Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 21, 1990 TAG: 9004210121
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARGIE FISHER RICHMOND BUREAU
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The Beyers quickly decided to abandon their original destination, the DLC's closed-to-the-press banquet, and go out and play with the reporters instead.
When the crowd ended up at a restaurant that does not take credit cards, Beyer - a millionaire automobile dealer - had to borrow $20 from one of the reporters to pay his share of the bill. (He repaid the loan the next morning.)
And later, when some in the group accidentally wandered into a Bourbon Street pub where a striptease performance was beginning, there was the predictable good-natured ribbing about whether the lieutenant governor had to drag the reporters out of there or whether they had to drag him out.
The night on the town exemplified the relaxed, down-to-earth style that has made the Beyers one of the most likable couples on the Virginia political scene.
And it's not surprising that they seem particularly comfortable with journalists, because Megan Beyer is herself a television reporter.
She met her husband five years ago on an assignment to interview him. At the time, she was covering politics for a Fairfax cable station; he was just beginning to move about on the fringes of politics as a Northern Virginia fund-raiser for then-Attorney General Gerald Baliles' campaign for governor.
What they would not have guessed then was that he would become a rising star in the state Democratic Party and a potential gubernatorial candidate - and that she, as a politician's wife, would become as frequent an interviewee as she is an interviewer.
Megan Beyer, 32, stopped covering politics to avoid any conflict of interest after she and Don Beyer were married in September 1987 and he decided to run for statewide office.
She hinted during a recent interview that she figured she would be returning to the political beat eventually, because it was so widely assumed then that Beyer could not even win the nomination for lieutenant governor, much less the general election.
He was, after all, a political neophyte and virtually unknown outside Northern Virginia. His opponent for the Democratic nomination was state Sen. Richard Saslaw of Springfield, who had much of the party's establishment behind him.
And the Republicans were set to run Sen. Eddy Dalton of Henrico County, widow of popular former Gov. John Dalton and considered a shoo-in for election.
Megan said she and other members of Don's family - including his father, who would later put more than $1 million into his son's campaign - all viewed his political ambitions with some amusement. Megan, with a bubbly laugh that punctuates her conversations, said, "I just said `fine, have a good time.' "
Once he won the nomination, however, she quit work to campaign for her husband. Although published polls consistently predicted a Dalton victory, internal polling for Beyer showed steady slippage in Dalton's support and equally steady gains for him. When it became clear that an upset was possible, Megan said her excitement was almost unbearable.
By then, she had completely crossed over from being objective political reporter to consummate political helpmate.
She remembers one day on the campaign trail when a radio reporter who had just interviewed Don asked him for his autograph. "As a reporter, I wanted to say, `Have some self-respect!' But as the wife of the candidate, it was like `Have my pen! No problem!' "
There was, of course, the down side. She said she was more upset than he was when his political opponents would take digs at him. Like the "Dapper Dan, the used-car man" label that Saslaw tried to hang on him.
Megan said even though she had covered political races and knew that negative campaigning is part of the game, "it really kind of hurt" when her husband was the target. "He handled it very well. I think it was tougher for me when there were personal swipes . . .. I learned something from being on the other side of the mike. There's more feeling involved than maybe you think or can observe."
The former Megan Carroll of Alexandria majored in journalism at the University of Richmond. When she graduated, she was offered a job as the first female news anchor for a Richmond television station, "but it was a moonlight shift and it was $7,000, and I had another offer for $15,000 to do PR. So I sold out right out of the gate."
But slowly she worked her way into television news reporting. First she did a once-a-week television talk show in Northern Virginia while holding down a public relations job during the day. Then, in 1984, she went to work full time for the Fairfax cable station that had just been set up by Media General, the parent company of the Richmond newspapers.
The station had a lightly staffed news operation when it started. Megan had to lug an array of equipment to all her assignments, and set it up and operate it while also doing reportorial duties. She said when she got the job she weighed 107 pounds. "By the end of six months, I weighed 96 and the equipment weighed 98."
Megan, who is just over 5 feet tall, is up to a hefty 103 pounds now.
The couple owns a Cape Cod home in Falls Church that is relatively modest, considering his wealth. Since Don was inaugurated as lieutenant governor, however, they have lived mostly in a condominium in Richmond's Fan District.
But, as Megan admits and a kitchen nearly devoid of groceries confirms, "we don't eat here; all we do is sleep here."
The idea when they moved into the condo was that it would be their base during assembly sessions, when it is the lieutenant governor's duty to preside in the Senate. They figured that the rest of the year they would divide their time between Richmond and Northern Virginia.
Don has a 9-year old daughter and a 14-year-old son by a previous marriage, so even during the legislative session he drove to Northern Virginia to spend weekends with the children, who live with their mother.
But since the session ended in March, the half-and-half timetable hasn't worked out the way they had planned, Megan said. Don has been spending nearly every day traveling around the state making appearances as lieutenant governor.
Meanwhile, Megan has returned to work as a television reporter. Two days per week she works out of Washington for a show called "Nation's Business Today," which is aired on the ESPN cable network.
She also does a weekly feature called "Virginia Profiles" for WTVR-TV (Channel 6) in Richmond, and she travels around the state looking for interesting characters to interview for that show.
And, because Gov. Douglas Wilder is not married, Megan has been invited to serve on various committees for fund-raising events and other causes that would normally fall to the governor's wife.
The upshot is that their lifestyle keeps them "going up and down the road [Interstate 95]," and they tend to end up in Richmond at night, rather than in Falls Church.
They joke about how little they've used the Chippendale chairs and dining room table in their condo. Breakfast is usually cereal, which they eat while walking around getting ready to go out, and dinner is usually at one of the seemingly constant political banquets they are invited to attend.
They cherish times when they can get away to a movie or find whole days to be together, such as on a skiing vacation they took with Megan's brother immediately after the General Assembly adjourned.
But the Beyers don't seem to have had trouble adjusting to the political treadmill. Don, Megan said, is "a big reader, and he does miss his time alone, probably more than I do. I'm energized by meeting people, so it really hasn't been that bad. But if I weren't an extrovert - which I am, and that's why I wanted to be a reporter; I love to find out about people - it might be a real problem."
Moreover, Megan seems to still be on a high from Don's dramatic upset victory last fall. "We're just so lucky to be here."
As for his political future, she is one reporter who won't speculate about the possibility that Don Beyer will run for governor in 1992. And she is probably the only one who might know.
Like every good political wife, she knows the value of the pleasant smile and circumspect "no comment" when asked about such things.
by CNB