THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 9, 1994 TAG: 9411090386
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A13 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GUY FRIDDELL
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines
Never have I heard, at the close of any other election, as many people declare as they did at the end of this 1994 senatorial race that they are glad it is over.
It's as if we have been caught up in it personally. That we are physically weary of it all. Fed up.
And no wonder we feel that way.
The two major candidates for the U.S. Senate, Oliver L. North and Charles S. Robb, put us through this wringer, as well as themselves.
It has been a thorough-going experience for everybody, we feel.
The underlying theme of the campaign was redemption.
Robb wanted to redeem himself for the partying with that Virginia Beach so-called fast set, which was really a tawdry lot given to drinking and drugs and womanizing and whatever attends that sordid scene.
He had let down his guard, Robb said, in a sort of blanket confession as the campaign got under way. He had been guilty of conduct unsuited to a married man, which was putting it mildly.
Gone were Robb's glittering dark good looks. His bleak face, as if he had endured Gehena, had aged an extra 10 years. He had tumbled from the heights.
As recently as 1990 he had been mentioned as a possible candidate on a Democratic presidential ticket. Now he was after only absolution.
North, the point man for the ill-starred Iran-Contra enterprise, also seeking redemption, wanted to break clear of all the gnawing details and from the questioning and the investigation that went on and on, a nightmare.
No sooner did you cap it in one spot than it broke out at another.
The eternal impression of the Marine in uniform before the congressional committee is of his face turned up, tilted at a slight angle, and those big, sad St. Bernard eyes fixed on his interrogators.
It won the hearts of thousands of viewers and, really, was the beginning of his campaign for rehabilitation via the Senate.
To redeem himself North aimed to win a seat in the Congress that had sought to break him, march triumphant into the midst of his tormentors.
At the start of the June 4 Republican nominating convention in Richmond, North introduced a World War II veteran who had crossed the beaches on D-Day.
And then, at the close of that day, North, likening his campaign to those in the jungles of Vietnam, talked of charging one more hill, the Hill topped by the U.S. Capitol where Congress sits.
In politics, winning absolves everything. It gives complete absolution, renewing power, bestowing clout so that the seeker feels that people see him whole again, forgiven.
The two tramped around Virginia as if it were a psychoanalyst's couch, admitting here and there they had ``made mistakes.''
North spoke of us ``poor, frayed, flawed mortals,'' as if to embrace all in the circle of human guilt.
He said it so often that sometimes it seemed to come out as ``flayed, frawed mortals,'' which - flayed and fraud - made a sort of crazy sense so that, if he said it, no one caught it.
So dogged Robb plowed along, a forgiving Linda at his side, two adoring daughters hovering, a tableau of family values.
A man of enveloping charisma, North bent a warm, melting gaze on voters, and the slightly husky voice broke at just the right point so that his followers wouldn't have believed the charges if they had seen them enacted before their eyes.
North failed, but there was some requital in having used his enormous gifts to the fullest. He had not won the Grail but in two grueling years he had earned Virginians' respect, and they would see him henceforth clean without tattered vestiges of the past.
There were two others.
Former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, entering the race as an independent, threatened to wreck Robb's chances. But seeing he couldn't win and fearing that a loss by Robb would be laid at his door, Wilder withdrew and helped roll up among black voters the margin of victory. Their long, debilitating feud must have closed, at last, last night.
Recruited by GOP Sen. John Warner to thwart North, J. Marshall Coleman spent most of Election Day still campaigning in communities around his home in McLean. After two defeats in races for governor, one by the narrowest of margins in Virginia history, Coleman knows how to lose.
Coleman campaigned with a smile on his face, a quip on his lips, offering each day solutions on a variety of issues. His proposals got scant space from the media absorbed with the overwhelming question of the two major candidates' character. Coleman kept his poise, never lost his grace, and won many friends.
There is muttering among some Republicans of fielding a candidate against redoubtable John Warner when he runs for re-election to the Senate in 1996.
Let them try. Just let them try.
KEYWORDS: U.S. SENATE RACE VIRGINIA CANDIDATES RESULTS
ANALYSIS by CNB