DATE: Monday, August 4, 1997                TAG: 9708040060

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY BILL SIZEMORE, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  140 lines

VOTER GUIDES EDUCATIONAL SERVICE OR POLITICAL TOOLS? CHRISTIAN COALITION SAYS GUIDES FOCUS ON IMPORTANT ISSUES. CRITICS SAY THEY DISTORT CANDIDATES' POSITIONS TO HELP OTHER CANDIDATES.

In 1991, Kenneth W. Stolle could do no wrong in the eyes of the Christian Coalition.

The Virginia Beach Republican had the conservative religious lobby's unqualified backing in his campaign to unseat state Sen. Moody E. ``Sonny'' Stallings Jr., the incumbent Democrat.

Stallings ``was positioning himself to run for attorney general,'' Ralph Reed, the coalition's executive director, told a gathering of lobbyists in 1994. ``None of us could take a chance on him being elected.''

The coalition was so committed to Stolle that it mass-mailed thousands of Stolle campaign letters, customized for various voter groups, directly out of its Chesapeake headquarters, according to a deposition given recently in a federal lawsuit by the coalition's former chief financial officer. The coalition says the local Republican committee paid for the mailing.

Fast forward to 1997.

Stolle, having won Stallings' Senate seat, was himself running for attorney general. But this time around, as far as the Christian Coalition was concerned, Stolle could do little right.

Based on thousands of voter guides distributed in Virginia churches the Sunday before the June 10 Republican primary, voters might well have rated Stolle a poor third behind state Sen. Mark L. Earley of Chesapeake, the eventual winner, and Jerry W. Kilgore, a former secretary of public safety, on 10 issues selected by the coalition for their importance to evangelical Christians.

And that's just where Stolle finished in the election: a poor third.

The Stolle case offers an unusual look at voter guides, one of the coalition's primary means of exerting its influence and a flashpoint in the debate over whether it is what it says it is.

The coalition says it is a nonpartisan social welfare organization that uses voter guides to educate voters about where candidates stand on issues it deems important.

Its critics say it is a hard-nosed political machine that uses voter guides to distort and manipulate candidates' positions to enhance the election prospects of specific candidates - almost always conservative Republicans.

The debate lies at the core of a lawsuit pending against the coalition, brought by the Federal Election Commission. The FEC alleges in the suit, among other things, that the voter guides amount to in-kind campaign contributions, which the coalition, as a corporation, is not allowed to make in federal races.

Democrats have been complaining about the guides for years. But in this spring's intraparty battle in Virginia, the complaints came from a conservative Republican who had enjoyed the coalition's blessing in the past.

``There were some problems with this voter guide,'' Stolle said in a recent interview, branding the guide ``inaccurate and misleading.''

Based on his experience in this year's primary, Stolle has joined the ranks of those who believe the coalition's voter guides are tailored to achieve a specific electoral result.

``Clearly there is an effort to try and direct the voters in one direction or another,'' he said.

Stolle declined to speculate on what may have turned the coalition against him.

Arne Owens, a coalition spokesman, denied that the guide was designed to hurt Stolle.

Stolle's treatment by the coalition exposed a rift in the normally unified ranks of religious conservatives.

``We believe this voter's guide falls short of . . . an accurate presentation of where Ken Stolle stands on these important issues,'' Del. Robert F. McDonnell, R-Virginia Beach, and David M. Hummel, 2nd District Republican chairman, said in a joint letter sent to about 600 evangelical activists shortly before the election. McDonnell and Hummel have close ties to the Christian Coalition and supported Stolle in this spring's campaign.

Larry Sabato, a government professor at the University of Virginia and co-author of ``Dirty Little Secrets,'' a 1996 book that accused the coalition of designing its voter guides to suit its own partisan ends, offers an even blunter assessment.

``They did a number on Stolle,'' Sabato said in an interview. ``They did what they usually do. They totally tilted this voter guide to make Stolle look as bad as possible. They manipulated it.''

``They went out of their way to isolate Stolle into positions unpopular with Christian Coalition sympathizers,'' Sabato said. ``You could just as easily, if you wanted to help him, have designed the categories very differently. . . . If you were to read this voter guide, you'd assume that the man was a flaming liberal.''

The guide was like those the coalition distributes by the millions in campaigns throughout the country: a small card on which 10 selected issues were capsulized in simple, three- to eight-word phrases: ``Riverboat Casino Gambling,'' ``Repealing the State Lottery'' and the like.

The candidates' position on each issue was characterized in a single word: ``Supports,'' ``Opposes'' or ``Unclear.''

``Our voter guides make an attempt to provide voters the ground truth of where the candidates stand on the issues,'' Owens, the coalition spokesman, said in an interview. ``It may not always be what the candidates would like to see.''

On six of the 10 issues, Earley and Kilgore were portrayed as taking one position and Stolle was portrayed as taking the opposite or an ``unclear'' position.

The guides are intended to highlight the differences among the candidates, Owens said, adding that sometimes those differences are small.

Case in point: The first issue on the Virginia guide was ``Prohibit Abortion (Except for Life of the Mother).'' Earley and Kilgore were listed as supporting that position; Stolle was described as opposing it.

The difference was actually more subtle than that. The subtlety was apparent only in a footnote, which explained, in small print at the bottom of the guide, that Stolle, too, would prohibit abortion. The difference: He would allow exceptions in cases of rape and incest as well as the life of the mother.

The Stolle campaign was perhaps most angered by the guide's treatment of off-track betting parlors. Earley and Kilgore were listed as opposing them, Stolle as supporting them.

``I'm the only legislator in Virginia who's introduced bills three years in a row to do away with off-track betting parlors or restrict them,'' Stolle said. ``I'm the one who's led the battle against off-track betting parlors.''

Stolle's legislation, passed by the General Assembly, requires that off-track betting parlors be shut down if the Colonial Downs horse racing track now under construction in New Kent County doesn't open on time.

The issue never was mentioned on the questionnaire that the coalition sent to the candidates, Stolle said.

So how did the coalition determine that he supports betting parlors?

It was explained in another footnote: ``Ken Stolle voted for HB 75 on Feb. 24, 1992, which would allow parimutuel betting at off-track facilities in Virginia.''

If a vigilant voter had taken the trouble to check that citation, even more confusion would have resulted. The bill cited in the footnote, HB 75, had nothing to do with off-track betting. It was an innocuous charter change for the town of Buena Vista, Va.

When questioned by The Virginian-Pilot last week about the discrepancy, spokesman Owens said the footnote should have referred to another 1992 measure, HB 1175, which authorized and regulated parimutuel wagering at licensed racetracks and satellite facilities.

He attributed the problem to a typographical error. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

Kenneth W. Stolle

Voter Guide... KEYWORDS: VOTER GUIDE CHRISTIAN COALITION

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu