THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 17, 1997 TAG: 9702170049
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARTIN WEIL, WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: FAIRFAX LENGTH: 71 lines
William L. Scott, 81, who began working for the federal government as a teen-ager and went on to represent Virginia as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate for a total of 12 years, died of a chest infection Friday at Fairfax Nursing Home.
He had Alzheimer's disease.
Scott, a lawyer who lived in the Fairfax area for 50 years, was a symbol of the rise of the Republican Party in Virginia and throughout the South. His upset victory in 1972 made him the first Republican to win a Senate seat from Virginia since Reconstruction.
He ran for the Senate after three terms in the House and at a time when, according to the Almanac of American Politics, ``no one else wanted the Republican nomination.''
But ``he thought he could do it,'' his son, William L. Scott Jr., said, ``and he wished to.''
In the end, he defeated incumbent William B. Spong Jr. of Portsmouth with 51 percent of the vote. A 1982 newspaper report said Sen. Scott regarded the victory as perhaps his finest achievement.
``Bill Scott's victory in 1972 helped build momentum for the party,'' former Virginia Gov. A. Linwood Holton Jr., a Republican, once told a reporter.
Scott did not run for re-election and left the Senate in 1979. After retirement, he spent a year practicing law with his two sons.
For part of his term in the Senate, he was burdened by having been labeled by New Times magazine and a Ralph Nader research group as one of the ``dumbest congressmen'' and one of the least effective members of congress.
Of those named, only Scott took public notice of the label, calling a press conference to deny it.
To a degree, his statements in a 1982 interview bore on his view of his effectiveness. ``We tried to serve our constituents,'' he said. ``Possibly I should have left some of that to the staff, but people want to talk to the officeholder. After all, your duty is to serve the public.''
Noting that both the House and the Senate had Democratic majorities when he served, he said: ``When you're in a minority, it doesn't encourage a person to attempt to get his ideas enacted. Most of the time, you're working in opposition to what the other party's trying to do.''
Scott was born in Williamsburg, one of five children of a locomotive engineer. When he was young, the family moved to West Virginia, and when he was 8 years old, his father died while saving passengers at a washed-out trestle.
After high school in St. Albans, W.Va., he began work in 1934 for the Government Printing Office.
He worked his way through George Washington University's law school and began an 18-year career as a Justice Department lawyer.
In 1961, he left the Justice Department for private practice, and five years later he got a chance to run for Congress.
The 8th District, which then stretched from the Washington suburbs to Richmond, was the province of Democrat Howard W. Smith. Smith, as chairman of the House Rules Committee, was a thorn in the side of liberal Democrats, and in the 1966 party primary he was defeated by George C. Rawlings Jr. In the general election, Scott ran against Rawlings and won in a close race.
Some commentators on politics have credited a then-unprecedented $200,000 television campaign blitz with a major role in the Scott campaign's 1972 Senate victory.
``Money didn't win the election,'' he said in 1982. ``Friends did. We had twice as many people working for us.''
In addition to his son, William Jr., survivors include his wife of 57 years, Inez Scott of Fairfax Station; a sister, Ava S. Dolin of Charles Town, W.Va.; a daughter, Gail S. Eldred of Yorktown; another son, Paul A. Scott; and five grandchildren.
KEYWORDS: DEATH OBITUARY