Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 20, 1990                   TAG: 9005210218
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: F2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ELECTIONS? WHAT ELECTIONS?

Yawn.

Southwest Virginia's three U.S. House members, all Democrats, will return to Washington with little or no opposition.

So will Republican Sen. John Warner. Virginia Democrats, despite their recent successes in statewide elections, worked hard to avoid naming anyone to challenge Warner's re-election plans.

Virginia may have a two-party system. But what good is the system if the parties don't bother to oppose each other's candidates?

Virginia's neighbors to the west and south are not so wimpy. In West Virginia's 4th Congressional District, a coal-mining district that abuts Virginia, a spirited Democratic primary will be followed by a spirited general-election campaign. In North Carolina, Democrats are engaged in a hot contest to name a candidate to oppose GOP Sen. Jesse Helms.

West Virginia Congressman Nick Rahall won renomination last week, but only after a primary struggle with West Virginia Secretary of State (and former Congressman) Ken Hechler.

Hechler scored points by alluding (though not referring outright) to a Las Vegas casino's 1984 suit, later dropped, against Rahall for gambling debts, and to Rahall's 1988 guilty plea to alcohol-related reckless driving.

Such criticism is apt to be at least an undertone in Republican nominee Marianne Brewster's general-election campaign against Rahall.

North Carolina's Helms, the loose cannon of whom even Republican colleagues have learned to be wary, has built a career on racial appeals - sometimes subtle, sometimes not - and on a slick fund-raising machine. His direct-mail operations continue to do well, even as other conservative organizations encounter financial woes.

Six years ago, then-Gov. Jim Hunt spent $9.5 million in his campaign against Helms - but Helms spent nearly $17 million. This year, the gap doubtless will be even wider.

Still, the opportunity to challenge Helms attracted four major contenders to the Democratic primary. Former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt will face Mike Easley, a district attorney from Southport, in a June 5 runoff.

Gantt led the field in the first round. But he is trying to become the Senate's first elected black Democrat. (Former Sen. Ed Brooke of Massachusetts, elected in the '60s, is a Republican.) North Carolina has a history of turning back black candidates in run-offs after they've led the primary pack.

There's much to dislike about both contests.

In West Virginia, Rahall may owe his renomination and probable re-election simply to the fact he's the incumbent. In North Carolina, racial voting and Helms' money machine could well prove the keys to his re-election.

But if elections these days are plagued by such problems as big money, racial disharmony and the unfair advantages of incumbency, the Virginia solution is no solution. It's no solution simply to abandon elections.