATELINE: SAN DIEGO
The eyes of the nation were on him, and Gov. George Allen passed the test - literally.
It all happened close to midnight Eastern time Wednesday when Allen rose to report the vote of Virginia's 53 convention delegates. Bob Dole needed only a handful of votes to officially claim the GOP presidential nomination, and Virginia, like a number of states before it, passed on giving its tally so that Dole's home state of Kansas could put him officially over the top.
Allen did it with style, however.
"We are pleased to do what Jack Kemp did on so many occasions as a quarterback," Allen said, referring to the GOP vice presidential nominee's days as a professional football player. "We pass."
Allen, a former University of Virginia quarterback, then took a small foam-rubber football and lobbed a perfect spiral across the aisle to Sam Brownback of Kansas, the Republican nominee to succeed Dole in the Senate. The pass brought laughs and applause across the convention floor.
But executing the play was not quite as easy as you might think, said Chris LaCivita, executive director of the state Republican Party. The convention floor was packed.
"We had to keep yelling at everyone who came in the aisle to move or to kneel down because we didn't want to the pass to be dropped," LaCivita said.
Allen got one other plum assignment from the Dole campaign Wednesday night. He got to stand on the floor and make the motion that Kemp be nominated by acclamation. That, state Republican sources acknowledged, was the Dole's campaign way of thanking Allen for being one of its early supporters.
- Warren Fiske
No shout, just clout
Ralph Reed, executive director of the Christian Coalition, said he is not bothered that evangelical leaders weren't invited to give prime-time speeches at the convention. He would rather have real clout.
"I don't need a lot of rhetorical bones from the podium," Reed said in an interview with The Washington Post. "You can only feed your people on that [rhetoric] for so long. At some point, you've got to have officeholders; you've got to have state chairmen; you've got to have state executive committee members; you've got to have delegates. We've got that, and we don't need as much of the rhetorical stroking."
The coalition has been widely credited this summer with blocking Dole's efforts to soften the party's anti-abortion plank.
In 1992, coalition founder Pat Robertson delivered a prime-time address. Critics argued that his speech and those of other religious conservatives gave the GOP convention a aura of intolerance for dissenting views on social issues.
- Warren Fiske
Oops, wrong store
You'd think that thousands of visiting Republicans would be good for downtown San Diego shops. But at the Midnight Adult Books & Video Center, just a short walk from the convention center, business has been off this week.
``We didn't really expect much from this family values crowd,'' observed a store employee. ``We've had a few wander in here, but they leave pretty quick when they realize where they are.''
- Cox News Service
Boom and bust
Taxi drivers, on the other hand, have done a booming business this week - but not for the summer as a whole. Reason: It took most of the summer to prepare the convention center, what with the need to build network TV skyboxes and the massive stage and podium. And it's estimated it will take up to eight weeks to tear it all down. During that period, nothing else has been booked into the convention center, which means drivers will suffer a net loss of convention fares during the summer.
- Cox News Service
District of what?
For more than two decades, Bob Dole has lived in the District of Columbia - a fact artfully dodged at this convention. In its own fashion, the San Diego Union-Tribune also joined in the ignore-Washington mood. During the convention, each day's issue featured a state-by-state rundown to help visitors keep in touch with the goings-on back home. But the rundown skips D.C. - home to 14 GOP delegates and a horde of media types. ``It's an oversight,'' said George Condon, the paper's Washington bureau chief, by way of apology.
- Cox News Service
LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICS PRESIDENTby CNB