THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 24, 1994 TAG: 9408240753
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Real Politik
SOURCE: Kerry Dougherty
LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines
SOMETHING ABOUT Chuck Robb's sleepy U.S. Senate campaign makes you want to take his pulse, put a mirror under his nose, poke him with a pin.
Anything to find signs of life.
Robb's spin doctors are trying to twirl his lack of a campaign into a plus. He's busy being a senator, they say. He hasn't the time to campaign; he's doing things senators do - like waiting around to vote.
Because locating Robb on the campaign trail is next to impossible, we decided to try to find his campaign headquarters in Northern Virginia.
It's not as easy as you would think.
First of all, we weren't made to feel welcome.
``Whaddya want to come here for?'' asked his press person over the phone. ``We have a pretty low-key operation up here. . . . I'll get back to you.''
He didn't. We went anyway.
Turns out it's easier to find the CIA headquarters in nearby Langley than the Robb enclave in McLean.
No store front office for Robb. No sir. No bunting and balloons for this incumbent senator. Robb's campaign headquarters are on the second floor of a nondescript building behind an ATM machine.
``If I give you the street address you'll really never find us,'' said the receptionist in Robb's McLean headquarters.
Under an overpass. Up a hill. Turn right at some trees. Locate a Safeway, find the Rite Aid, look for a NationsBank machine, go behind, look for a door, go up to the second floor, travel down a maze of corridors, look for Room 212. A simple red and white ``Robb'' sign is on the door.
There it is, the nerve center, so to speak, of the Robb campaign. A nerve center that, given its location, may as well be under general anesthesia.
The first thing that strikes you about the Robb office is the photos. Color photos of Chuck. Black and white pictures of Chuck. Chuck as a young guy. Chuck as governor, Chuck as senator, Chuck campaigning. See Chuck with his children. See Chuck with his wife. See Chuck with local legislators. See Chuck with his entire family. See Chuck with old pal David McCloud. See wife Lynda with Nelson Mandela.
Whoa, who is this African American with Chuck?
``I don't know,'' confesses Robb's media relations man, Bert Rohrer. ``Jane, who is this black man with the senator in this picture.
``Oh, the black man, I don't know,'' replies the receptionist squinting at the framed photo.
Turns out no one does. OK, see Chuck with a black guy.
The other noticeable thing about Robb's campaign headquarters is the shabby furniture.
``It's from the Robbs' basement, most of it,'' says one staffer.
After a few minutes of soaking up the ambience, we are told that Rohrer has finagled an impromptu interview with the campaign manger.
Campaign manager Susan Platt is seated behind a big, well-worn desk, eating take-out Chinese food from the box.
She is just 39 years old, has shoulder-length dusty blond hair and a magnificent manicure.
She wants to talk for background (that's news business talk for not wanting to be quoted in the paper).
The big secret - she is not a Wilder supporter.
She doesn't like Ollie North very much either.
She does like her boss, even though his Senate duties have caused her to make a lot of erasures on the giant campaign calendar behind her desk.
She reveals that it's hard to schedule a senator for campaign appearances when the Senate is in such an extraordinary session.
It is early afternoon and Platt and her fellow campaign workers have not heard the latest news that the Senate will be in session on Saturday. (The session was later canceled.) The reason they haven't heard the news is that they can't watch C-SPAN.
``We don't have cable,'' she says, laughing. ``And it would cost $3,000 to get it here.''
When the staff needs to watch something on TV, they pile into cars and drive to Bert Rohrer's house nearby.
But the Robb campaign is kind. They are worried about our being caught in rush-hour traffic.
``If you leave right now,'' Rohrer says, tapping his watch, which reads 3:15, ``you will miss rush hour on the Beltway.''
They make it clear we should not tarry another minute.
Meanwhile, Robb is on Capitol Hill being a senator. Wilder is stumping in Leesburg, North and Coleman are crisscrossing the Southwest.
And Robb's campaign is trying to eke out a schedule for the few hours he has to campaign on Sunday.
Leaving, we find it hard to shake the desire to go to Capitol Hill and stick a mirror under Robb's nose. But then he might think we were trying to revive those rumors about drug use in Virginia Beach when all we'd really be doing is trying to see if the senator . . . zzzzzzzz . . . forgot . . . zzzzzzz . . . about Nov. 8.
KEYWORDS: U.S. SENATE RACE CANDIDATE by CNB