THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 1, 1994 TAG: 9407300075
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Realpolitik\ Occasional dispatches on the offbeat side of Virginia's
1994 U.S. Senate race.
SOURCE: BY KERRY DOUGHERTY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 127 lines
OLLIE NORTH is every Democrat's nightmare. He's Ronald Reagan, only wide awake, coming at you 16 hours a day - praying, speechifying, ``semper fying.''
Amanda Barneycastle spied North while she was shopping in Providence Forge's Cardinal Drug Store.
``I love you to death,'' she squealed, pumping his hand.
North glanced at a name tag she was wearing.
``How old are you, Amanda, old enough to vote?'' he asked, flashing his crooked, gap-toothed grin and gazing deeply into her eyes.
``No sir, I'm 16,'' she replied, smiling. ``But my mother is thinking about voting for you.''
Bingo! North dug into the pocket of his khaki slacks, pulled out a piece of paper the size of an index card and held out his hand for a pen, which one of his aides quickly supplied.
``What's your mother's name?'' he asked.
``Catrina. C-A-T-R-I-N-A.''
Writing in his weird left-handed-upside-down style, North jotted a note: ``Catrina, I need your vote. Oliver North.''
North turned and headed to the back-to-school aisle, determined to contact every voter or son-of-a-voter in the store during the five minutes his handlers were allowing him there.
The Providence Forge stop was one of almost 50 North made last week aboard ``Asphalt One,'' the 32-foot RV his campaign is using to tour small towns. Each stop seemed unreal, as if the entourage had been dropped into Mayberry on the Fourth of July. Or into some lost episode of ``Twin Peaks.''
Bunting, flags, color guards. Souza marches, baby kissing and snappy salutes from veterans.
North's grassroots campaign, which combines Henry Howell-style populism and Elizabeth Taylor-type celebrity, electrified sleepy one-traffic-light hamlets and brought back memories of Virginia campaigns of years gone by.
This leg, accompanied by up to a dozen members of the press, blew through towns on the Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula - storming into dinettes and banks, supermarkets and drugstores, Little League fields and fire stations, leaving behind a blizzard of blue and white ``Ollie Was Here!'' stickers.
North's note to Catrina was one of dozens he scribbled along the way.
A man named Ralph got one. Ralph's wife was shopping in the Kilmarnock Food Lion when North trotted down the vegetable aisle. She pledged her support.
``This woman needs a bumper sticker,'' North shouted to his aides.
``My husband will never let me put a bumper sticker on my car,'' she protested.
``What's his name?'' North demanded.
Out came the note cards. The woman left the store carrying a sticker and a card that read: ``Ralph, put the bumper sticker on the car. Oliver North.''
He also made phone calls.
A woman buttonholed North outside the city treasurer's office in Bowling Green, begging him to visit a sick friend in the hospital. North's aides said there was no time. She offered to get the woman on the phone. No time.
North started down the sidewalk then spun on the heel of his black, Oklahoma-made cowboy boots.
``Write down her name and the number of the hospital. I'll call her from the cellular phone in the Winnebago,'' he said.
He made the call as the RV headed for Tappahannock.
On the RV. Off the RV. Note cards. Phone calls. No wonder so many of those Contra airdrops delivered the goods.
A crowd of about 25 was waiting on the steaming hot sidewalk in White Stone when North arrived there about 20 minutes behind schedule. Mayor Harman Treakle was sweating profusely. His purple silk shirt was sticking to his body, and he dabbed at his forehead with a paper napkin. A gold chain was matted in his chest hairs. North shook his hand, slapped him on his sweaty back and called him ``Your Honor.''
Such diplomacy. The sweat, heat and gold chain must have brought back memories of Managua.
Treakle beamed and led North around the corner to Willaby's Restaurant, where North interrupted the lunchers in the town of 460 people with an impromptu campaign speech.
``I'm asking you for your prayers,'' he said in conclusion. ``A lot of people don't believe in the power of prayer, but I do. If anyone doubts it, see me about it later. I'm living proof of the power of prayer.''
``God bless you,'' called out a voice.
If many North supporters seemed lifted from Norman Rockwell's vision of America, others seemed plucked from a Federico Fellini film.
At a barbecue in Charles City, a supporter missing his front teeth wore a ``Jesus Never Fails'' baseball cap and sported a tattoo of a naked woman on his right forearm. He put his calloused hands on North's shoulders and began swaying and praying.
``Amen,'' North replied when the man finished.
At a supermarket stop, a man wearing green shorts and black socks accosted North.
``I'm a member of the John Birch Society,'' crowed George Meyer of Richmond. ``And we've been supporting you since the Iran Contra hearings. You're a great patriot. You've got a grassroots thing going, and you're going to win.''
And in West Point, ``Anna's Pizzeria'' owner Joseph Parisi, who had dogged North through gatherings in Deltaville and Urbanna, finally caught him at the Chesapeake Corp. gates, where North had come to greet workers during a shift change. Parisi arrived balancing a large mushroom and pepperoni pizza. For the next few minutes, North juggled a greasy slice while gripping and grinning with workers.
Asphalt One rolled on through the Virginia countryside like a wingless C-17 doing touch-and-go deliveries for North's newest rebels.
When the RV pulled up to the King George Fire Department in Dahlgren, about 300 people burst into applause and a loudspeaker began to blare ``It's a Grand Old Flag.''
After the Pledge of Allegiance, the Rev. Sherman Davis, a local Baptist pastor, gave an invocation. ``Thank you, Lord, for Oliver North,'' he said, before begging the good Lord to save North from ``the liberal press.''
In the crowd was a petite well-dressed woman named Trisha Messner. A former Mike Farris supporter, Messner said she was a home-schooler.
``I know what people say about us, about the North and Farris supporters,'' she said knowingly. ``They call us Wal-Mart Republicans. They think we're peasants.''
``But I'm thinking about having some buttons made that say, `Serfs Up.' ''
Half an hour later, after North had signed autographs, posed for photos and shaken hands, Asphalt One rolled out of the parking lot, past the biggest traffic jam Dahlgren had ever seen, past the police cars with their lights flashing, past the children waving miniature American flags.
Standing on the sidewalk was a gray-haired woman wearing a flowered dress and supporting herself with a wooden cane. With her free hand, she was blowing kisses to Ollie, looking like a lost image from an old Reagan campaign TV ad.
Don't look now, it may be morning in Virginia.
KEYWORDS: SENATE RACE CANDIDATE CAMPAIGNING by CNB