THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 23, 1995 TAG: 9510230033
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: Election '95
SOURCE: BY DAVID M. POOLE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WARSAW LENGTH: Long : 233 lines
The Northern Neck is such an isolated and insular place that Del. W. Tayloe Murphy Jr. would never bring in an outsider to campaign for him.
``Tayloe has always thought people would resent it if someone came in here and told them how to vote,'' explained Helen Murphy, the delegate's wife.
The irony for Murphy this fall is that an interloper is giving him fits. The outsider is Gov. George F. Allen, who is featured in direct-mail pamphlets that urge Northern Neck residents to question Murphy's party loyalty (Democrat) and his enthusiasm for the Republican chief executive (lukewarm).
``My opponent is asking voters to choose between me and the Republican Party. I think some people are beginning to see it that way,'' laments Murphy, a 14-year veteran of the House of Delegates known for his genteel drawl and penchant for bow ties.
Murphy's concern in a region once considered impervious to outside influence is a testament to the power of Republican efforts to transform local General Assembly elections into a statewide referendum on Allen's anti-government agenda.
There will be no place to hide from Allen in the final weeks before Election Day, as various GOP groups unleash more than $1 million worth of direct mail, radio commercials and television ads.
Republicans are counting on Allen's charisma and momentum from the GOP takeover of Congress to generate an urgency for change in the General Assembly.
``People in Virginia have seen what happened in Congress and, finally, they are realizing the same thing can happen here,'' said Chris Nolen, who directs an Allen-led political action committee, Campaign for Honest Change.
Democrats who control the Assembly by the slimmest of margins are bracing for the fight of their lives, hoping that Virginia voters who bucked the nationwide GOP landslide in congressional races last year will once again exercise independent judgment.
Lt. Gov. Donald P. Beyer Jr., a Democrat, said some of the changes in Washington are hardly an endorsement for giving Republicans a free hand in Richmond. ``Virginians now know what Newt Gingrich means: slashing Medicare, slashing jobs all over the place,'' he said.
Beyer also argued that GOP efforts to create a statewide referendum flies in the face of tradition that the 140 separate Assembly races turn on issues and personalities unique to each district.
``All politics is local,'' he said.
With its isolated geography and peculiar history, the Northern Neck is perhaps the ultimate test of the Republican strategy of imposing a statewide message on local races.
Jutting into the Chesapeake Bay, the Northern Neck is a peninsula squeezed between the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers. The area was settled by loyalists to King Charles II of England and operated for much of its early history as a fiefdom to Lord Fairfax.
Here, many people live on land held by their families for generations. It's a place where most jobs still spring from the soil and the water.
Tayloe Murphy, 63, has the impeccable manners and gentle accent of someone bred to represent the region in the House of Delegates.
``There is a gentility to the people in the Northern Neck,'' he said, sitting on a sofa beneath a 17th century Italian painting that hangs in his law office. ``They may disagree with you, but they are never rude.''
His estate, King Copsico Farm, overlooks the wide Potomac. His family has been in the area for centuries. When Murphy married a Richmonder, he became the first member of his family to marry outside the Northern Neck since the early 1800s.
Elected in 1981, Murphy occupies the seat once held by his father. He has never faced a serious test.
Still, Republicans say they have more than a fighting chance to capture the 99th House District, which includes the counties of Northumberland, Lancaster, Westmoreland, King George and Richmond.
They note that the region - which went big for Allen two years go - has undergone some subtle changes in the past decade. Retirees drawn to the Chesapeake Bay have steadily moved into waterfront developments with made-up names like Jetty's Reach and Harbour Pointe. The hamlet of Kilmarnock now has no fewer than three brokerage houses vying for these newcomers' accounts. The northern end of the district is growing as well, with suburbanites sprawling out of Fredericksburg.
The Republican candidate, Henry Lane Hull, is a proven vote getter in the southern end of the district.
``Henry Lane's going to take it, or else he's gonna come so damn close that he'll wish he had,'' predicted S. Vance Wilkins Jr., the House Majority Leader from Amherst County.
Hull, 53, moved to the area a decade ago, set up an antiques business in the crossroads of Wicomico Church and, in 1991, won a seat on the Northumberland County Board of Supervisors. The former bachelor has since married and fathered a son. His wife, 29, is expecting another child.
A devout Catholic who has traveled the world doing charity work, Hull has the towering presence and the deliberate movements of a parish priest.
He sounds like a man of firm convictions. When told that some Northumberland residents interviewed outside a grocery store criticized his votes on funding for local schools, Hull declared: ``You can come to Northumberland County and stand outside Food Lion all day . . . and everyone will tell you - no matter which side they're on - that I have done what I said I would do.''
One of the first issues in the campaign was Hull's claim that his family has lived in the Northern Neck for five generations.
``That's what he says,'' Helen Murphy huffs.
This summer, Murphy authorized a telephone poll asking, among other things,
whether voters cared if Hull was a relative newcomer. ``During that time I made 127 round trips to the Northern Neck - I can give
you the dates of every one,'' he said.
On the campaign trail, Hull sticks close to the script that the Republican
Party has provided to candidates across Virginia. He wants to support Gov.
Allen's plan to return lottery money to localities, build prisons for violent
criminals and notify parents whose daughters seek abortions.
``More or less the same issues that are working all over the state,''
explained Chad Clark, Hull's campaign manager. ``I don't see too many regional
issues.''
Hull portrays Murphy as a partisan Democrat who thwarts Allen at every
opportunity. A GOP-financed mailer that arrived in mailboxes this month drove
home the same theme. It credited the ``liberal'' Murphy with a variety of
deeds, including getting tough on small business and going soft on child
molesters.
``The Record is Clear,'' the flier read, ``Tayloe Murphy Votes Against Our
Values.''
Murphy called the flier an outrage and a clear distortion of his record.
``I don't know where else I would have learned my values because I've lived
here all my life,'' Murphy said, his tone more sad than angry.
The basis for the GOP claim that Murphy is a liberal is a handful of
selected votes. A different portrait of Murphy emerges from a Virginian-Pilot
analysis of the 50 most-partisan votes during the General Assembly session
this year. Murphy broke with his party 12 times, making him the second-most
independent Democrat in the House.
Murphy is confident the ``liberal'' label won't stick with Northern Neck
natives. But he is less confident about newcomers who don't know him as well.
The Republican attacks on Murphy have met with mixed results, according to
a very unscientific sampling of residents outside the Winn-Dixie in Kilmarnock
one afternoon last week.
``Mr. Murphy is pretty liberal all the way around,'' said Barbara
Robertson, a 27-year-old mother who home-schools her children. ``I like Allen,
and I think Henry Lane Hull is right with him on most of the major issues.''
Leroy Hughes, a local banker, said he found it hard to connect `Murphy' and
`liberal' in the same sentence.
``Tayloe Murphy's been representing this area for a long time. I'm sticking
with him. I don't see any reason to change,'' Hughes said.
Confident that the generic GOP message will ring hollow in Northern Neck,
Murphy is focusing on local concerns like the Chesapeake Bay Preservation
Act.
Murphy has dedicated his legislative career to the preservation act,
believing that keeping the Bay free of pollution is vital to the Northern
Neck's economy.
Hull said he would want the Assembly to review the act to remove
regulations that can create hardships for real estate developers and farmers.
But Murphy said that without the regulations the state would be inviting
nothing more than ``voluntary noncompliance.''
``It doesn't make any difference if you are a waterman or a new arrival, we
have the same interest in protecting this resource,'' Murphy said.
As for Allen, Murphy wondered aloud how a governor who during the campaign
has taken such an interest in the Northern Neck could have failed to mention
the area's seafood industry in a recent statewide economic strategy plan.
``If you leave out the seafood industry, we're dead in the water,'' Murphy
said.
MEMO: CAMPAIGNS TO WATCH
Some other House of Delegates races to watch:
CENTRAL VIRGINIA - 56th District
V. Earl Dickinson of Louisa County is next in line to become chairman
of the House Appropriations Committee, but the 70-year-old Democrat must
survive the re-election fight of his life. Two years ago, he won by 520
votes against a woman with no real ties to a district that stretches
from the suburbs of Richmond to the outskirts of Charlottesville. This
year his opponent is Fletcher W. Harkrader III, a lawyer with deep roots
in the community. This one could be up in the air until the last
precinct is tallied. A must win for Republicans if the expect to gain a
House majority.
SOUTHWEST VIRGINIA - 5th District
Republican Barnes Lee Kidd, a welder from Tazewell County, won this
traditionally Democratic seat two years ago in what may have been a
fluke. Kidd's re-election campaign was so unorganized this summer that
the Republican Party took control of his polling and direct mail. The
Democratic challenger is John H. Tate Jr., a Marion attorney. Turnout
could be the key, and a local sheriff's race will get a bunch of people
to the polls in GOP-leaning Smyth County. Democrats are banking on a
win.
NORTHERN VIRGINIA - 39th District
Democrats need to hold onto this Fairfax County seat after the
retirement of Democrat Alan E. Mayer. The smart money is on Vivian E.
Watts, a Democrat who used to occupy the seat and, from 1986-1990,
served as secretary for transportation and public safety under Gov.
Gerald L. Baliles. But keep your eye on Tim Hugo, a 32-year-old
conservative Republican who has outspent Watts and has run a textbook
campaign. A third candidate, independent C.W. Levy, could scramble
things. Hugo is considered the GOP's best shot in strategically
important Northern Virginia.
RICHMOND - 70th District
Republicans will be watching returns here to gauge their strategy of
targeting five black-majority districts, which always have been
unquestioned Democratic turf. Democrat Dwight C. Jones, dogged by
accusations that he may live outside the district, faces a three-way
race. Republican M.E. Hall Jr. raised $33,910 with the help of GOP
officials around the state. Independent Mamie Lee Moore, who is black,
could drain votes away from Jones. It will be a long night for Democrats
if Jones goes down.
THE ROANOKE VALLEY - 14th District
Republicans would like nothing more than to dethrone House Majority
Leader C. Richard Cranwell of Vinton, who applied the guillotine to Gov.
Allen's legislative agenda earlier this year. But Republicans could not
recruit a candidate, so local GOP activist Trixie Averill put her name
on the ballot. It's not clear whether Averill - who at one point in the
campaign broke out in the ``Mickey Mouse Club Song'' - has convinced
voters that she is a serious alternative to the region's most powerful
politician.
ILLUSTRATION: [Color] PHOTOS BY CHRISTOPHER REDDICK/
The Virginian-Pilot
You can come to Northumberland County and stand outside Food Lion
all day . . . and everyone will tell you - no matter which side
they're on - that I have done what I said I would do,'' says Henry
Lane Hull, a member of the county's Board of Supervisors, with his
wife and son.
``My opponent is asking voters to chose between me and the
Republican Party. I think some people are beginning to see it that
way,'' laments Tayloe Murphy, a 14-year veteran of the House of
Delegates known for his genteel drawl and penchant for bow ties.
KEYWORDS: PROFILES CANDIDATES GENERAL ASSEMBLY RACE
by CNB