THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 22, 1994 TAG: 9406220475
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
DATELINE: 940622 LENGTH: Medium
A format of set speeches would favor North with his huckleberry grin, earnest hoarseness and flair for hyperbole. North, some skeptics suggest, is trying to evade the customary panel of journalists.
Let's look at the 1855 senatorial campaign in Illinois between Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln. In each of seven debates, one of the pair fired away for an hour, the other came back with an hour and a half and the first one closed with half an hour.
If North is serious in urging that each of the four senatorial candidates in Virginia talk even 45 minutes, audiences better tote boxed fried chicken and sleeping bags.
Seven joint meetings were but the start for Lincoln and Douglas. From midsummer, such was the electorate's interest in debates over slavery, the two continued speaking from separate platforms almost daily until the election.
Such a threshing of issues would be worthwhile, but it should not exclude the kind originating in the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon race with reporters asking questions.
In the 1992 Democratic primary, the candidates, dueling on television, had as many as 30 set-tos. In one clash of Bill Clinton and George Bush, questions came from the audience.
There's time during the next four months for several meetings of Virginia candidates. Word came last night they would clash Tuesday night on CNN's ``Larry King Live.''
Organizations should extend bids now and negotiate details. Should North or any of the other three - Marshall Coleman, Doug Wilder, Charles Robb - duck the debate, he would be disclosed to voters as a fraidy-cat, lacking stuff.
After the national media stung North at the start of his bid for the GOP nomination, he kept his distance from Virginia reporters.
Upon winning the June 14 convention, he seemed bent on meeting the state press. In Norfolk on Thursday, he remarked that he had a seat in his Winnebago for any reporter who wanted to join him.
The Associated Press reported Thursday that Celerino Castillo, a former federal agent in Central America, alleged that North had known that cocaine was being smuggled into this country by pilots hired to assist Contras in Nicaragua.
``It's totally garbage, absolutely, 100 percent untrue,'' said North spokesman Dan McLagen. ``I think he's trying to sell books, make money. It's a nutty conspiracy theory with not one scintilla of truth.''
The Drug Enforcement Administration said Friday no evidence had been found to support Castillo's allegations. North's denial would have been better from him than from a mouthpiece.
For many voters, fear and loathing mark the four-way race, loathing for some aspects of candidates, fear of what North might do, as he seemed to do in Iran-Contra, to shape the means to fit his ends.
He can best allay doubts through frank meetings with the press.
{KEYWORDS} SENATE RACE CANDIDATE
by CNB