Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 20, 1992 TAG: 9202200344
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY and DANIEL HOWES STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
THE REAL MAYOR'S RACE: LAID-BACK VS. GUNG-HO
THE BIG DIFFERENCE between the two candidates in the mayor's race may not\ be issues, but style. David Bowers says his outspokenness will move the city\ off dead-center. But the low-key Howard Musser suggests Bowers might\ alienate business leaders.
Visitors to David Bowers' law office on Church Avenue can't help but notice a reminder of his most celebrated lost cause - a photograph of the Hunter Viaduct, before it was razed to make way for the Dominion Tower.
"Roanoke's glorious past," quips Bowers, who cast the only vote on City Council against the project and laces his conversations with references to "the big boys" in Roanoke's business community.
Howard Musser grimaces.
He recites the series of unanimous votes council took in the summer of 1989 instructing the city administration to do all it could to make the downtown development come to fruition.
"Everything up to the point, he voted yes," Musser says. "All of a sudden, there were rumblings about the viaduct and it became political" - and Bowers began crusading against what he called the "back-room deals" that led to the decision to raze the viaduct to make way for the tower.
"I don't like the way he's being pictured on this," Musser says. "It churns inside of me."
As Saturday's mass meeting that will nominate a Democratic candidate for mayor nears - a nominee who could become the next mayor by default - the key issue separating the two candidates isn't really an issue at all.
It's style.
Both Bowers and Musser come from the same populist, middle-class and working-class wing of Roanoke's Democratic Party that rose up in reaction to the business-backed Roanoke Forward City Council of the 1970s.
But it would be difficult to find two more disparate personalities.
For a glimpse of how the two men operate, turn from Bowers' lobby to Musser's basement.
His prize creation stands in the corner: a 4-foot-long doll house, complete with electricity and roomfuls of miniature furniture, all of which he meticulously assembled over 10 years.
He's been building models since he was a kid. Ships, cars, the doll house - his basement is crammed with evidence of his hobby.
"If I'm real tense and nervous, I can sit and work on this and the tenseness goes away," he says.
Secreting himself in his basement to piece together tiny doll chairs no bigger than a thumb seems a perfect metaphor for Musser, a low-key, behind-the-scenes man who markets his personality as one of his chief selling points in the race for mayor.
It's also one of the main reasons that Bowers says he, and not Musser, should succeed Noel Taylor.
"Musser said of himself that he is going to be a laid-back, behind-the- scenes sort of mayor," Bowers says. "I'm glad that's what he said. That gives the voters of the city a clear choice. I'm not a laid-back kind of guy. I have demonstrated my vitality. I'm a hands-on activist. That's me."
That's also what scares some of Bowers' detractors, who see a politician more interested in playing politics than getting things done. Musser describes himself as "mature" and "responsible," as if to imply that Bowers is immature and irresponsible.
"It's the showmanship," Musser grumbles. A councilman can afford to mount crusades for one issue or another, he says, as Bowers did to save the Hunter Viaduct. "But as mayor," Musser says, "you have to go right down the middle."
Certainly Bowers is outspoken, and proud of it. He presents himself as someone who will move the city off dead center, someone who is unafraid to raise issues that often don't get discussed outside what he calls "the back rooms."
Ah yes, those back rooms.
Inevitably, the style factor intersects with Bowers' class-oriented politics, his uneasy relationship - if there's a relationship at all - with Roanoke's business community, and the mayor's role as a symbol of the city.
"With David's style, it would be an absolute disaster for the city," says Councilman Jim Harvey, who's backing Musser. "That's my concern. Being mayor is much different than being on council. A mayor has to go out and negotiate with business."
Bowers says no one need worry.
"I've negotiated contracts for 14 years as a lawyer - business contracts, leases, divorce contracts," he says. "I negotiate all the time with some of the toughest lawyers in town."
But the larger question might be whether either candidate, with their populist backgrounds, but especially Bowers, would alienate a powerful constituency: the business community.
Dominion Bankshares Chairman Warner Dalhouse and other business leaders express concern at the prospect of a mayor - any mayor - who sees the political and economic landscape in terms of class. "What we don't need is a mayor who would polarize the community in any way - whether by polarization of economic classes or polarization of races . . . ."
An assumption that "business is villainous . . . would spread and be known and we'd have a devil of a time getting new investment," Dalhouse says.
However, he adds: "I don't believe either one - Musser or Bowers - is apt to make that mistake."
Bowers says business leaders shouldn't be concerned about the prospect of him as mayor.
"I'm not of the business community. I was raised in a middle-class neighborhood. I don't socialize with them too much. I have a very good law practice, but I'm not in it for greed or money. But I would say to the business community: I will promise I will be accessible to them. I will welcome them into my office in city hall, if elected. Every day, if need be.
"But I'm not going to be told what to do. I think they'll find, even though I'm not going to vote with them every time, I've gone with them 80 percent of the time."
And that may be why several business leaders scoffed when asked how important the next mayor's style will be to the health of the business community.
"I'm not as concerned with [their] style as a leader than I am with their position on the issues," says Larry Davidson, president of Davidsons, the Roanoke-based clothing chain.
Some key business leaders doubt that either candidate has Taylor's ability to build consensus across racial and economic lines. And they hear neither detailing his vision for "where Roanoke ought to go," one said.
"There isn't a unified voice in the business community," said a well-known businessman who spoke only if he would not be identified. "If there was, we'd have somebody out there."
Keywords:
POLITICS