THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 11, 1995 TAG: 9501110028
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVID M. POOLE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 241 lines
THE DEMOCRATIC LORDS who ruled the Virginia General Assembly laughed off Del. S. Vance Wilkins Jr. when he arrived from rural Amherst County in 1978.
They scoffed at his loud jackets, oversized ears and skullcap of black hair.
They swatted him down when he rose on the House floor and argued for checks on their power.
Then, a few years ago, they split their sides when the rough-hewn road contractor made no secret of his ambition to lead a Republican revolt and become speaker of the House of Delegates.
``Vance Wilkins as speaker? My Democrat friends and I used to laugh at that. It was the biggest joke,'' recalled Sen. Elliot S. Schewel, who lives across the James River from Wilkins in Lynchburg.
They aren't laughing now.
Through his dogged recruitment of conservative candidates, Wilkins has helped carry the GOP to within three votes of seizing control of the House of Delegates for the first time in post-Reconstruction history.
If that were to happen - and it could happen as soon as November - Wilkins would become the Newt Gingrich of Virginia politics.
Wilkins and the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives share an uncanny list of similarities: They both lost twice before finally winning their legislative seats; both nearly were defeated after messy divorces; and both were held up as objects of ridicule.
Virginia Democrats are filled with dread at the thought of humbling themselves before ``Speaker Wilkins.''
``Nightmare on Grace Street,'' chuckled Roanoke Del. Clifton A. ``Chip'' Woodrum, referring to a street near the Capitol.
Wilkins is so determined to win the seat that he sold his businesses in 1990 and devoted himself full time to recruiting Republicans. History may record that Democrats, blinded by power and arrogance, did not see Wilkins coming until it was too late.
``It just kills them,'' one lawmaker remarked last year. ``They look over and see Vance Wilkins, who looks like he couldn't find his ass with both hands, recruiting these candidates - and they win.''
Wilkins has risen through the ranks without the benefit of a law degree, a powerful mentor or a winning personality. He has pulled himself up through sheer determination.
Those who have encountered Wilkins through the years swear they have never seen such a tireless worker. It is an approach to life forged in the foothills of the Blue Ridge, where families cared for their own, the able-bodied were expected to work and folks shared a distrust of government in faraway Richmond.
Wilkins, 58, is the oldest of three children. His father, who still lives in the hamlet of Amherst, ran a construction company and was one of a handful of Republicans in town.
The younger Wilkins remembers his childhood as a succession of chores and jobs: raking leaves, cutting wood, slinging the Lynchburg News, sweeping floors at a grocery.
Former campaign aide Jim Beamer recalls retreating to his motel room on election night in 1985, after Wilkins had defeated a tough opponent, in hopes of sleeping late for the first time in months.
``At 4:30 in the morning, someone started pounding and kicking on my door,'' Beamer said. ``It was Vance out there yelling, `Get on up, boy.' ''
Wilkins wanted Beamer to go along with him to check damage from floodwaters that struck just before the election. Beamer, now a legislative liaison to Gov. George F. Allen, said he spent all day and most of the next night driving up and down country roads.
``Something is flogging him,'' said Doug Harwood, editor of The Rockbridge Advocate. ``He is a man possessed.''
Like Gingrich, Wilkins harkens back to the morality of a bygone era and decries the counterculture.
``All the problems in society today,'' Wilkins said, ``have their roots in the 1960s.''
Some of Wilkins' prescriptions are as controversial as Gingrich's notion of sending poor children to orphanages.
Wilkins believes that many criminals are repeat offenders because they are coddled in state prisons. He has suggested that Virginia should study China, a nation that routinely jails suspects without trial and tortures them in prison.
His unbending conservatism is baffling to suburban and urban lawmakers from eastern Virginia.
Petersburg Del. Jay W. DeBoer, who served with Wilkins on the House Health, Welfare and Institutions Committee in the 1980s, said he did a double-take when Wilkins spoke against a bill requiring hospitals to care for women who show up in labor but who can't pay for the delivery.
``I thought he was kidding,'' the Democrat said.
Wilkins is a bundle of contra-dictions.
He is such a strong believer in selfless public service that he donates his $17,640 General Assembly salary to a nonprofit foundation, which pays for schoolchildren to take field trips to Monticello. Yet he also doles out some of the foundation money to civic groups in his district, like a Chicago pol handing out favors in his ward.
He has voted without fail against welfare and affirmative action programs aimed at helping the disadvantaged. Yet he installed a black businessman as the head of one of his companies in the early 1980s to take advantage of state highway contracts set aside for minority-owned firms.
He advocates strict ethics laws that would bar lawmakers from cashing in on their elected offices. Yet he interceded on his wife's behalf in a policy and salary dispute with the Amherst County Board of Supervisors in 1993.
He is a champion of family values who has fought against sex education in public schools and birth control counseling for teens. Yet he left his wife, the mother of his six children, in 1982, and married county librarian Leona Doggett.
As an engineer, Wilkins sticks out in a legislature rife with lawyers in gray suits. He is a cattle farmer and certified welder. His oversized hands are rough from years of labor. His dark hair is slicked back and his smile reveals an Ollie North-sized gap between his front teeth.
His speech is difficult to understand, not only because of a thick mountain twang but because he talks in quick bursts, swallowing the ends of words and running them all together.
The lack of finesse has led many political foes to underestimate his intelligence.
``He is deceptively knowledgeable,'' said Del. Lacey Putney of Bedford, the legislature's lone independent. ``He has a mind like a computer.''
Wilkins earned an engineering degree from Virginia Tech and served a brief hitch in the Air Force before returning home in 1960 to take up politics.
He refused to follow the lead of a high school friend who won a seat on the Amherst County Board of Supervisors by aligning himself with the local Democratic machine.
``He took the easy way,'' Wilkins recalled with disdain.
Wilkins set out to build a Republican organization from scratch, a task that appealed to his independent nature, his love of a challenge and his belief, inherited from his father, that Virginia needed a two-party system.
In the early 1970s, Wilkins ran twice for the House of Delegates and lost both times. The party refused to nominate him for a third try in 1975.
``They thought I was a loser,'' he said.
Wilkins refused to give up. A plaque on the wall of the Richmond office reserved for the House minority leader sums up his philosophy:
Press on. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
After his second defeat, Wilkins set out to build a grassroots network by spending all his spare time at school fairs, church picnics and rescue squad suppers. The groundwork paid off in 1977, when he won a seat in a two-member district that included Amherst and Nelson counties and Lynch-burg.
In his 17 years in the General Assembly, Wilkins has gained a reputation as an obstructionist who refuses to kowtow to the Democratic majority.
At a GOP retreat in 1985, Wilkins asked University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato if Republicans should go after then-Norfolk state Sen. Peter Babalas, who at the time faced accusations of vote-selling.
Sabato advised steering clear of the issue, lest Republicans appear to be hitting a man when he was down.
``Isn't that when you want to hit him?'' Wilkins replied.
His combativeness means few crumbs from the state budget fall into his district. But as an advocate of limited government, Wilkins takes more pride in the number of initiatives he kills than the amount of bacon he brings home.
``Wait until he gets some real power,'' Sabato said.
In fact, Wilkins sounded like a ``pork barrel'' politician two years ago while campaigning for a candidate who had challenged House Majority Leader C. Richard Cranwell of Roanoke County.
Wilkins promised to take care of the Roanoke Valley if Cranwell, the area's most powerful benefactor, lost his seat.
``I will be speaker,'' Wilkins declared at a Vinton press conference. ``I'm a country boy. You're not going to lose anything if you lose Dick.''
The speaker of the House is a figure of sweeping power. The current speaker, Norfolk Del. Thomas W. Moss Jr., determines the fates of all delegates by assigning them to various committees. He controls the flow of legislation, steering favored bills to friendly committees and burying duds. He sets the pace of the session, determines who gets to speak and settles daily disputes.
The position also carries ponderous historical weight. The names of former speakers dating back 300 years are etched in marble tablets in the House chambers.
Four years ago, Wilkins dedicated all of his time and energy to adding his name to that list. He sold his printing and highway construction businesses and lit out across the state recruiting GOP candi-dates.
He tells potential office seekers that they need three qualifications: be honest, believe in the Republican creed and be willing to work day and night to achieve their goal.
Inspirational tapes produced by Gingrich's political action committee reinforce the message. Wilkins urges candidates to listen to the tapes again and again as they drive between campaign events.
His determination has paid big dividends for Republicans. Some 23 of the current 47 house Republicans have won their seats since Wilkins took control of GOP candidate recruitment.
Democrats are not the only ones worried about the prospect of Wilkins as House speaker. Some Republicans say privately that his behind-the-scenes skills are ill-suited for a role with such high visibility.
Some fear his country-boy persona is out of character with the overwhelmingly suburban GOP caucus; that his conservatism is too unbending on topics such as gun control, gay rights and abortion; that he lacks the statesmanship to reach out to Democrats.
``He has the makings of a good speaker, but he would have to look at a broader perspective,'' Sen. Charles Hawkins, R-Chatham, said last year. ``He is focused now on partisan politics.''
Despite those concerns, Republicans say it would be hard to imagine a House GOP majority not electing Wilkins as speaker. It would be like denying glory to the general of a victorious army.
If he were to become speaker, Wilkins said he would give Democrats a taste of the indignities they have heaped on Republicans for decades - stripping most Democrats from key committees, at least for a few years.
Asked if that means Republicans will switch from oppressed to the oppressor, Wilkins replied: ``It might be hypocritical to do it forever. But it might not be hypocritical next time. If that is what they think is fair, they shouldn't complain about it next time.''
Wilkins vowed to push for reforms, overturning the heavy-handed way Democrats have:
drawn boundaries for legislative districts that make no sense except to protect Democratic seats.
selected judges through a secret process based more on political loyalty than qualifications.
created holes in ethics laws that allow legislators to represent clients before state agencies they regulate.
``I feel sure we will be different than the Democrats,'' he said. ``They say power corrupts. But if we remove these things, it might not corrupt us as much.''
Democrats vow to run someone against Wilkins this fall in legislative elections that will determine which party controls the General Assembly. If Democrats can't dislodge Wilkins, they at least hope to keep him too preoccupied to help GOP candidates elsewhere.
Wilkins, who has not faced a serious challenge in a decade, is taking nothing for granted. Democrats redrew his district in 1991 so that more than half of his constituents live west of the Blue Ridge, in Staunton and the counties of Augusta and Rockbridge.
But no one has yet stepped forward to oppose him. Wilkins still hits the road two or three days a week to enlist his Republican militia, girding for what could be the final phase of the fight he started 35 years ago.
``If you don't quit,'' he said, ``you can't hardly lose.'' MEMO: This story was adapted from one that appeared last spring in the Roanoke
Times & World-News
ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
CHRISTOPHER REDDICK/Staff
Photo
CHRISTOPHER REDDICK/Staff
Those who have encountered Del. Vance Wilkins through the years
swear they have never seen such a tireless worker.
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