ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 16, 1997 TAG: 9702170049
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
TYPE: NEWS OBIT
SOURCE: Associated Press
William L. Scott, who started working for the federal government as a teen-ager and went on to represent Virginia as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate for a total of 12 years, is dead at age 81.
He died of a chest infection Friday at Fairfax Nursing Home in suburban Virginia. He had Alzheimer's disease.
A lawyer who lived in the Washington suburbs of Fairfax County for 50 years, Scott was a symbol of the rise of the Republican Party in Virginia and throughout the South.
His upset victory in 1972 - over Democratic incumbent William B. Spong Jr. with 51 percent of the vote - made him the first Republican to win a Senate seat from Virginia since Reconstruction.
Prior to his election to the Senate, Scott had served three terms in the House. He did not seek re-election and left the Senate in 1979.
The Williamsburg native graduated from high school in 1934 and worked his way through George Washington University's law school before beginning an 18-year career as a Justice Department lawyer.
Some commentators have credited a then-unprecedented $200,000 television campaign blitz with a major role in Scott's 1972 Senate victory.
``Money didn't win the election,'' Scott said in an interview 10 years later. ``Friends did. We had twice as many people working for us.''
LENGTH: Short : 38 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Scott in 1977by CNB