ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, October 23, 1996 TAG: 9610230071
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RICHMOND
SOURCE: ROBERT LITTLE STAFF WRITER
John Warner, the senator with Virginia's most celebrated streak of political independence, got stiffed Tuesday by Virginia's political independents.
The fledgling Virginia Reform Party endorsed Warner's Democratic opponent, Mark Warner, calling him the candidate most committed to battling Washington's status quo.
The endorsement should mean little in statistical terms. Virginia's third party, an offshoot of Ross Perot's 1992 presidential campaign that gained a spot on the ballot through the fractious three-way Senate race in 1994, is still very much in its infancy. And Perot attracts as little as 2 percent of the state's vote in this year's campaign, according to recent polls.
But for Mark Warner it highlighted an emerging issue in his final-stretch campaign: John Warner's opposition to Oliver North two years ago was good. Thanking him for it with a vote Nov .5 is not.
Said Mark Warner: "That's my biggest challenge, I believe - to get voters to not use their vote simply as a thank you."
A campaign advertisement Mark Warner began broadcasting last weekend begins "What happened to John Warner? He made us proud once, but now "
After a campaign stop this week, Mark Warner explained the reasoning behind this latest focus.
The Democrat's support in Northern Virginia and Tidewater is lagging, he said, even though both areas are generally friendly to Democrats. In Hampton Roads, he's running against a man with a lifetime of military service. But Northern Virginia is a little harder to explain.
He's pro-choice and has the backing of most teachers' groups. His high-technology vision would seem at home in the capital beltway's shadow. Opponents say the voters just don't like his ideas, but Mark Warner says it must be something else.
"Losing Northern Virginia? When I've got all these issues on my side?" Mark Warner said. "The issue is Ollie North, at least that's my sense. I think I'm the candidate that they would support on the issues."
So an endorsement from the Virginia Reform Party was a start, Mark Warner said Tuesday. The group was essentially born of the third-party challenge that John Warner sponsored against North in 1994, when a group of former Perot supporters banded together and endorsed independent Marshall Coleman for the Senate seat. And John Warner was instrumental in arranging the party's backing of Coleman, which gave the party an automatic spot on the state's ballot this fall.
"We certainly feel gratitude to him," said Bill Daggett, Reform Party chairman in Charlottesville. "But the principles of reform are of utmost importance to us."
Signing your name to the party's principles of reform is, anyway.
Party members acknowledged that John Warner embraces many of their principles, such as a balanced budget, high ethical standards, campaign reform and economic level-headedness. He just wouldn't sign something to make it official.
"It's easy to make a statement, it's something else to back it up," said Don Mott, Virginia's Reform Party coordinator.
But with the under-awed confidence of a man well ahead in the polls, John Warner shrugged it off as another example of his independent politics.
"Federal law prohibits any member of Congress from promising to support or oppose any particular legislative initiative in return for receiving anything of value," John Warner said in a statement released to the press.
"Therefore, it has been my normal practice not to sign any type of pledge."
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICS CONGRESSby CNB