THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 11, 1994 TAG: 9411110651
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GUY FRIDDELL
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines
Having lost a senatorial race Tuesday when Republicans throughout the nation were winning them, the Virginia Republican high command already is revving up to lose another race in 1996.
This time they aim to defeat Republican U.S. Sen. John Warner, who is so popular that Virginia Democrats didn't bother to field anyone against him in 1990.
Warner risked his career by refusing to back Oliver L. North for the Senate. He recruited J. Marshall Coleman to challenge North as an independent.
``We've got a sickness in our party, and that sickness is John Warner,'' Republican Michael P. Farris said Wednesday.
The sickness in the party lies not with Warner but with GOP leaders who had a golden chance to defeat the unsavory candidacy of Sen. Charles S. Robb and threw it away by choosing North, a candidate also encumbered with a notorious past and a tendency to commit gaffes in commenting on issues.
James C. Miller III, a dogged late-hour candidate, would have won the GOP nomination in a primary and then whipped Robb, but party chiefs chose North in a huge mutant mushroom of a convention.
Warner said Wednesday he was willing to take on all comers in a primary two years hence.
A host of Democrats, grateful for Warner's opposing North, would cross party lines to back him. For a century, Virginians have delighted in jumping fences to follow a candidate rather than a party.
Some angry North supporters favor challenging the law allowing incumbent senators to choose between a primary or a convention when they run for re-election.
Even if the disgrunts win a court test, they will lose ground. Warner's fervent fans among Republicans, Democrats and independents would resent the nomination taking place in a convention's confines instead of a wide-open primary.
They will flock all the more eagerly to Warner's standard should he, shut out by a convention, opt to run as an independent in the November election of 1996.
A GOP official in Abingdon, Jim Ferreira, is ready to oppose Warner either way. ``I want to beat his ass in public,'' he said.
Warner is at the peak of his career on the Senate Armed Services Committee, a point appreciated by citizens of Hampton Roads who cherish the military.
In a rush to beat Warner's ass in public, as he so elegantly puts it, Ferreira, like others of his ilk, is apt to find on Election Day that his own is in a sling.
``I'm not engaging in any dialogues with Mike Farris,'' a benign Warner said. ``It's appropriate to give campaign-weary Virginians a rest, particularly the losers. Let them be with their families and collect their lives.''
If GOP officials insist on making a martyr of John Warner, he will be the mellowest - and merriest - seen in a long time in Virginia politics. by CNB