DATE: Tuesday, September 2, 1997            TAG: 9708290013

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B9   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion 

SOURCE: Perry Morgan 

                                            LENGTH:   70 lines

GILMORE'S "ME-TOO" MAY PAY DIVIDENDSTHE QUESTION POSED BY THE GUBERNATORIAL CAMPAIGN IS HOW STATE GOVERNMENT IS TOCONDUCT ITSELF AND WHETHER GILMORE CAN STAND THE HEAT FROM IMMODERATE MEMBERS OF HIS OWN PARTY.

Jim Gilmore, the Republican candidate for governor, has decided to distance himself from the environmental record of the Allen administration.

Does the Democrat, Don Beyer, say he wouldn't retain the services of Natural Resources Secretary Becky Norton Dunlop? Well, come to think of it, says Gilmore, he wouldn't either. Moreover, his camp explicitly signals embarrassment over Dunlop's tendency to preen her ideological plumage.

Sensing the calculation of Gilmore's maneuver, Dunlop accuses him of attacking her integrity and of disloyalty to Governor Allen and his team. A gun-rights group weighs in, spotting a Gilmore ``drift to the left'' and advising him to watch it. A newspaper ridicules him as a pantywaist. But Gilmore doubtless had reckoned in advance the dangers - and benefits - involved in me-tooing Beyer on the environment, and went ahead anyway. He means to reduce Beyer's lead in Northern Virginia.

For his part, Governor Allen terms the dust-up overblown and ``not much of an issue.'' He's right regarding Dunlop's future in Richmond; she's been intending to leave. What she resents is Gilmore stepping forward to show her the door. But in a larger sense, the environment always is a significant issue in a state where pollution afflicts great rivers and the Chesapeake Bay.

The question posed by the gubernatorial campaign is how state government is to conduct itself and whether Gilmore can stand the heat from immoderate members of his own party who, naturally enough, want to design his strategies and call his plays. These are the sort of folks who converted Bob Dole from pay-the-bills conservatism to the gospel of a balanced budget guaranteed by big tax cuts.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch gives Gilmore a volley of grape. Passing over his appointment of a campaign task force to consider the import of backfires and foul-ups in the Department of Environmental Quality, the newspaper presents the Republican candidate as a nerd or, perhaps, a dweeb: ``He reminds even some Republicans of the kid who would bring his sister's underwear to school if it would help him get elected hall monitor.''

Well! as George Will is wont to say, Well! Considering such hostility on the Republican right, is it any wonder that Gilmore is prospecting for votes in the middle?

What is one to make of Dunlop? Describing her as ``the worst nightmare of leftist environmentalists,'' the Times-Dispatch wants to know what she's done that ``Gilmore wants to make clear his administration would disavow?''

Albeit with some fuzziness, the Gilmore camp has spoken to that point. James C. Wheat III, a Richmond financier and a member of the Gilmore task force, said ``Becky (Dunlop) is well thought of within the administration, but her style publicly at times has not been productive. Jim (Gilmore) asked us to be on this task force so that we can help identify somebody who can work with environmentalists.''

Gilmore himself said that he will ``assemble a leadership team in the Natural Resources secretariat that will help me to reach out to all Virginians who are committed to conservation. . . . Instead of emphasizing areas of disagreement, I will seek to find common ground.''

The point is decipherable. Dunlop fails as a leader. She is divisive, devoted more to ideological notions than to practical problem-solving. She stirs up more trouble than she can settle. The environment as a camp for political re-education has been overused. It's time to turn the page.

Gilmore's move already has offered voters fascinating insights into Republican politics. His seeming intent to chart his own course is more important than hurt feelings among officeholders unsummoned for curtain calls.Gilmore's environmental ``me-too'' may pay dividends MEMO: Mr. Morgan is a former publisher of The Virginian-Pilot.

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