THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 4, 1994 TAG: 9411040726
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A16 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KEITH MONROE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
The final television blitz of Virginia's U.S. Senate race has arrived with six new advertisements that will crowd the airwaves from early in the morning until late at night.
Democratic incumbent Charles S. Robb has shaken off his lethargic start to continue a vigorous attack on Republican Oliver L. North. North has returned to his folksy, common-man persona in an attempt to dispel charges of extremism and align himself with Virginia families against ``the Washington crowd.'' J. Marshall Coleman ends where he began, trying to convince voters that his independent candidacy is a viable alternative.
On Wednesday and Thursday, Robb hit the airwaves with two ads attacking North for a proposal to make Social Security voluntary. In the first, Robb for the first time speaks directly into the camera. In the second, an announcer makes a nearly identical case using visuals of newspaper clippings underscored with ominous, nervous music.
Both ads quote unidentified experts as saying that North's idea ``could destroy the entire Social Security system.'' And both claim the American Association of Retired Persons believes that ``plans like North's could plunge millions of elderly into poverty.''
AARP has issued a press release saying it ``strongly objects''to attempts to link it to individual candidates or to portray it as partisan.
North's latest ad is a return to the warm, fuzzy, family image with which he began the campaign. Back then, his wife, Betsy, vouched for him and sought to dispel fears that he might be an extremist.
North is shown laughing around a table with his youngest daughter, 13-year-old Dornan. He says he's worried about her future ``in a nation whose government has fallen so far out of touch with its people.''
Appealing for votes in his trademark blue plaid workshirt, North encourages viewers to join the fight to change Washington and tries to finesse the Iran-Contra issue with an argument that has become standard campaign fare: ``I'm not perfect. Trying to save American lives led me to make some mistakes.''
North later suggests that voters forget all that past unpleasantness and focus on the future.
``If you want a senator who will stand up to Bill Clinton and the Washington crowd and put fighting for Virginia's families first, then I am your candidate and I need your vote.''
North has another new ad, featuring the candidate in shirt sleeves with Gov. George F. Allen.
``If we're ever going to straighten out that mess in Washington,'' Allen says, ``we need to send people there who will fight to change the way they do business. That's why I'm 100 percent behind my friend Ollie North.''
On Wednesday and Thursday, Coleman rolled out two ads with an identical theme. He asks Virginians disenchanted with Robb and North to believe that the Coleman campaign can come up a winner.
In the first, Coleman frontally assaults the idea that a vote for him is wasted. ``There was a time we would have agreed,'' the ad claims. But now, it says, Coleman is ``surging in the polls.'' He's right on the isues and is ``the only candidate who can beat North. The only one who can beat Robb. Wasted vote? Only if you vote for someone you don't really like.''
Coleman is clearly out to refute polling data and pundits who say the independent campaign merely siphons support from Robb.
The argument is undercut by the fact that, after an uptick in the polls to as high as 24 percent in June, his campaign now appears to have plateaued in the high teens.
A second ad features Sen. John W. Warner, Coleman's chief booster. He encourages Virginians to ignore the odds and the polls and unnamed ``outsiders and political insiders.'' Instead, Warner says, Virginians should ``do what's right - vote our consciences.'' If Virginians do that, he claims, Coleman will win and ``make Virginia proud again.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
KEYWORDS: U.S. SENATE RACE VIRGINIA CANDIDATES CAMPAIGN
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