THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 21, 1994 TAG: 9410210644
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ALEXANDRIA LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines
President Clinton and U.S. Sen. Charles S. Robb are ``co-conspirators'' in what could be an illegal attempt to buy former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder's support for Robb's imperiled re-election campaign, Republican nominee Oliver L. North suggested Thursday.
The GOP candidate pounced gleefully on a newspaper report of a Clinton-Wilder meeting at the White House on Tuesday. The Washington Times quoted Democratic sources as saying that Clinton urged Wilder to back Robb and discussed Wilder's interest in a high-profile roving ambassadorship in Africa.
Clinton and Robb are attending a Democratic Party dinner in Alexandria tonight, and Wilder is invited. Some state Democrats have lobbied Wilder to use the event - which is called the Kennedy-King dinner - to endorse Robb and bury the hatchet in their longtime feud.
Wilder, who could not be reached Thursday, has not announced his plans. He dropped his independent Senate candidacy last month, citing fund-raising difficulties and his poor showing in opinion polls.
The White House confirmed the Clinton-Wilder conversation but insisted that the former governor neither sought nor was offered a job. ``This was a private meeting,'' said spokeswoman Ginny Terzano. ``They discussed many issues. In large part, they discussed the midterm elections and the Virginia Senate race. That's not unusual.''
North, with former federal prosecutor Henry Hudson at his side, noted that the offer of any federal job in exchange for political help would be illegal. Violations carry a fine of up to $10,000, or up to a year in jail, or both.
``If these allegations are true, then it's a disgrace that the president, the vice president and a United States senator would stoop to this kind of activity,'' North said. He sent U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno a letter requesting an investigation by the Justice Department's election crimes unit.
Vice President Al Gore did not attend Tuesday's Clinton-Wilder meeting. He met with Wilder in July, while the ex-governor was still in the Senate contest, but both men have said no jobs were discussed.
Robb, campaigning Thursday in Portsmouth, said stories of any deal are ``simply and categorically untrue.'' He accused North of trying to spin an unsubstantiated story into a campaign scandal.
``Lack of a factual basis has not stopped his campaign before, and it hasn't stopped Mr. North before,'' Robb said.
Robb agreed that ``any attempted linkage'' between a Wilder endorsement and a federal job for Wilder ``would not be proper.'' He added that ``I don't think anyone on either side of that meeting had any intention of doing that.''
Support from Wilder, the nation's first elected African-American governor, could be critical to Robb's hopes of generating a substantial turnout among black voters on Nov. 8. Most of the African-American vote generally goes to Democrats, but some in Robb's camp worry that his disputes with Wilder have sapped enthusiasm for him among blacks.
Relations between the two men have been strained, at best, for almost a decade, and Wilder earlier this year called Robb unfit for the Senate. A key issue between them is the involvement of Robb staffers in efforts to embarrass Wilder by giving reporters the transcript of an illegally wiretapped phone call Wilder made in 1988.
Three Robb aides were convicted of minor criminal charges in that case and left his staff. Robb was the subject of a lengthy investigation, but grand jurors declined to indict him.
North said Thursday that if true, the allegations of a Clinton offer to Wilder are ``insulting to the integrity of former Gov. Wilder (and) of the people of Virginia. . . . That kind of politics may work in Arkansas, but in this, the cradle of democracy, we don't want it.''
North sidestepped a question about whether he considers Wilder qualified for an ambassadorship - ``that's not the issue,'' he said. And he insisted there is a big difference between the reported offer to Wilder and the ambassadorships presidents of both parties have long conferred on their prominent political supporters and contributors.
Robb, who spent much of the day in Hampton Roads, tried to put some fire into his often-lackluster campaign as he equated the divisiveness of North's drive with the failed Louisiana and national campaigns of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.
``Down in Louisiana . . . a number of principled Republicans said, `I don't want to be associated, as a Republican, with a candidate like David Duke,' '' he said, alluding to the fact that some GOP members, such as U.S. Sen. John W. Warner, have distanced themselves from North.
``The nation is going to be watching Virginia this time,'' Robb told the Chesapeake Democratic Committee. ``We don't want to have to pay the consequences of whatever frustrations might exist in a momentary fit of passion or protest.'' MEMO: Staff writers Robert Little and Greg Schneider contributed to this
story.
ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
The claim: President Clinton enticed former Virginia Gov. L.
Douglas Wilder with an envoy's post if he would back Robb.
KEYWORDS: U.S. SENATE RACE VIRGINIA CANDIDATES
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