THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 30, 1994 TAG: 9411300461
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B01 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
During a secretive summit of 20 GOP leaders, Gov. George Allen wrung a pledge from Republican rivals for the U.S. Senate in 1996 that they shall not take potshots at one another during the 1995 campaign of candidates for the Virginia General Assembly.
The text of Monday's powwow at the lengthy running-broad-jump table in the dining room of the Governor's Mansion might have been: ``Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall inherit Virginia.''
The immediate beneficiary of the convivial, if wary, mingling of lions and tigers was U.S. Sen. John Warner, at whose heels jackals have been nipping lately.
Warner, Virginia's senior Republican, who has the insouciance of a hog in a mud wallow, quietly declined to back the GOP's Michael Farris in last year's race for lieutenant governor. As well, he campaigned stoutly against Republican Oliver L. North in this year's Senate race.
It will be all the harder for Warner's detractors, having faced him Monday, to try to bushwhack him during the 1995 truce.
Some disgrunts had been bent on urging Warner's senatorial peers to deny him choice committees, but GOP Executive Director David Johnson disclosed last week they had given up that notion. At best, it was childish; at worst it verged on being calamitous for Virginia.
Warner already is the second-ranking Republican behind ancient, time-defiant Strom Thurmond on the Armed Services Committee. On the Transportation Committee, Warner heads the subcommittee that parcels out highway funds.
When Congress returns Jan. 4, Warner will strive to become chairman of the Rules Committee, which, among other duties, supervises the budgets of all the other committees. That will give him a powerful seat in Senate deliberations.
IN MONDAY'S SESSION, Warner made it clear that the contest for the rules seat was one that he would make on his own - and win.
Gov. Allen, who aims to remain neutral in the 1996 race, declined when questioned by reporters to endorse Warner's re-election; but the two became close when Warner campaigned for Allen during his run for Congress.
In the throng that filled the Capitol's Rotunda after Allen was inaugurated, courtly Warner, at the elbow of the new governor's mother, introduced her to other dignitaries.
The moratorium on any strife in 1995 for the 1996 senatorial race does not exclude the organizing and fund-raising for campaigns.
Other putative candidates for 1996 are Farris and North. Neither was present Monday, but both had emissaries at the mansion.
A third possible candidate in 1996 is James Miller III, who lost to North in a vigorous bid last June for the GOP nomination to the Senate.
Miller, budget chief in the Reagan administration, has been busy on the phone recruiting a committee to explore whether he should undertake the race in 1996. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
The immediate beneficiary of the pact made at a GOP summit was U.S.
Sen. John Warner.
KEYWORDS: REPUBLICAN PARTY
by CNB