THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 24, 1994 TAG: 9409240210
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARGARET EDDS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 139 lines
The Republican nominee was immersed in covert diplomacy. The Democratic nominee was immersed in covert night life. And the result was supposed to be a U.S. Senate campaign that rewrote the textbook on gutter politics.
Instead, turn on the tube and see Oliver L. North in checkered shirt talking about term limits and saving our kids. Or Charles S. Robb in coat and tie talking about education and protecting our kids.
Only independent J. Marshall Coleman is running a radio ad tweaking the public's memory of drug parties and document shredding - and even he is carefully couching the assault in hillbilly humor.
What gives?
Is it possible, just possible, that Virginia will be spared the bloodletting of an all-out negative campaign?
Not likely, say those who design and watch campaigns. Name-calling has already made a few appearances - just Friday, for example, Robb and North accused each other of being racially divisive.
But an unpredictable multicandidate field, a tight race between the frontrunners, and the fact that both major party candidates live in glass houses has delayed the onslaught, observers say.
Last week, the major political consultants to Robb and North maintained that they'd prefer to keep the rhetoric on a higher plane.
Asked if things could turn nasty fast, North adviser Mark W. Goodin insisted: ``I certainly hope not, all of us hope not.''
In the Robb camp, adviser David Doak said: ``For now, we're content to talk about Chuck's record.''
But both men - each blaming the opposition - also predicted that the calm won't last, and the candidates themselves seemed to be bracing for that eventuality.
``There is a time and a place for everything,'' said Robb when asked at an informal news conference on Tuesday why his recent television ads don't mention North. Claiming that he has been turning the other cheek as North takes potshots, Robb warned: ``I am not the bearer of an inexhaustible supply of cheeks, and there will come a time when I run out of cheeks.''
North implies that it's Robb who's spoiling for a fight. ``When he came down out of his ivory tower, he didn't start campaigning on the issues. He launched a personal attack on me,'' said North on Wednesday as he toured Southside Virginia. Robb describes his campaign as ``mainstream vs. extreme.''
``If Chuck Robb wants to play by those rules, look out Chuck. If he wants to mud wrestle, stand by,'' said North.
Such sparring bolsters the belief of Ron Faucheux, editor of Campaigns and Elections magazine in Washington, that the quiet is temporary. ``Stay tuned,'' said Faucheux. ``When the first stone is thrown, it won't be a stone. It will be a mountain. . . . And once it starts, it won't stop until the election's over.''
There probably are several reasons the Senate campaign, aside from a few notable exceptions such as Friday's dustup and the Sept. 6 debate at Hampden-Sydney College, has been conducted on a relatively positive note so far, analysts say.
First is the surplus of candidates. Until former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder dropped out last week it was a rare, four-person race. Even a three-man contest raises a specter sometimes seen in three-way primaries: The candidate who does the least negative advertising gets a good-will bonus in votes.
``I just assume it's a pretty tough call for both (North and Robb) about how to proceed, partly because there're three people in the race,'' said Doug Bailey, who runs the Hotline political information network and is a former GOP campaign consultant.
By conventional wisdom, said Bailey, if North and Robb focus their fusillades on each other, ``the real beneficiary may be Coleman.''
Also complicating strategy is the fact that the public is already intimately familiar with the negative aspects of Robb's and North's histories.
Usually, negative advertising works to a candidate's advantage if it helps define an opponent who is not well-known by voters or highlights an issue on which public knowledge is sketchy, analysts say.
``What makes this so fascinating is that you're probably not going to find any other race in the country where people have as much (information) about the two candidates,'' said Paul Goldman, a Democratic strategist who has recently signed on with the Robb campaign.
The result, said Bailey, is that strategists may want to save their heavy artillery until the end of the campaign. ``To use it now might be viewed as a waste,'' he said. ``It keeps it from being fresh and effective at the end.''
Analysts say the possibility that the Senate campaign might never turn negative is too radical a departure from modern-day tactics to expect.
``You'll see both candidates unloading very heavily,'' predicted Faucheux. ``There's no such thing as a truce'' on negative ads.
That is more true today than ever, added Robert Goodman, a Maryland consultant who advised Coleman in his 1989 race for governor. ``It's part of the national mood, how we are less civil to each other, care less about the needy, are more cynical about politicians. . . . It's very discouraging,'' he said.
Politics has always had its seamy side, however. A few decades ago, newspapers were more often the vehicle of negative attacks. In the 1973 gubernatorial race, for instance, former Rep. Watkins M. Abbitt of Appomattox wrote a letter to his local newspaper - a few days before the election - that was quickly circulated throughout the state.
The letter accused Norfolk lawyer Henry E. Howell Jr. of financing his independent campaign through ``big union bosses . . . and the liberal left-wing millionaire Jew from Richmond.'' The reference was to philanthropist Sydney Lewis, co-founder of Best Products Co.
The letter was disavowed by Howell's opponent, Republican Mills E. Godwin Jr., but in an insular era, the damage had been done.
By the mid-1980s, media consultants were sharpening their stilettos. Even then, Goodman insists, there was ``more humor than meanness.'' He recalls ads showing hound dogs searching for officials who supposedly couldn't be found or farmers shoveling manure as a comeback to campaign charges.
``What changed the whole world was videotape,'' said Goodman. Suddenly turn-around time between shooting a commercial and getting it on the air was hours rather than days. ``The culprit is the speed and the technology,'' he said.
And the determination of candidates to win elections.
``Campaigns are about the differences between people. If information's true and on the record, that's fair game,'' said Doak of the Robb campaign.
As for the days ahead, if it's fair for North to portray his role in Iran-Contra as being about patriotism and saving lives, ``then it's fair for us to give the other side,'' Doak said.
The philosophy prompts an instant rebuttal from Goodin of the North camp. ``Robb should be on notice,'' Goodin said. ``For every stone, we're going to hurl nine 90-millimeter shells at him.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
[Oliver North]
[Charles Robb]
[SIDE BAR]
A PRIMER ON NEGATIVE CAMPAIGNING
1. Let your opponent go negative first.
2. A nasty ad may cut into your opponent's support, but it also cuts
into yours.
3. You've got to establish your own credibility before you go
negative.
4. Campaigns aren't won on the defensive.
5. Campaigns should end on a positive note.
KEYWORDS: U.S. SENATE RACE CANDIDATE CAMPAIGN ADVERTISING by CNB