THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 2, 1994 TAG: 9411020470
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARGARET EDDS AND ALEC KLEIN, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long : 124 lines
In time-honored Virginia tradition, Oliver L. North and Charles S. Robb are raising decibel levels on race and fear as the Nov. 8 election for the U.S. Senate approaches.
But while race has surfaced time and again in the waning days of Virginia elections, this year there's a twist: The charges being hurled aren't subtle, as they once were. And yet it's less clear what's motivating the candidates and who's exploiting black voters more.
Robb and his Democratic allies opened the door on race by comparing North to David Duke, former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, in several campaign remarks and in a telephone vote-raising effort.
North on Tuesday responded with a news conference accusing Robb of ``a despicable effort to salvage his foundering political campaign. Chuck Robb has decided to play the ugly card of racism.''
The former Marine lieutenant colonel also ventured into hostile territory Tuesday to defend his honor, seeming to relish tough questions from students at predominantly black Virginia Union University.
``I do not believe that there is room in American politics for bigotry or exclusion based on any factor,'' North said, promising to be a color-blind senator.
While the Democrats have barely concealed their intention of stirring up black voters by invoking Duke, North's approach to race is almost a paradox.
In the course of the campaign, the Republican candidate has defended flying the Confederate flag and has denounced statehood for Washington, two issues that stir racial sentiment. His decision to lambaste Robb over race in aninterview Monday with The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star and later Tuesday was seen by some as a ploy to stir up white racism by underscoring the extent of Robb's black support.
``It's demagoguery in its rankest form,'' said House of Delegates Speaker Thomas W. Moss Jr. of Norfolk.
North waited until eight days before the election to respond to Robb, even though Robb first equated him with Duke 12 days ago.
But both North's message and his venue are far different from those of old-school conservatives.
An impassioned North told about 75 Virginia Union students and faculty that 17 of the 23 employees in his bullet-proof vest company are minorities, including a Vietnamese production chief and an African-American inventory chief. His business partner is Hispanic, he said.
Even more, North pointed out that he campaigned against David Duke in a 1990 Republican congressional primary in Louisiana. And he said: ``I spent 22 years in the U.S. Marine Corps, where we treated every Marine exactly the same.''
For about 30 minutes, North took questions challenging everything from his integrity to his alleged knowledge of drug trafficking while supplying arms to the Nicaraguan resistance movement in the mid-1980s.
North didn't flinch when senior Shawnice Hubbard asked him how he could hope to be a positive force in Virginia with his reputation for being ``a shabby person and a liar.''
``I give you my word I will be a fair and impartial United States senator,'' said North with steely conviction.
Independent candidate J. Marshall Coleman, campaigning elsewhere in Richmond, wasn't convinced of North's sincerity. ``He should be an expert on devices to divide. I think he could be cited as having professional status on that. I'll tell you one thing . . . he wrote the playbook on that.''
Republicans said it was the Democrats who invented the game.
A Democratic Party phone bank last week began describing the GOP as the party of ``Jesse Helms, Jerry Falwell, and David Duke.'' The Rev. Jesse Jackson also compared North to Duke when he campaigned recently in Hampton Roads.
GOP Chairman Patrick McSweeney lambasted the Democrats at a news conference Friday for mentioning Duke, and the North camp picked up the rallying cry.
``Can you imagine the national outrage there would be if we ran phone banks saying whites ought to be afraid of blacks?'' said Mark Merritt, North's deputy campaign manager. ``It'd be a disgrace, but that's what Chuck Robb's done in reverse.''
Phone bank callers, using a written script, did not mention either Robb or North by name.
At a Richmond news conference Tuesday, Robb denied that he injected race into the campaign on Oct. 20 when he said North has gotten the same chilly reception from some Virginia Republicans that Duke got when he ran for governor in Louisiana. Robb made that comment while speaking before the Chesapeake Democratic committee.
``What was being suggested by me at the time was simply a recitation of what many Republicans had told me,'' Robb said.
The senator also defended the phone bank: ``I know the name David Duke was used in it, but I don't think it was aligned specifically with Ollie North.''
The Republican shot back: ``Racist politics, that's what they're doing.''
Informed of North's charge, Robb seemed taken aback. ``Was he standing in front of the mirror?''
Key Republicans privately insisted that there was no grand design to use race to North's advantage. They noted, for instance, North had not exploited two issues with racial overtones used in past campaigns: racial quotas and the Voting Rights Act.
But he has been attacked on at least two fronts: He was the only candidate who did not attend the state NAACP candidates' forum Friday night and he held a news conference last week to underscore his opposition to D.C. statehood.
He attributed his NAACP absence to a prior commitment, and in an interview Monday, he said: ``D.C. being a state has nothing to do with race.''
The timing of the racial debate seemed oddly reminiscent of several past campaigns.
In 1981, for instance, when Coleman and Robb were locked in a tight race for governor, former Gov. Mills E. Godwin Jr. broke his silence on the election seven days before the vote. Godwin, a former segregationist aligned with the old Harry Byrd machine, listed five reasons to back Coleman, then the GOP nominee.
Four of them - the Voting Rights Act, post-card registration, congressional representation for the District of Columbia and guaranteeing black companies a share of government construction projects - had racial overtones.
In 1989, when Coleman was again the GOP nominee for governor, he held a widely publicized news conference to charge that his opponent was getting favorable media treatment because of a ``double-standard.''
His opponent was L. Douglas Wilder, who is black.
That event occurred five days before the election. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
CANDIDATES' APPEARANCES
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
KEYWORDS: U.S. SENATE RACE VIRGINIA CANDIDATES
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