THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, November 6, 1995 TAG: 9511040030
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines
Everyone should get out and vote tomorrow, but they shouldn't have to wear waders on the way to the polls.
This is one of the most important elections in Virginia's history, but it has also turned into one of the mud-slingingest. Real issues are at stake, different visions of Virginia's future and the role of government. But too many candidates have devoted their efforts to personal attacks, distortions of their opponents' records, and to simply lying.
The candidates who have come to discuss their views with The Virginian-Pilot's editorial board have generally seemed to be decent, thoughtful, concerned citizens, but you'd never know it from the disgraceful attack ads with which some have polluted the commonwealth's airwaves and mailboxes. Perhaps it's harder to smear an opponent in person than by means of TV, radio and direct mail.
In fact, there are very few extremists in a generally conservative, generally cautious state, but that hasn't stopped some candidates from pretending their opponents are ogres who favor ruinous taxation, profligate government spending, assaults on individual liberty, the coddling of criminals, the destruction of free enterprise, the trashing of the environment and the end of civilization as we know it. All that huffing and puffing is the real extremism.
A popular trick used against incumbents is to find some obscure vote against some minor amendment that might have denied a school district or a police department a dollar. That's enough to permit the candidate to be characterized as an enemy of schools or a friend of rapists.
You'd think it would turn the stomachs of candidates to sink so low. But as more outside money and expertise flow into local races, the techniques of negative campaigning become the standard. The ``experts'' say negative campaigning works, so the ambitious candidate mouths the half-truth sound bite, tapes the dishonest attack ad, prints the phony-comparison flyer, hands out the distorted voting-record brochure.
The victim of the attack would be a fool not to answer, and he's got his own experts in gutter fighting to do it for him. Often the biggest load of mud is saved for last - too late to answer or refute. It's a sickening business that turns a serious civic responsibility into a squalid swim in a sewer. For every voter these tactics turn out, three must be turned off. But if decent people refuse to vote in sleazy elections, that just means we'll wind up governed by sleazy people elected by sleazy people. That's no solution.
The only hope is for voters to remain vigilant, to greet outlandish claims with skepticism, to use their common sense rather than fall for appeals to prejudice and emotion. Voters must go to the polls and then refuse to reward demagogues with their votes. by CNB