
DATE: Saturday, October 25, 1997            TAG: 9710250391

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LEDYARD KING, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: WILLIAMSBURG                      LENGTH:  113 lines

REFORM CANDIDATE DEBUTS IN GOVERNOR'S RACE SUE HARRIS DEBAUCHE PREACHES LESS GOVERNMENT TO NAACP CONFERENCE.

In her first widely watched appearance, Sue Harris DeBauche, the Virginia Reform Party candidate for governor, told delegates convening here for the state NAACP's annual conference that Virginians need to wrest control of their lives from a government that rules rather than responds.

``We need to get government out of our lives, and we need to make our own decisions,'' she said during a debate with Democratic nominee Donald S. Beyer Jr. The debate was sponsored by the Virginia chapter of the NAACP. ``We're supposed to be governing ourselves, and somehow it's gotten turned around. They're governing us.''

DeBauche talked about how she struggled as a single mother, found herself jobless at 50 and ran an in-home child care service to make ends meet.

Her message, short on specifics but long on personal example, seemed to connect with the 200 or so delegates who came to watch a debate that was supposed to feature Beyer and Republican James S. Gilmore III.

Gilmore bowed out of the event, saying he would only come if he did not have to debate Beyer. He felt he was burned at a Richmond debate earlier this month where Beyer accused him of being soft on crime. Beyer brought up 35 cases involving sex crimes against children and said Gilmore, a former Henrico County prosecutor, had agreed to accept light sentences for the offenders.

``He would very much like to go, but they refused separate appearances,'' Gilmore spokesman Reed Boatright said Friday morning. ``Jim has said he won't debate because he's not going to subject himself to further lies and scurrilous charges.''

Beyer seemed at home during the cordial debate. With polls showing about 70 percent of blacks statewide backing him, Beyer spoke of his support for racial preference in college admissions and his opposition to school vouchers and his votes that would give welfare recipients a chance to sue if their benefits are cut off. Gilmore has mentioned those votes in television ads designed to paint Beyer as an opponent to welfare reform.

His vote, Beyer said, was so that ``an older person on Medicare or a mother on welfare can challenge the decision made by a bureaucrat in Richmond,'' he told the receptive crowd who frequently applauded.

He didn't mention his opposition to racial quotas and, in response to a question, said that government should withhold food stamps ``on a case-by-case basis'' from the mother whose child refuses to go to school.

But it was DeBauche, the nominee of the party created from H. Ross Perot's failed presidential bid in 1992 and 1996, that drew the most curiosity.

Born and raised in Henry County, the 52-year-old Dillon's Fork grandmother works as a freelance business manager and accountant.

Her platform on running the state centers on the need for more ethical standards in government - and for much less government, if possible.

She supports an end to the practice of allowing state politicians to accept gifts from lobbyists. And she wants the state to enact a $1,000 cap on what any single contributor can give a candidate. Currently, there are no limits on individual or political action committee contributions.

She doesn't like either Gilmore's or Beyer's plan to give tax relief to car owners. Instead, she said, the entire tax system should be overhauled.

``We have people who live like kings. And we have people who can't afford to feed their children, who can't afford to go the dentist,'' she said. ``We need to change the system. We don't need to cut the welfare system first; we need to cut frivolous spending.''

Jerome Johnson, a Portsmouth delegate who backs Beyer, was impressed with DeBauche.

``If it wasn't a two-party system and she could have started earlier, both of them would have been in trouble,'' Johnson said. ``People are just sick of Republicans and Democrats. And both take blacks for granted.'' ILLUSTRATION: ABOUT THE CANDIDATES

Sue Harris DeBauche,

Reform Party

3809 Dillon's Fork Road

Fieldale, VA 24089

Telephone/FAX: 540-673-2577

e-mail: DBAUCHE digdat.com

Website: www.naxs.com/people/

mcgoats/homepage.htm

Family: Born August 15, 1945 in Dillon's Fork, Va., the daughter

of a carpenter and a housewife, she has four brothers.

Single and the mother of one daughter, April Amoreena and the

grandmother of two, Hayli, 4 and Ambrianna, 1.