ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, August 30, 1996 TAG: 9608300058
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: convention NOTEBOOK
SOURCE: WARREN FISKE
Unlike most first-time political candidates, Thurgood Marshall Jr. wouldn't have any trouble getting people to recognize his name.
The oldest son and namesake of the legendary civil rights lawyer and first black U.S. Supreme Court justice, Marshall is contemplating running for state attorney general next year.
"It would be a tremendous opportunity to help people," said Marshall, 40, who is a Virginia delegate at the Democratic National Convention. "The office of attorney general offers a unique opportunity to be a public advocate."
Marshall, the director of legislative affairs for Vice President Al Gore, didn't come to Chicago this week with the slightest thought of running. But since getting here, he said, he has been urged to enter the race by a number of prominent Democrats whom he refused to name.
"I need to go home and discuss this with my family," said Marshall, who is a lawyer by training. He has two boys and lives in Falls Church. "This has all come on me rather suddenly."
A soft-spoken man with a quick smile, Marshall demurs when asked if his father would have approved of his entry into politics.
"I have no idea what he'd think of me running for office," he said. "That's really a tough question. I do know that my father could not have been happier when Bill Clinton was elected president."
His father died in 1993. Marshall has a brother, John, who is is a state trooper.
Other Democrats expressing interest in becoming attorney general include Del. Jerrauld Jones of Norfolk, Richmond Commonwealth's Attorney David Hicks and William Dolin, a Northern Virginia lawyer who ran unsuccessfully in 1993.
Former aide knows how to land well
Bobby Watson of Portsmouth, the one-time boy wonder of the state Democratic Party who was forced to resign from Sen. Charles Robb's staff in 1991, keeps landing on his feet.
Watson, you may remember, was one of three Robb aides to lose his job and plea-bargain on wiretapping charges in connection with their dissemination of an illegally taped telephone call between then-Gov. Douglas Wilder and a political supporter.
Watson moved from Richmond to Washington after the scandal and did a short stint as a lobbyist. In 1994 he became executive director of the Democratic National Committee - which was always his dream job.
Last spring he left the DNC to form a public relations firm with David McCloud, a former chief-of-staff for Robb who also had lost his job in the eavesdropping affair. Among their clients is Dan Fowler, the national Democratic chairman.
Watson has been chasing all around Chicago this week, escorting Fowler to dozens of speaking engagements and interviews. At night, he has a VIP seat on the podium only a few feet away from the microphone.
"Life is good," says Watson.
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICS PRESIDENTby CNB