THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 28, 1996 TAG: 9604270026
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Keith Monroe
LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines
I feel as though I've just spent a month in one of those WPA murals that used to adorn train stations and post offices in the 1930s.
In them, you'd find the boilermaker, the dentist, the sailor and the barber, a whole cross section of the country with their sleeves rolled up making America work.
That's the way weeks of looking at candidates for office in five cities has affected me. Like a Thomas Hart Benton painting or a Carl Sandburg poem - The People, Yes.
We live in an age of easy cynicism, but the most striking thing about more than 100 candidates seeking dozens of offices was their evident sincerity. Many, perhaps most, of them aren't running to get ahead or get their names in the paper, to satisfy their ego or put money in their purse.
They say, convincingly, they are running because they care about the city they live in or the school system their children attend. Many are worried about the status quo and think they could do a better job if entrusted with the public's business.
Some of the candidates that the members of the editorial board have met have been earnest, others angry. A few appeared to be pursuing public office to settle a personal score or advance a private agenda. Some might prove to be loose cannons if elected. Others seemed unready for prime time, lacking answers to fairly obvious questions. A couple admitted they'd thrown themselves into the fray without realizing all it would entail.
But the great majority of the candidates were people of evident good sense without conspicuous vanity. They were people not unlike our neighbors or ourselves. But instead of getting up every morning and muttering about the School Board or City Council, they got up one morning and resolved to fix it personally.
The old TV show used to say, there are 8 million stories in the Naked City. Meeting the candidates was a reminder that there are a million stories in South Hampton Roads, no two alike.
Spend too much time watching TV and you can come to believe Americans are a single, blow-dried, air-headed homogenous breed. But it isn't so. We are wonderfully diverse and wildly individual. Consider a few of the candidates we got a chance to meet.
Algie Howell is a barber and Norfolk booster who deplores racial division in public life. He speaks with authority as a veteran of the civil-rights movement and a man who pioneered the teaching of race relations for the Navy.
Chesapeake's Bill Pierce is a retired Army expert in management analysis. He's a large man, ruddy, bald and bearded, who wants to apply principles of work simplification and manpower organization to make government more efficient.
Elizabeth Daniels of Portsmouth is a dentist and one-time associate dean of a dental school. She's a quiet woman with a firm, no-nonsense manner who leaves little doubt she could whip a curriculum into shape without the aid of novocaine.
In Virginia Beach, veterinarian Pedro Rodriguez says he never wore shoes until he went to school and that education saved him from a life of poverty. He wants to serve on the School Board. So do Les Powell, a state trooper, and Steven Emmanuel, a philosophy professor.
In Chesapeake, candidate Thomas Mercer is a Methodist pastor. In Norfolk, Dan Montague is a retired boilermaker who thinks the city needs the battleship Missouri, a less extravagantly rewarded staff and a monorail.
Those are just a few of the colorful, interesting, varied individuals running for office. It's like one of those lists out of Walt Whitman of sea captains and mechanics, coppers and smiths and coachmen.
Not all of these candidates will be elected. Some probably aren't the best person in the race for the job. But the fact that so many people, representing such a broad cross section of Hampton Roads are interested in serving their cities says something good about them and about this country. Even in a time of disenchantment with politicians, suspicion of government and distrust of each other, the grass-roots is producing citizens who care. MEMO: Mr. Monroe is editor of the editorial page of The Virginian-Pilot.
by CNB