ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, October 9, 1996 TAG: 9610090054
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RICHMOND
SOURCE: DAVID M. POOLE STAFF WRITER
Despite his vow to avoid negative campaigning, U.S. Sen. John Warner aired a commercial Tuesday branding Democrat Mark Warner as a Washington insider who traded on political connections to build a $150 million fortune.
John Warner's advisers said the 30-second television ad is a fitting counterpunch to cellular telephone mogul Mark Warner's record-setting TV blitz attacking the senator's 18-year voting record.
"Mark Warner is spending his millions portraying himself as Mother Teresa. We'll have to use limited resources to tell the truth," said Rick Reed, a Northern Virginia media consultant.
Mark Warner called the ad a misleading "personal attack" that exposes a certain hypocrisy in John Warner's claim that he is above negative politics.
With four weeks before Election Day, John Warner has signaled he no longer intends to sit on his 20-point lead in the most recent public opinion polls.
The popular senator spent a good part of the summer and early fall ignoring an unprecedented, $5 million wave of TV ads that portrayed challenger Mark Warner as a self-made man who rose from middle-class stock.
In the John Warner ad, Mark Warner becomes a Washington insider who takes advantage of a massive government giveaway program.
An announcer's voice intones: "Mark Warner's TV ads don't tell you he made his $150 million fortune from his political connections, taking advantage of big government loopholes not available to average working people."
The Mark Warner campaign said the ad was misleading and inaccurate.
The fact is, however, that Mark Warner got his start in the fledgling cellular telephone industry in 1982 with the help of his connections raising money for the National Democratic Party.
In his travels for the Democratic Party, Warner became friends with Tom McMillen, then a professional basketball player with the Atlanta Hawks who later became a congressman from Maryland.
McMillen had been approached to invest in a "cellular radio" license for Atlanta, and he in turn told Warner that he might look into the potential of this new technology.
Warner then relied upon Democratic connections in Connecticut to arrange an appointment with a rich businessman, who agreed to back Warner with $1 million.
The federal government held a lottery to give away cellular licenses for metropolitan areas around the country. Critics claim the lottery program was a boondoggle in which the government gave away licenses that today are worth fabulous sums.
In 1990, Warner told Fortune magazine: "The government has basically given away tens of billions of dollars in assets that is yours and mine and everybody's in this country."
In a recent interview, Warner said that while in hindsight Congress erred in not auctioning off the cellular spectrum, he played by the same rules as everyone else who applied for licenses in the 1980s.
He noted that anyone who was willing to pay a $200 application fee to the Federal Communication Commission could apply for a cellular license. He noted that nearly 100,000 people applied for the last round of metropolitan areas in 1986.
"The idea that Mark had some underhanded, insider information is just absolutely untrue," said Anita Rimler, his campaign manager.
The bulk of Mark Warner's fortune did not come from winning licenses. Rather, he earned most of his money brokering deals as the cellular industry consolidated in the late 1980s and as an investment banker who raised money for wireless communications companies that went public in the mid-1990s.
"What you can say is Mark Warner is a business-savvy guy who worked his tail off to make his money," said Eric Hoffman, a campaign spokesman.
Hoffman said he was particularly upset with a graphic display in the John Warner ad in which the words "dirty," "stupid," "reckless" and "dangerous" flash one-by-one next to an unflattering photo of Mark Warner.
The adjectives come from a Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial that likened Mark Warner's criticism of John Warner's vote to slow the growth of Medicare as "the political equivalent of the mosh pit: dirty, stupid, reckless and dangerous."
Hoffman said the ad twists the words into a personal insult.
Rick Reed, the media consultant for John Warner, denied any attempt to slander Mark Warner.
"As far as I know," Reed said, "he's anything but stupid."
Staff writer Robert Little contributed to this report.
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICS CONGRESSby CNB