THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, February 27, 1996 TAG: 9602270289
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MCLEAN, VA. LENGTH: Long : 131 lines
He is summoning working-class Americans, the machinists and tool-makers and assembly-line workers whose jobs seem to be disappearing every day, to become ``peasants with pitchforks'' in a revolution against big government and big business.
The nation's elites are ``in a terminal panic'' at the thought he might grab the Republican presidential nomination, Patrick J. Buchanan told cheering audiences from New Hampshire to Arizona last week. They are ``riding into the castle and pulling up the drawbridge,'' he has said.
But here, hard by the Potomac River in a community of colonial homes - some large enough to invite comparison to castles - Buchanan lives, works, plays and prays among the corporate executives, lobbyists and bureaucrats he's targeted as America's enemies.
And the peasants are nowhere in sight.
For 17 years, the Republican rebel and current red-hot challenger for his party's soul has lived in this bedroom community - one of the nation's most prosperous - in what aides describe as a comfortable, two-story home.
Buchanan's neighbors include Democratic stalwarts like Sens. Ted Kennedy and Chuck Robb and a newly minted Republican who many here expected also would be running for president this year: Colin F. Powell.
Big government and its corporate attendants are close by, too. The CIA and the Federal Highway Administration have their headquarters on huge, rolling tracts near Buchanan's house. A couple of miles to the southwest, at Tysons Corner, a growing forest of office towers bears the logos of firms like TRW and Rockwell.
``It's delightful. It's still a small town in a way, but probably a lot of important people live here,'' said Mary Connery, a 34-year McLean resident who sometimes sees Buchanan and his wife, Shelley, among the Sunday morning worshipers at St. Luke's Catholic Church.
Connery came to McLean when it was among Washington's outermost suburbs, a community of farms broken up by new subdivisions. She and her husband moved into one of the last tract homes built in their area, just west of the Arlington line.
The subdivisions there feature three-bedroom ranchers, colonials and tri-levels that are comfortable but not distinctive and date to the 1950s. To the west and north, where McLean has grown and Buchanan lives, are larger, newer, custom-built homes, many priced at more than $1 million and situated on rolling lots of two to five acres.
Developer Dwight Schar, who built many of those expensive homes, says the area's location has made it a magnet for bankers, lawyers, members of Congress and top government officials. Much of McLean lies inside the Capital Beltway, so downtown Washington and National Airport are less than 10 miles to the east; the Tysons Corner shopping complex, with exclusive stores like Saks and Tiffany's, is right next door; and Dulles Airport is about 12 miles west.
Jerry Halpin, who developed much of Tysons and still owns about one-third of the land there, said he and his partners knew by the time their development began taking shape in the early 1970s that they were sitting on a boom.
``One of the most motivating forces for locating big companies is where the CEO's wife wants to move,'' Halpin said. The dramatic growth of the federal government after World War II brought those firms to the Washington area, and as their executives looked for places to settle they were naturally drawn to McLean, with its large, wooded lots, convenient location, and high-quality public schools.
The area ``has been a haven for a lot of highly placed Washington officials who enjoy the simple commute'' over Chain Bridge, agreed Bruce Kriviskey, who heads a ``heritage resources office'' for Fairfax County.
McLean is ``not like an Alexandria, or a Richmond or even Norfolk,'' with their neighborhoods of Civil War-era or older homes and shops and an established downtown, Kriviskey observed. Instead, McLean is built around a crossroads just east of the Capitol Beltway, where a couple of modest-looking strip shopping centers were developed in the 1950s.
At least one of those centers, Salona Village, continues to thrive, surrounded now by a collection of banks, small restaurants, gas stations, hardware stores, and barbershops that give it a feel not unlike that of Wards Corner or older portions of Great Bridge.
But there are signs that this area is different too. One of Salona Village's tenants has hung a large sign out front proclaiming itself an ``Espresso Bar.'' And just down the street is a fur salon and a jewelry store called ``Puttin' on the Glitz.''
Buchanan's national campaign headquarters also is nearby, crammed into a tiny-but-soon-to-expand suite of offices in a small building on Elm Street, a block from the post office. It was staffed Friday by a couple dozen well-scrubbed young people, who struggled to manage the flood of phone calls and offers of help sparked by their man's victory in the New Hampshire primary.
The office is unassuming and unmarked except for a small listing in the building's lobby. Developer Schar, who lives in and has done business around McLean for 20 years, admitted Friday that he didn't even know Buchanan's revolution was headquartered in his back yard.
A Republican himself, Schar suggested that Buchanan's message of economic nationalism and social conservatism probably isn't playing well among their neighbors. Others however, aren't so sure.
``A lot of people here work for large corporations and are constantly being faced with downsizing,'' said Rosemary Ryan, a 15-year resident. ``And there is a worry about that - in this community like any other.''
Ryan, who works in the office of Stuart Mendelsohn, the area's representative on the Fairfax Board of Supervisors, said the area's wealth and its collection of famous and powerful residents has given McLean ``sort of a panache'' that isn't entirely deserved.
``Actually there are several McLeans,'' she argued. Houses in her neighborhood, one of McLean's older sections, are priced at around $200,000, ``which in the Washington market is very modest,'' she said, and the community is a multinational mix that defies stereotypes of white suburbia.
There are a lot of military families, and ``second-tier foreign diplomats,'' Ryan said, who've brought their families into the area to take advantage of the good schools. At McLean High, where Ryan's children attend classes and she's active as a volunteer, parents speak 46 languages, she said.
``It's very diverse, and I like that,'' Ryan said. MEMO: McLEAN, VA
Population: 60,179. (1993 estimate)
Median household income: $65,000 (1991 estimate)
Housing prices: $400,000 to $1 million-plus for new single family
homes, $350,000 to $700,000 for new townhomes; $200,000 to $1
million-plus for single family home resales, (according to a handbook
from the Mclean Chamber of Commerce.
Unemployment rate: 3.3 percent (for all of Fairfax Co.)
ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Pat Buchanan lives among those he targets as U.S. foes.
ASSOCIATED PRESS photo
Republican presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan meets in
December with advisers at home in McLean, Va. - one of the nation's
most prosperous localities and a magnet to the nation's political
power brokers. At right is his sister, Bay, his campaign manager.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE CANDIDATE by CNB