ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, October 13, 1996 TAG: 9610140067
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: FRANKLIN, N.C.
Pat Bell, the big-haired proprietor of the Sassy Shears beauty salon in this Blue Ridge mountain town, has never voted for a Republican, not for any office.
But next month, after casting her vote for the Democratic nominees for president and U.S. senator, she plans to pull the lever for the Republican candidate for secretary of state, Richard Petty, the man she idolizes more than any other, now that Elvis is dead.
In his 35 years as the king of stock car racing, Petty won a record 200 races sponsored by NASCAR, nearly double the career total won by his closest rival. In the process, he gained the cult-like devotion of thousands of fans like Bell, who once waited in line for six hours to get his autograph.
``I've loved Richard longer than I've loved my husband,'' said the 48-year-old hair stylist at Petty's campaign stop at the National Guard armory here Oct. 1. ``And I think he's going to do as good a job as secretary of state as he did in racing.''
It may not seem obvious, but there is a certain logic to Petty's evolution from race car driver to statewide candidate.
In 1984, President Reagan received glorious television coverage by campaigning at the Firecracker 400 stock car race in Daytona on the day that Petty claimed his 200th victory. Since then, Republican politicians have spent numerous Sunday afternoons at race tracks from Talladega, Ala., to Darlington, S.C., where the grandstands hold tens of thousands of the white middle-class voters who form the foundation of Southern Republicanism.
Perhaps more than anywhere, racing is regarded as religion in North Carolina, where moonshiners in fast cars helped pioneer the sport and where NASCAR sanctioned its first championship race in 1949. Despite his retirement from driving four years ago, the 59-year-old Petty remains the pope.
Although his jive-talking oratory does not always hit on all pistons, Petty tries to argue that his celebrity can be a political drawback. ``My name recognition sometimes is a minus, you know what I mean, because people just look at you as a one-dimensional situation,'' he said in an interview here this month.
As he campaigned across western North Carolina Oct. 1, Petty's public appearances did not differ significantly from those he has made over the years as a racing icon and paid promoter of products such as STP and Goody's headache powder.
In his disjointed speeches, which rarely exceeded five minutes, Petty tried to make the case that he was more than just a race car driver, laying out his credentials as a 16-year veteran of Randolph County's governing commission and an entrepreneur whose racing teams and endorsement contracts constitute a multimillion-dollar business.
Then he would plant his lanky frame in a chair, pull the black felt marker from his pocket and spend the next hour signing the shirts, posters, caps, trading cards and collector's sets of toy cars that were thrust before him.
The scenes had a waiting-in-line-to-see-Santa-Claus quality, except that Santa Claus does not wear snakeskin boots, a gray felt cowboy hat and wraparound shades.
When Petty finally left the autograph sessions, more fans waited outside with their automobiles, the doors flung open, so that Petty could slide in easily and sign the dashboards. At a stop in Sylva, he was greeted by a line of dented dirt-track roadsters that had been hauled in to receive his hand-scribbled blessing.
As for Bell, she asked Petty to sign a photograph of the two of them that had been taken during a previous pilgrimage. She said she planned to hang it across from her chair in the hair salon rather than in the ``Richard Petty section'' of her home, which includes numerous Richard Petty posters, model cars, clocks, a ``Petty bear'' and a telephone designed like Petty's race car. The headlights, she explained, blink when the phone rings.
A poll taken in mid-September indicated that Petty's race against Elaine Marshall, a Democratic lawyer and former state senator, was tight. The secretary of state is responsible for keeping the state's official records, registering corporations and regulating the securities industry.
Petty said he had chosen to run because he wanted to end the Democrats' century-long control of the office and to help Republican candidates up and down the North Carolina slate.
He did not rule out a future race for governor, but he said he would have set his sights higher this year if he had been interested in another job. ``I feel like the voters would vote for me just as much for one office as they would another office,'' he said.
Marshall recognizes that she faces a significant deficit in name recognition. There is not yet, for instance, an Elaine Marshall Museum in her hometown of Buie's Creek. There is, however, a Richard Petty Museum that draws 35,000 visitors a year to Level Cross, where Petty was born and still lives.
``The public is going to have to decide whether or not the experiences or training he brings are what they want in this office,'' Marshall said.
What Petty said he would bring to the office was a name that might open doors for industrial recruitment. ``If they say, `Joe Blow's calling,' they might not take the call,'' Petty said. ``If they say, `Richard Petty's calling,' they'll at least take the call. So that's a plus. That's one of the deals.''
He also said he had a history of promoting the state. ``Another situation is, you know, I go all over the United States, my racing and my promotion deal, and I try to help promote the state of North Carolina,'' he said. ``I say, `Hey man. We've got a beautiful state. You need to come and look at it.'''
While Petty tries to prove he can do more than drive, he has not distanced himself too much from his previous career. His campaign telephone number ends with the digits 4343, a doubled variation of the number that adorned the Pontiacs and Plymouths he raced.
And any attempt to move beyond his race car reputation was lost last month when Petty, driving a Dodge pickup, bumped the car ahead of him on Interstate 85 because he thought it was moving too slowly at 60 mph in the passing lane. The incident cost him a $65 fine.
Besides, said Frye Gaillard, a North Carolina author who has written about racing, Petty's primary political asset is one nurtured in 35 years at the race track: his ability to talk to everyday folk.
``There are some people in North Carolina who are just appalled at the notion that Richard Petty, who they regard as a redneck and a bumpkin, would hold public office,'' he said. ``But anecdotally, I would guess that's a small percentage compared to those who think he's just a good guy.''
LENGTH: Long : 116 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICSby CNB