THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 30, 1994 TAG: 9410300080
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A4 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: REALPOLITIK
SOURCE: BY KERRY DOUGHERTY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines
Occasional dispatches on the offbeat side of Virginia's 1994 U.S. Senate race.
With 10 days until the election, Ollie North rolled into Chuck Robb's favorite resort city Saturday to deliver his version of the Sermon on the Mount.
Make that the Sermon on the Landfill.
Standing at the base of Mount Trashmore, North spoke to about 1,000 fans - one carrying a hand-lettered sign reading: ``Quit your bitching, Nancy. Ollie saved Ronnie's butt,'' and others sporting T-shirts reading: ``Politically Incorrect'' ``Ollie, by Golly,'' and the ever-popular ``Widows and Orphans for North.''
North sounded hoarse - who wouldn't after five months of nonstop jawing - and had to holler to be heard above a handful of hecklers who chanted throughout his speech.
North learned that there is only one thing more annoying than having a quartet of LaRouchites at your rally: a quartet of LaRouchites with a megaphone.
``Send Ollie to jail, Send Ollie to jail,'' sang the followers of political extremist Lyndon LaRouche who have been all over North like a cheap suit since his campaign began.
As North took the podium they switched: ``Son of a Bush, Son of a Bush,'' they chorused - their favorite anti-North catcall.
The cacophony clearly annoyed North.
``Let me tell you how it feels,'' North began, jerking his head toward the knot of protesters. ``In spite of that trash on the bottom of Mount Trashmore, let me tell you how it feels to be ahead at this point in the race.''
Ollie deviated from his usual rallying cry to ``take back government'' and bashing the liberal media to put Vice President Al Gore in his crosshairs. Reacting to remarks made Friday by Gore in which he accused North of ``banking on the fact that he can raise enough money from the extreme right wing - the extra chromosome right wing - to come in and buy enough advertising to just overwhelm the truth with blatant falsehoods,'' North appeared incensed.
``The vice president of the United States of America is stooping down to join Chuck Robb in the slime,'' he charged. ``Friends, this is a moral outrage and we have a right to be disgusted.''
(Gore apologized for his remarks, which were interpreted as ridiculing people with Down syndrome, a birth defect characterized by an extra chromosome.)
Several North supporters shared Ollie's anger with the press.
``What's the matter, did you guys forget the words?'' hissed one North supporter, eyeing the mute media types standing atop a platform as the crowd sang the national anthem.
Saturday's rally was a carefully orchestrated event - if you didn't count the hecklers, the lone Robb supporter with a sign and a weird female mime dressed as Pinocchio who has been turning up at North's Hampton Roads campaign appearances carrying a placard reading ``Ol Lies.'' On Saturday she had scribbled ``Ask Nancy'' on the reverse side of her sign.
Before North arrived on the RV he calls Rolling Thunder, a small plane trailing an ``Ollie North Ralley'' banner circled overhead and folding tables were set up with dozens of North souvenirs for sale. Maybe Dan Quayle is designing campaign banners in his spare time.
A sampling of the Ollie memorabilia included ``patriotic portraits'' of an uncharacteristically swarthy-looking North for $20, signed copies of North's autobiography, ``Under Fire,'' selling for $15 and copies of a little-known book called ``Blue's Bastards,'' a pro-North book, with its price slashed from $15 to $10.
Gary Amos, a Virginia Beach lawyer who has penned a North book called ``Attainted,'' was hawking his paperbacks for $6.95, but was letting them go on credit to those without money.
After his speech, North ducked reporters, bounding onto Rolling Thunder and sped away from the city's only mountain. But his supporters were not finished. One elderly man dressed in a dark suit and waving a ``North for Senate'' sign was last seen chasing Robb's lone supporter over the hillside.
KEYWORDS: U.S. SENATE RACE VIRGINIA CANDIDATES
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