THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 23, 1994 TAG: 9410250484
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WARRENTON LENGTH: Long : 122 lines
For nearly a century, North Carolina's 1st Congressional District was a comfy, carpet-slippered kind of living room for white Democrats who elected only five congressmen in nearly a century, from 1899 to 1992.
Every one of those 1st District representatives was a male conservative who was regularly re-elected because he looked out for kindred constituents back home through a county courthouse network that unfailingly rewarded the party faithful.
Then, in a wrenching 1992 transformation of Politics-As-We-Knew-It, the North Carolina General Assembly redrew election areas of the 1st District to favor African-American candidates under U.S. voting rights guidelines.
And Eva McPherson Clayton, then 57, became the first female and the first African American in this century to go to the U.S. House of Representatives from North Carolina.
``I like the job,'' Clayton said last week as she campaigned for re-election in her sprawling district, which stretches from Virginia down the eastern coastal plain to South Carolina.
``I haven't achieved everything that I want to do in Washington, but I've learned a lot and I think I'm more effective now.''
To create a 57 percent black majority in the new voting enclave, the General Assembly strung together portions of 28 counties in a way that ``looks like a Rorschach blot,'' according to one legislator.
Clayton quickly entered the 1992 Democratic primary and learned a painful but lasting political lesson when she lost a first round to Walter B. Jones Jr., the son of a congressman who represented the old 1st District for 26 years.
Clayton finished second in the primary because several other African-American candidates also sought the nomination. The black vote was badly divided, allowing Jones to win, but without the required 40 percent of the votes needed for the nomination.
Clayton's 1992 campaign manager, state Sen. Frank W. Ballance Jr., her neighbor and longtime friend in Warren County, quickly organized a more unified vote in the runoff, and she got the nomination and in November won a seat in Congress.
Now, with two years of congressional experience, Eva Clayton is proud to be a Washington pro. She also is happy to again have Ballance running her election efforts. He is a tough-talking leader of the General Assembly's black caucus and not afraid to tell the 1st District's majority voters that if they don't hang together they'll surely hang separately. Many feel that if Clayton were to decide to step down, Ballance would be her successor in Washington.
``I think I've learned how to stay the course; to fight for the legislation I want and make my opinions have impact,'' Clayton said the other day at her Greenville office.
She seems to have transferred to most of the other counties in her district the racial ambience that she and Ballance enjoy back in Warrenton, the Warren County seat. In few N.C. communities do whites and blacks live together so comfortably as they do in Warren County, which is located on the Virginia border just below Lake Gaston.
But the congresswoman, 59, has a stern demeanor that would draw respectful salutes in the military. Once, during Clayton's 1992 campaign, someone suggested to Ballance that Clayton ``loosen up'' a little in public.
``Why?'' asked Ballance. ``That's the way she is. She has a powerful sense of purpose and it will take her to Washington.''
Clayton proved Ballance's point.
After she won in 1992, Clayton returned to Elizabeth City's Holiday Inn, where the year before she had first announced her congressional candidacy to a sparse crowd of black supporters. After her victory, the motel's banquet room was jammed with white political leaders, too.
``I am proud of Eva Clayton,'' said Matt Wood, then chairman of the Pasquotank County Democratic party. ``The racial issue doesn't matter.''
In her first term in Congress, Clayton has won the respect of House leaders. She was appointed to important committees such as Agriculture and Small Business and was named to the Speaker's Policy Group. She has remained faithful to the social issues that have concerned her at home in Warren County; in the state Department of Natural Resources and Community Development, as well as during several terms on the Warren County board of commissioners.
Clayton and Ballance both have said that the reason there is racial harmony in Warren County is ``because blacks and whites respect each other.''
As much as any message, Clayton has carried and demonstrated the wisdom of that simple formula for racial peace to all of the 1st District. ``We're getting money for education, for school buildings, for farmers, for the fight against crime,'' Clayton said of her work in Congress.
She's also getting money to run for re-election.
Her last quarterly campaign contribution report filed with the state Board of Elections in Raleigh showed a balance of $73,915.34. Expenditures were listed at $60,813.95. The campaign figures put Clayton far ahead of Ted Tyler, her Republican opponent, who reported contributions of $1,789.84 and expenditures of $2,717.18 for the quarter.
So far the campaign against Tyler has been a model of political politeness. ``He's a gentleman,'' Clayton often has said about Tyler. Tyler, a pharmaceutical salesman from Northampton County, lost by a 2-to-1 margin to Clayton in the 1992 race.
Clayton's policy seems to be working with her fellow Democrats.
``I think our party is in solid shape now, better than in 1992,'' said William Hodges, a Washington, N.C., hotelier who was chairman of the old 1st District Democratic party for many years. Hodges is in his 80s and is a kind of Democratic soothsayer-emeritus. He knew all five of the former 1st District's congressmen and still is calling the shots before election day.
``Mrs. Clayton is doing a good job and she'll to win again,'' Hodges said.
``She deserves to,'' he added. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Eva McPherson Clayton
Graphic
EVA McPHERSON CLAYTON
Age: 59.
Elected offices: U.S. House of Representatives, 1992; Warren
County commissioner, 1982-1990; former assistant secretary, N.C.
Department of Natural Resources and Community Development.
Education: Public schools in Savannah, Ga., where she was born.
Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte; master's in science
degree from N.C. Central University in Durham.
Family: married to T.T. Clayton Sr., a Warrenton attorney; four
children.
KEYWORDS: ELECTION NORTH CAROLINA CANDIDATES by CNB