THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 2, 1995 TAG: 9504020020
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARGARET EDDS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long : 125 lines
Jaw squared, collar starched, seal-of-Virginia cuff links fastened, Attorney General James S. Gilmore III is explaining his strategy for becoming the state's top crime fighter as well as its top lawyer.
He describes an office reorganization and a 10-point plan. Interrupted by a question, he pauses briefly and lets the mental gears rewind. He'll answer the new query, he observes, and then ``I'll move on to Roman Numeral II'' of the earlier response.
This is Jim Gilmore, intense, focused, organized, linear in his thinking, military in his bearing.
From a spacious Capitol Square office free of family photos or personal bric-a-brac, in which the two most-commanding decorations are a portrait and a bust of Thomas Jefferson, the former Henrico County prosecutor plans and executes the strategy that he hopes will culminate with his election as governor in 1997.
Fourteen months into a four-year term, that careful planning has produced some unexpected results, not the least of which is this: For a highly partisan individual in a highly charged political year, Gilmore has a score card remarkably free of complaint.
Aggressive and confrontational on the campaign trail in 1993, he appeared - at least during the legislative session - almost to have switched roles with his Republican ticket mate, George F. Allen. A folksy and genial candidate, Allen turned acerbic in facing the legislature last winter. Gilmore kept his distance from the fray, looking statesmanlike in contrast and seeing much of his legislative agenda pass.
In interviews, a hard prosecutorial edge easily resurfaces. Gilmore speaks of ``the devastation'' of the office's criminal work under his predecessor, Democrat Mary Sue Terry. He snaps, ``This is a profession. We don't make widgets around here,'' when asked if there's a tangible way to prove that his reorganization has produced a better product.
But the end result appears to have impressed even Democrats. ``The word on the street,'' said Del. Franklin P. Hall, D-Richmond, ``is that the office is running very well.''
Added Paul Goldman, a former state Democratic Party chairman, ``Gilmore looks to be a potentially stronger nominee (in 1997) than many Democrats would have assumed a year ago. Most people thought he'd be perceived as a very right-wing Republican partisan who won on Allen's coattails but was not ready for prime time. That has not occurred.''
Central to the legislative victories - including limiting appeals in death penalty cases, expanding the state's victim-witness program, and increasing the authority of multi-jurisdictional grand juries - was a savvy decision to leave most of the negotiating to two highly respected deputies, lawmakers say.
Another key to the in-house accord is a management style that gives attorneys more day-to-day freedom, say past and present employees of the office. Numerous decisions that reached Terry's desk can now be signed off on at a lower level.
Still, eyebrows have arched at the conservative ideological flavor of some of Gilmore's legal actions. Citing freedom-of-speech concerns, he opposed the University of Virginia over the denial of student activity funds to ``Wide Awake,'' a student-run Christian magazine. The case is before the U.S. Supreme Court.
In another controversy monitored by the Religious Right, he filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting a 1992 Colorado referendum denying homosexuals hope of ``minority,'' or protected, status. And he has protested federal regulations that, he said, would let government command religious expression in the workplace.
``Control's being asserted, but in a very different, more ideological way,'' said one lawyer familiar with the offices of both Gilmore and Terry.
Despite his forcefulness in public, Gilmore is apparently skilled at listening in private. Soon after his election, he interviewed each of the 130 or so attorneys who do the state's business. He says he found ``severe problems with morale and a sense that there was a need (to restore) a high professionalism.'' Under Terry, many thought decisions were being based on politics, he said.
In keeping with his crime-fighting pledge, one of Gilmore's responses was to reunite a criminal division that had been dispersed by Terry. While most of the work of the attorney general's office is civil, portions are criminal, including representing the state in death penalty and other appeals, and launching Medicaid or other fraud prosecutions.
Gilmore's anti-crime emphasis has led to several changes, including the appointment of his top prosecutorial assistant in Henrico County to head the criminal division. Gary Arenhalt said the section's staff has grown from about 25 to 36 attorneys, that there's more emphasis on helping local prosecutors with cases and that full-court reviews are being sought more aggressively when three-judge panels of the Virginia Court of Appeals rule against the state.
Terry and some former assistants bristle at the suggestion that their office was less professional - or less interested in criminal matters.
Terry notes that her office's investigation and prosecution of political extremist Lyndon LaRouche was perhaps the highest-profile criminal case ever handled by the attorney general's office.
As for political decision-making, it didn't occur, insists H. Lane Kneedler, a former U.Va. law professor and Terry's top assistant. ``All the legal decisions went through me. They weren't political decisions. They were legal decisions,'' he said.
``Who was that who stood on the steps of U.Va'' in the Wide Awake case? asked Terry.
Despite the relative calm, Gilmore's administration has not been glitch-free. The number of legal opinions issued last year in response to local and state government officials is down sharply from the Terry years, and turn-around time is reportedly longer. According to office publications, Gilmore issued 29 official opinions last year, compared with Terry's 66 in her final year in office and 127 the prior year.
Gilmore said steps are being taken to increase the output and shorten delays.
He also dismissed complaints that the office is being staffed with Republican attorneys. (His former campaign manager is personnel director.) ``There are some Republicans who've come in, and why shouldn't they?'' asked Gilmore, who has made much of his nonpartisan hirings of private attorneys to assist in state work.
Thus far, Gilmore seems to have kept his balance on the tightrope between his party's religious and more secular wings. Major tests will be his ability to do so for the next three years, as well as his success in humanizing his crime-fighting image.
Permitting himself a bit of exuberance, he notes, ``This is a great job.'' Quickly he moves on to describe the three subsets of why that is true: his work as an attorney, an administrator and a policy setter. ``For a lawyer this is just a great position to be in.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
GILMORE
KEYWORDS: GUBERNATORIAL RACE 1997 REPUBLICAN PARTY by CNB