THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 31, 1996 TAG: 9604010212
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ROBERT LITTLE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 246 lines
Democrats remember the meetings as a sort of brush with fate, the time they cradled the beast back when its teeth were still coming in.
It was 1988. Ken Stolle, a fledgling lawyer in his mid-30s, had developed the political itch, and he turned to the city's top Democrats for advice, inspiration, maybe opportunity.
``It seemed clear he already had somewhat of a base with Republicans,'' remembered Del. Glenn Croshaw, a Virginia Beach Democrat.
``I told him if he wanted to run for office, he'd have to move because we already had candidates where he lived,'' said Ken Geroe, the local Democratic chairman.
In hindsight, maybe they should have pampered him a bit more, some say. Or rubbed him out while no one would have noticed.
A novice six years ago, Stolle now is a Republican boss, a confidant of the governor who can manage a written legal opinion from the attorney general overnight.
Republicans command all but one of the legislative seats at the Beach today; they had two when Stolle was elected city chairman in 1990.
The former cop, who read law in his spare time while he busted drug pushers, is now a de facto leader of the Senate GOP. Democrats wouldn't even run against him last fall.
Now he's ready to make a bid for state attorney general. While not calling it an official announcement, he told Republicans at a mass meeting in Virginia Beach Saturday that he would seek the office in 1997.
Stolle's is a stature born more of grit, timing and chance than of pedigree and seniority, the traditional innards of political power.
But that makes him no less confounding to Virginia Democrats, for whom Stolle personifies the breakneck potency of a party teetering on statewide control. Locally, Democrats have learned to work with him - at least those who are left.
``I guess it's one of those things you wish you could have seen coming,'' said Geroe. ``I have to laugh about it sometimes.''
It's no joke. With just five years in the legislature, Stolle is the senior senator from Virginia's largest city. He's a Republican point man on anti-crime legislation and the channel used by Senate Democrats to reach the governor.
During this year's legislative session, the parties were at odds about selecting judges. Members called a special meeting of the Senate Courts Committee to work it out. Stolle came early, carrying the official Republican paperwork.
Sen. Richard L. Saslaw, head Democrat in the Senate, was ready to cooperate with the Republicans. ``Ken, what do you guys want?'' Saslaw asked, leaning across the dais to see Stolle to his left. Between the two sat Sen. Joseph Benedetti of Richmond, the Senate's designated Republican leader. Saslaw craned to look around him.
Asked about it later, Saslaw denied any tacit acknowledgement of Stolle's clout. But, he offered: ``I had questions, and I knew where to get them answered.''
Stolle's first whiff of real power came this year when Republicans scored half the Senate's 40 seats. As a senior senator in a heavily Republican district, he took control of the local legislative perks. He performed with the skill of a veteran back-roomer, and with no less partisan aplomb.
Take the first Republican judge appointed this year: Joe Canada, the former senator who once held Stolle's seat. Canada's wife, Sandy, raised money for Stolle's campaign, and is expected to again. When Stolle read law - the program that lets students take the bar exam without going to law school - he studied under Joe Canada.
That politics played a role in Canada's selection is something no one tries to hide. Stolle says Canada wasn't even the top choice, rather a better political fit. Croshaw - the Beach's lone Democratic legislator - agreed to support Canada after Stolle promised not to kick Democratic judges off the bench.
``I wanted a qualified Republican, and we got one,'' said Stolle. ``There are other political realities, but the outcome is what really matters.''
Less conspicuous is Stolle's hand in the expected opening for one of the Beach's four commissioners of accounts, historically among the most savory of political appointments. Circuit Court judges pick the commissioners, though the legislature typically holds sway. The top candidate for a spot expected to open in Virginia Beach next month: Ed Stolle, Ken Stolle's brother and law partner.
There wouldn't normally be a vacancy, but the Beach's Circuit Court judges decided this year to impose the same retirement rules on commissioners that judges follow. That will force out one commissioner who's above the age limit.
Stolle met with the judges several times, mostly to discuss two topics: He promised not to take away their jobs, and he recommended his brother Ed to fill the vacancy. He denies there's any connection.
``Maybe indirectly one could feel that there was some political pressure there, but not directly,'' Stolle said. ``I wouldn't be so presumptuous as to tell the judges who to select. If they decide not to appoint Ed, it's not going to affect anyone's position on the bench.''
An old campaign brochure of Stolle's criticizes his predecessor for his political patronage - helping one law partner get a judgeship and another to become a commissioner. Stolle admits he's doing essentially the same thing, but he's doing it with Republicans - a message, he says, that Democrats no longer own the ball.
``I'm willing to personally suffer the spillage of blood that I'm going to spill on that, to carry the message out there that the old scheme is no longer going on here,'' Stolle said last week. ``I think it's more important to send a message out there that the Republicans . . . play a role in the selection of the leaders of the judiciary of Virginia, and are not afraid to play that role.''
Even Stolle's best friends say his sudden surge into politics caught them off guard. None doubted he had the wits or the bull-headedness to pull it off, only that he would ever walk away from the cops-and-robbers business he so held high.
Police work was his life for so long, after all. He studied to be a policeman in college, then always sought the jobs with the most danger, the most glory. When he heard the Naval Reserve needed intelligence officers, he signed up. He resigned only to run for office.
Police work even introduced Stolle (which rhymes with ``holly'') to his wife, Debbie, who met the sandy-haired detective when she reported a stolen car. It looked like an insurance scam, Stolle remembers, and he considered her a suspect for fraud.
``She was innocent,'' Stolle smiles now. ``Lucky for me, I guess.''
He made his first felony arrest in 1976 when he and friend Wray Boswell were scouting the parking lot at Military Circle and somebody tried to sell them marijuana. Not only were they off duty, they also were out of their jurisdiction and hadn't even graduated the academy. ``He was always like that,'' Boswell said. ``Even on his day off, he'd go out looking for trouble.''
He often found some, walking the beat at the Oceanfront or working narcotics. Stolle was the kind of cop that his colleagues called gung-ho, and thugs on the streets called a punk. At least twice Stolle was sued for brutality, and always was exonerated, though some cases were settled out of court. He was hospitalized 13 times for broken bones and dislocated joints, and says he needs a dozen Advil a day to temper old back and neck injuries.
He never shot anyone, though he shot at a few people. He recounts killing a pit bull with a machine gun during a drug bust, ripping a few shots across its belly ``like a zipper.'' He still has the pictures.
Such a spectacular past made interesting campaign fare when Stolle ran for Senate in 1991, defeating Sen. Sonny Stallings. Dirt on most candidates is usually about voting records or tax bills or marriage troubles. The dirt on Stolle was that he once walked into a High's ice cream store and, without provocation, beat a man bloody with the butt of his revolver. He was cleared of the charge.
``I've never in my mind arrested an innocent person, and I have never used excessive force in an arrest,'' Stolle said. ``But when you're arresting robbers and rapists and murderers and drug dealers, sometimes you're going to use force.
``I don't apologize for it. In fact, I'm proud of it.''
Besides, Stolle was among the police force's most decorated officers when he left in 1987, with awards for ingenuity and bravery. He and Boswell once saved two attorneys who flipped a car into a ditch filled with water. One man had to be resuscitated. Again, Stolle and Boswell were off duty when it happened.
There's an easy explanation for all his scrapes, Stolle says, both the ones with criminals and the ones with the court system afterward: ``They don't put wimps in the SWAT team,'' he said. ``And they don't put wimps in narcotics.''
Nor in positions of power in Republican politics.
Early in this year's legislative session, in a cramped, windowless room, horseman Arnold Stansley asked for more time to open a track in New Kent County. Stolle saw the request as a broken promise.
He sat at the head of the table, with Stansley just inches away. He turned to Stansley and extended a finger toward the Ohioan's face. ``You said you needed 12 months last year, and we gave you 12 months,'' Stolle rumbled. ``Why are you coming back asking for more than that?'' By the end of the annual session, Stolle said he had what he wanted.
Every year while Stolle was a narcotics officer, the commonwealth's attorney would ask the police what new laws they should propose to the General Assembly. They always wrote up a list, and it always got nowhere. Sometimes the bills weren't even introduced.
It was partly that frustration that guided Stolle 15 years ago to the office of then-state Sen. A. Joe Canada Jr., a Republican introduced to him by a police chaplain. At the chaplain's request, Canada agreed to let Stolle read law out of his office. In 1983, Stolle passed the state bar exam. He practiced law some while still on the police force, but resigned in 1987 to make it a full-time career. He still represents the Fraternal Order of Police, and most cops involved in shootings or called for a disciplinary review.
He'd peaked as a police officer, Stolle said. He didn't want a desk job, and he'd been a sergeant long enough. And for all the instant gratification of police work, so rarely did it make any real difference, he thought. You had to be in politics for that. The decision was surprisingly simple.
His early role in politics was as bridge-builder. The Christian conservatives and moderates in Virginia Beach were at odds, and Stolle is largely credited with bringing them together.
Observers say that style is largely how Stolle survives - he walks and talks with the moderates, but also votes with the religious right. None of which troubles him. Stolle is among those lawmakers who will gladly vote what he thinks the voters want, even if he doesn't.
Sometimes, that leaves Republicans snarling, like when he votes against term limits or endorses Jim Miller over Oliver L. North. But his is generally a safe vote for Republicans, particularly when it comes to punishing lawbreakers.
On the wall of his Virginia Beach law office hangs a small white leaflet, framed in black. It's a bill to make transporting drugs into the state illegal, an idea Stolle pushed for years as a police officer. It was his first bill as a legislator.
Great art, it ain't. The words are barely readable, including Stolle's name at the top. But he has a clearer version down the hall, printed in the state law books.
``If you take a look at what I've done, there's probably a mixed bag of tricks there. And that might be why people think they don't know where I'm coming from or what to call me. But I've voted for every pro-life piece of legislation that's come before the General Assembly, and I'll continue to do that. I'm a fiscal conservative and always have been. Not to get into cliches, but I believe the government ought to keep its nose out of what we're doing and just provide for the safety of the public and make sure that the economy moves as well as it can.''
He endorsed George F. Allen's bid for governor early, helping secure the Fraternal Order of Police endorsement that gave Allen his first real boost in the polls. The two have stayed fast friends and close allies since then. When the governor vacations at the Beach, the kids stay at the Stolles'.
Even his initial entry into politics came at an opportune time, when there was much room in the Republican Party, and just as it vaulted to power.
``Politics is a matter of timing,'' Stolle said last week, in an interview at his Virginia Beach law office. ``If I had become chairman back in 1980, probably none of this stuff would ever have happened. The people weren't ready in Virginia Beach, the state wasn't ready for a Republican Party. And I didn't know any of that, it was just a matter of luck.'' MEMO: Staff writer David M. Poole contributed to this story.
ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
BILL TIERNAN/The Virginian-Pilot
Ken Stolle, center, once looked to the Beach's Democrats for advice.
Now, the Democrats look to him, a GOP power broker, for access and
approval.
Photo
BILL TIERNAN/The Virginian-Pilot
Ken Stolle, a Republican who's racked up only five years in the
General Assembly, now is the senior senator from Virginia's largest
city. The Democrats use him, for example, as their conduit to the
governor.
Graphic
KENNETH W. STOLLE
Born July 7, 1954, in Washington, D.C.
Grew up a Navy brat, living on both coasts and in Europe.
Graduated from Cox High School in Virginia Beach, and Berry
College in Rome, Ga., with a bachelor of science degree in
criminology.
Married his wife, Debbie, in 1982. They have three children:
Whitney, Ken Jr. and Ross.
Virginia Beach police officer from 1976 to 1987.
Passed Virginia bar exam in 1983.
Elected Virginia Beach Republican chairman, 1990.
Elected to state Senate in 1991, re-elected in 1995.
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