ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, November 5, 1996 TAG: 9611050052
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
TYPE: ANALYSIS
VIRGINIANS may be bored, but candidates have been working hard to woo the state.
Americans go to the polls today in the last presidential election of the 1900s, and the outcome in Virginia appears to be in the hands of voters like Charles Kennedy.
The 75-year-old retired Roanoke warehouse worker says he votes "for the man, not the party," and insists he usually doesn't decide until he steps into the voting booth. "I don't like to make up my mind beforehand," he says. "It makes it too rigid. You have a tendency not to listen to the other side."
Despite his open-mindedness, Kennedy sees little at stake in today's voting. "I see things as being as best as they could be," he says. "I think we're on the right track. I'd hate to see it change" - a sentiment that generally bodes well for incumbents.
In many ways, Kennedy's general contentment with the state of the nation seems the dominant mood this autumn.
Across Virginia, the state's incumbents in the House of Representatives appear unthreatened. Its senior U.S. senator has called on a reservoir of good will among independent voters built up from the role he played in helping defeat Oliver North, his party's controversial nominee two years ago. Most remarkable, Virginia is flirting with backing President Clinton's re-election.
The Old Dominion has only gone Democratic in one presidential election since 1952, and even that was something of a fluke - Lyndon Johnson's landslide over Barry Goldwater in 1964.
Nevertheless, this fall Virginia has appeared up for grabs. Clinton's autumn-long lead in the state polls has evaporated, but two polls during the past week show the race for Virginia's 13 electoral votes is still close enough to constitute a statistical dead heat.
The fact that it's close at all appears to be because of voters like Kennedy, who tend to give Clinton credit for what they see as a good economy.
"Do you think you're better off now than you were four years ago?" the retiree asks rhetorically. "I think the bigger percentage of people are. I think the majority of the people, the ones who are trying, are better off than four years ago."
The practical effect of living in a state considered "in play" is that the presidential campaign has entered Virginians' living rooms - both Clinton and Dole have bought television time here, something presidential campaigns rarely do. The candidates have also done something else unusual; they've visited here late in the campaign - Dole to Norfolk, Clinton to Springfield, and Reform Party nominee Ross Perot to Blacksburg.
The other prevailing sentiment this fall has been an apparent lack of interest in the campaign. Both parties staged rallies on the Roanoke City Market, hoping to take advantage of the lunchtime crowds with big-name speakers - Senate candidate Mark Warner for the Democrats; Bob Dole's daughter Robin for the Republicans. Yet both times, the general public walked by in disinterest.
One twentysomething woman stopped long enough at the Democratic event last Friday to size up the action, then muttered "bull" to no one in particular.
"None of them will do anything for anybody," shouted another passer-by. "I wouldn't vote for Clinton or Dole or Mark Warner or John Warner." A third found the sign-waving party activists a laughable lot: "I'd like to throw a black snake in there and see what they'd do."
Virginia election buff Frank O'Leary predicts that today's voter turnout will be lower than it was in the presidential race four years ago, a forecast echoed by other analysts.
The treasurer of Arlington County, O'Leary has found the number of absentee ballots is a good forecast of the size of the actual turnout on election day. On that basis, he's projecting about 80 percent of registered Virginians will vote. In some ways, he says, this will be "normal" - Virginia's turnout in presidential races has remained anchored around the 80 percent mark for decades.
"The real anomaly was 1992," O'Leary says, when the state's turnout jumped to almost 85 percent. "That's the one that stands out as the real oddball. The Clinton-Bush race got a lot of people excited, for many different reasons. But not this time."
The one exception to the "normal" turnout this time may be in Franklin County, where the presence of both a popular hometown politician on the ballot - Virgil Goode for Congress - and a five-way race for clerk of court - has prompted an avalanche of more than 700 absentee ballots. Based on those, "I'm saying we're going to have 85 percent turnout," says Franklin County registrar Peggy Allman. Maybe higher.
Historian Stephen Ambrose, now with the University of Wisconsin, has suggested that a "dull" presidential campaign may be healthy for the nation. He says that in the post-Cold War era, when national security concerns appear to have retreated from the public's mind, America is reverting to a period similar to the 1920s, when technological changes brought on by innovative business leaders such as Henry Ford were more influential in the lives of ordinary Americans than were their presidents.
It's not at all clear, though, just where this year's election fits in the grand sweep of history. In 1994, Republicans hailed their takeover of Congress as a genuine realignment of the nation's political order, as significant as the construction of the Democrats' New Deal coalition in the 1930s.
Two years later, however, the Republicans' hold on Congress is in doubt. If the GOP can hang on in the face of a Clinton re-election - or if Dole pulls an upset - then the realignment might be confirmed. If Democrats could take back one or both houses of Congress, then the Newt Gingrich-led "Republican revolution" might come to be seen as a temporary blip on the nation's political radar screen.
Virginia will play a small role in determining the extent of any realignment: Rural Southern districts have been fertile ground for Republican gains in recent years, and the GOP is expected to pick up some seats across Dixie today - no matter what happens at the presidential level.
Virginia's 5th District, where Democrat L.F. Payne is retiring from a seat that covers the tobacco-and-textile heartland of Southside, offers a textbook example of how both parties are battling for such seats.
Democrat Goode of Rocky Mount has emphasized his attention to local issues and his "independence" - even to the point of ignoring his party affiliation in his television ads. Republican George Landrith of Albemarle County has touted national themes. Tex Wood, the Virginia Independent/Reform Party nominee, has campaigned on reducing the trade deficit to create jobs in the district.
One thing is clear enough: The 1996 election provides additional evidence of the electoral weight of the Washington suburbs in Virginia politics. When the year began, five people sought the Democratic and Republicans nomination for U.S. Senate; all were from Northern Virginia. The two finalists - John Warner and Mark Warner - both hail from Alexandria.
And it's Northern Virginia that's expected to be make the difference - one way or another - in tonight's results. Democrats who win in Virginia do so because they win big in Northern Virginia, yet Republican John Warner has been running strong there this year..
In a way, this year constitutes a respite from politics. Last year, Democrats and Republicans waged a titanic, but inconclusive, struggle for control of the General Assembly. Next year, Virginians will again be asked which party should control the House of Delegates. And they'll also choose a governor.
On Monday, the two likely candidates for that job - Democratic Lt. Gov. Don Beyer and Republican Attorney General Jim Gilmore - were both on the road, talking up their party's 1996 candidates, getting ready to take the stage in their own right for 1997.
LENGTH: Long : 135 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICS CONGRESS POLITICS PRESIDENTby CNB