THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 30, 1994 TAG: 9407300233
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
First Congressional District Democratic leaders will meet in Kinston today to elect a party chairman who will have the ticklish task of trying to prevent the defection of white political conservatives.
At least two prominent blacks will be seeking the job of top Democrat in the sprawling, 28-county congressional district:
State Sen. Frank W. Ballance Jr., D-Warrenton, a legislative leader with statewide influence.
Isaac A. Battle, a Gates County Democrat who has waged a vigorous campaign against Ballance.
``It would seem to me that there are many capable people in the 1st District without placing all of the power in the General Assembly,'' Battle said in a July 20 letter to 1st District Democrats.
``That is the only personal reason I have (for running) and I feel that I should let it be known,'' added Battle, a 70-year-old retired educator who teaches occasionally at Chowan Community College.
A third Democrat whose influence could affect the outcome of the party election is state Rep. Milton F. Fitch Jr., 47, a Wilson lawyer who is majority leader of the state House of Representatives.
Fitch was co-chairman of the legislative redistricting commission that created two black-majority Congressional districts in 1992 and said at the time that he hoped to ``someday'' run for Congress in the 1st District.
Two years ago the 1st District sent Rep. Eva M. Clayton, D-Warrenton, to Washington as the first black and the first female from North Carolina this century. A second ``minority-majority'' district - the 12th - was created between Durham and Charlotte and elected Rep. Mel Watt, D-Mecklenburg, a black attorney.
Ballance, 51, was Clayton's campaign manager and is credited with directing the racially sensitive campaign in the new 1st District that stretches from the eastern Virginia border almost to South Carolina.
Fitch has been attending a national legislators' convention this week in New Orleans and could not be reached Friday for comment on whether he may attempt to short-circuit the election of Ballance as 1st District chairman.
Political philosophy will be at issue at today's meeting.
Ballance was only recently persuaded to seek the chairmanship by some Democratic regulars who fear the pursuit of power by blacks in the district will drive many conservatives into the Republican Party.
The late U.S. Rep. Walter B. Jones, D-Farmville, represented the old 1st District for 26 years when it was a white-majority enclave of political conservatives.
Jones died in 1991 and his son, Walter B. Jones Jr., is running as a Republican against Rep. H. Martin Lancaster, D-Goldsboro, in the 3rd Congressional District. The younger Jones, a 10-year member of the legislature, switched to the GOP after the Democrats refused to nominate him to serve out his father's unexpired term.
The 1st District party chairmanship became vacant earlier this year when Judge James Carlton Cole of Perquimans County resigned to run for the District Court bench in the Albemarle's 1st Judicial District.
Subsequently, Gov. James B. Hunt Jr. appointed Cole to a District Court vacancy to succeed his wife, Janice McKenzie Cole. Janice Cole earlier this year was named U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina.
The new chairman named today in the Lenoir County Courthouse at Kinston will serve two years until the party's next regular district convention. by CNB