THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 31, 1996 TAG: 9601310489
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GUY FRIDDELL
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines
Sometimes the far-right heads of the Virginia Republican Party behave as if they have slipped their moorings, if not their minds, and are operating in New Jersey.
Evidence of this surfaced over the weekend in Richmond at the annual GOP retreat which Republicans call an Advance. At times, it is a retreat from reason and reality.
Just before the three-day session opened, GOP Chairman Patrick McSweeney told reporters there is a 95 percent chance that someone will try to block the open Republican primary on June 11 to select a candidate for the U.S. Senate.
McSweeney hopes some procedure could be set up to allow only those who declare themselves Republican to nominate the party's candidate. This would close the primary to Democrats.
The GOP hierarchy doesn't understand that Virginians relish their independent custom of jumping back and forth between parties, voting for one party's candidate in the spring and for the other's in fall. It is a practice as old as the mint julep.
An effort to have a Virginian at the polls identify himself (or herself) as a Republican or Democrat would be deemed an insult to the Virginian's honor, suh!
In olden days such a challenge might well escalate to become a call to the dueling ground at dawn. Seldom has there been a major election when voters have not switched parties midstream with abandon.
What prods the hierarchy on this mad course is U.S. Sen. John W. Warner, who dares depart now and then from the party line when he believes it conflicts with his oath to uphold the Constitution. In 1994 Warner declined to support Oliver L. North of Iran-Contra notoriety.
But Warner's occasional burst of independence endears him to many Democrats and Independents who would flock into the Republican primary to back him.
North had promised to remain neutral between Warner and his challenger, James C. Miller III; but at the closing prayer breakfast, without naming either candidate, he found a veiled ruse through which to endorse Miller.
He held up a fund-raising form letter which had been mailed to him by mistake by the Warner camp. It asked for 10 qualities in a senatorial candidate.
North ticked off 10 grievances that some of the far-right hold against Warner, ranging from his refusal to back Robert H. Bork for the U.S. Supreme Court to his support of the deployment of peace-keeping troops in Bosnia.
An ecstatic Miller declared: ``This is about as close to an endorsement as you can get!''
Warner took no notice of North's roguish dance of the veils, but his chief of staff, Susan Magill, said North ``is free to have his views, as are all Virginians. That's what's great about this country.''
Even the hierarchy should find that incontestable. by CNB