ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 1, 1996 TAG: 9612020061
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BASSETT
SOURCE: ROBERT LITTLE STAFF WRITER
WITH CONTROL of the state Senate at stake, campaign money from across the country is expected to pour into the Dec.17 special election to fill Virgil Goode's seat.
Donna McLaughlin is caught smack in the middle of a history-making political melee, and she doesn't care at all.
It's not that the 44-year-old factory worker is uninformed. The Republicans could control part of Virginia's state legislature for the first time since Reconstruction, and she knows her vote could help them do it.
She just doesn't care.
"That's for them in Richmond to worry about," McLaughlin said last week, perusing some wooden yard ducks at a Bassett High School craft show.
"I think we just need a man who knows what's going on and will do what's right."
Oh, those pesky voters out in the rural foothills of Henry, Patrick, Carroll, Franklin and Floyd counties, along with Martinsville. They've been confounding the politicos for generations, it seems, and now they're doing it again.
Back east, the 20th Senate District is probably best known for two things: The first is moonshine. The second is Virgil Goode, that twangy, maverick state senator who was so darned fair he actually made the Democrats and Republicans get along.
For 24 years, voters elected Goode, a Democrat more conservative than half the Republicans. He voted pro-tobacco and anti-abortion. He sponsored the bill that lets Virginians carry concealed handguns.
But then he got himself elected to Congress in November, and now his spot in the state Senate is empty. And a special election for the seat Dec. 17 is attracting as much political might as the two parties have left this year. The Senate's control is in the balance: If the Republicans win, they'll have 21 seats, the Democrats 19.
Of course, Goode took care of that before he left, too. It was his stubborn nonpartisanship that made senators agree to share power for the next three years. The plan can't change without approval from two-thirds of the senators, and if there's a political trick that can get around that, nobody seems to know it.
But from Richmond, the race is still critical. Beyond the historical distinction of holding their first majority, the Republicans also could take over proceedings on the Senate floor if they win.
And they wouldn't have to count on a Democratic turncoat to get the 21 votes needed to make laws. They'd have enough of their own.
There's also the matter of Lt. Gov. Don Beyer, the president of the Senate and the vote that breaks ties. He's a Democrat running for governor next year. The Republicans wouldn't mind a little more power to dictate which ties he has to break.
"The race has the attention of the entire commonwealth," said Beyer. "It certainly has mine."
So the party politicians are coming out with guns blazing. They plan television and radio campaigns and have sent their statewide consultants into the district.
Some party officials estimate they will spend $100,000 on a race that will last only six weeks. The national Democratic and Republican parties are expected to chip in some cash. "The luxury, right now, is there's nothing else really going on," said one Democrat. "If you have resources, you might as well use them."
Two more conservative candidates, both members of the House of Delegates, have been nominated. One, Roscoe Reynolds, calls himself a Democrat. The other, Allen Dudley, answers to Republican.
So far in the breakneck campaign, they're not running as Democrat or Republican, or even as the next state senator. Each is hailing himself as the next Virgil Goode.
Reynolds' radio ads spend more time exalting Goode than asking for votes. If elected, he promises, he'll carry on that independent tradition.
"I don't see Roscoe as a Virgil Goode independent," Dudley said. "I think I'm that kind of candidate."
Reynolds, a 54-year-old lawyer from Henry County, has a decade in the House on his resume. He's a former commonwealth's attorney.
Dudley, a 49-year-old banker from Rocky Mount, will begin his fourth year in office in January.
Both men are well-known in their House districts and have won comfortably in past elections running as conservative-minded natives.
If there's one clear edge, Reynolds has it. Goode is on his side.
But with so much at stake, nothing is certain, and outside the 20th District, politicians are slobbering over the potential ramifications.
If Republicans win, they could pass new Senate rules and forget amending the old ones that guarantee power-sharing, some say.
If the Democrats win, they could do the same. Reynolds doesn't have the 24 years of clout that Goode had when he foiled their majority.
But because of the power-sharing agreement, which parceled out committee assignments and chairmanships more or less evenly to both parties, none of it would be easy, and it's Goode who is to blame. Or thank.
"Any member could have resigned or died, and it could have gone either way," said Sen. Mark Earley of Chesapeake, one of the Senate's senior Republicans, whose seat would open if his bid for attorney general succeeds. "The [power-sharing] agreement was made to protect both parties."
Beyer agreed.
"Virgil certainly knew L.F. [Payne] was going to retire sometime, and that he would have a good shot at that seat," Beyer said, referring to the congressman Goode is replacing.
"But I think Virgil would have done that even if he was going to be in the state Senate another 20 years. That's the kind of senator he always was. The people he represented liked it that way."
LENGTH: Long : 107 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshots) Reynolds, Dudley. color. KEYWORDS: POLITICS GENERAL ASSEMBLYby CNB