Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 8, 1992 TAG: 9203080241
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LEXINGTON LENGTH: Long
Potato chips ground in the carpet. Greasy pizza boxes piled up in the hall by a drained keg. A deck of cards scattered like a game of 52 pickup.
"This is a big poker house," Martin muttered. "It's our fault. We had our entire delegation meet here before the parade and drink a keg, so the guys living here had 86 people walk in and say, `Hey, where's the beer?' "
Looked like it, too.
The party had been Friday morning.
Now it was Saturday and the old Victorian house on Nelson Street - which students believe bears a passing resemblance to the abode of the television Munster family - hadn't exactly straightened itself up.
The McNeil-Lehrer Newshour producer waiting on the porch outside was appalled. The sight was apparently too nauseating for public TV viewers. He ordered Martin, the co-chairman of the Texas delegation at Washington and Lee University's mock convention, to clean up the place before Roger Mudd and the camera crew arrived.
"What a disaster," senior producer Jim Trengrove said as he kept a discrete distance. "I thought my place in college looked bad."
Martin tossed the most obvious empties in the trash, then gave up. "This is about as clean as it's going to get," he said.
Trengrove shrugged. "Do you have any Texas flags?" he asked.
Martin sent someone searching for a hammer to nail up the Lone Star to cover the unpainted walls.
The things you do to get on national TV . . .
At W&L's mock convention, it's hard to tell if life imitates art or the other way around. The kids get the nomination for the party out of power right so often the event becomes a magnet for national media types looking for a color piece.
Next thing you know, here's Roger Mudd trailing the Texas delegation around like it's the real thing.
(His segment will air during McNeil-Lehrer's Tuesday show on WBRA, Channel 15, at 7 p.m.)
Mudd stumbled upon the ultimate irony in this exercise of preppy W&L students posing as Democrats: Scott Holstead, the other Texas co-chairman, is an intern in the White House this semester.
Now, Holstead's all worried about what his White House bosses will think when they see him on McNeil-Lehrer proclaiming 66 of Texas' 86 convention votes for "the next president of the United States, Bill Clinton!"
They will realize it's all in fun, won't they?
Or is it?
At Friday's session, the conventioneers were in a panic. A rumor was sweeping the hall that a prominent West Coast newspaper - OK, the Los Angeles Times - was about to break a story that would do to a certain candidate what that iceberg did to the Titanic.
"I'm sure you've heard about that story . . . "
"We heard it might be a bombshell . . . "
"If something like that comes out, my sources tell me that would kill his candidacy . . . "
Martin slouched in his folding chair on the convention floor as the Friday night speakers droned on. "If it happens, we'll be really messed up," he said. "If it's going to break, I wish it would break tomorrow, so we could be right."
For a few frantic hours, the rumor at W&L's mock convention leapfrogged from coast to coast like the Michaelango computer virus.
The Ring-tum Phi, the student newspaper, frantically called the LA Times, looking for confirmation, denial, no comment, anything. Journalism professor John Jennings worked his sources in the profession, too. The W&L callers all were told there was nothing to it.
No matter. The McNeil-Lehrer guys caught wind of the rumor and got on the horn to their bosses back in Washington.
Worse yet, Martin - deadly serious about getting the Texas vote right - had his delegation checking and double-checking with every political source they've cultivated in Texas during the past year.
"We told them about it and they hadn't heard it," Martin sighed.
"Thing is, every delegation has called their state chairmen back home, so everybody knows about it by now, and they're crapping in their pants," Holstead said. W&L's reputation for research is legendary. Hey, if these mock convention kids say the LA Times is about to break a story, they might be right. "The people we were talking to were saying, `The minute you hear something, you let me know.' "
As the Friday night session broke up, there was talk on the floor about extraordinary efforts to track down a copy of the LA Times before the voting started Saturday.
"One of the convention directors was joking to me he had somebody ready to fly to Los Angeles to get a copy," said Nebraska co-chairman Eric Foust. "I wouldn't put it past him."
Saturday morning dawned with no killer LA Times story and the Munster House still a mess.
The Texas delegation was supposed to caucus here before the mock convention reconvened, but only 17 of the 86 delegates straggled in.
"At 8:30 in the morning, we're just looking for a strong quorum," Martin yawned. "We're not going for total attendance."
The McNeil-Lehrer crew snapped wireless mikes onto Martin and Holstead, who held forth in the living room, dispensing instructions - and Fall Creek wine - to their delegates. Mudd took a seat on the staircase in the foyer. Even he was hot on the trail of the rumor now. "Anybody heard from the LA Times? What is it? A great unfounded rumor?"
Apparently.
The Texas delegates were die-hard Southerners. Clinton all the way. But across the aisle, the Wisconsin delegation wrestled with its conscience - and the Mario Cuomo factor.
"I get the feeling a lot of the state chairmen want to make news," said John Layman, who headed the Dairy State delegation. Drafting Cuomo would sure do that, especially with CBS on hand. "But I think the steering committee is really torn because most of them worked for two years putting this together and they want to make sure they get it right."
A Cuomo draft certainly would risk W&L's track record.
So on the first ballot, W&L's Wisconsin delegation decided to stick by what the pols out there advised: 12 votes for Clinton, 11 for Paul Tsongas, seven for Tom Harkin and six for Jerry Brown.
But across the hall the mock convention set up a well-guarded telephone room, open only to each state chairman. The purpose: If the convention goes to multiple ballots, the chairmen can rush there and get on the phones to sources in their respective states to see what the real politicians would do in the event of a deadlocked convention.
The phones were unneeded.
Despite dire predictions of daylong and nightlong balloting, Clinton eked out a majority on the first ballot.
The students accorded Cuomo the vice-presidential slot.
"It's geographical balance," Martin explained. "Plus, he gave a great speech."
Oh, yes, and there's another reason. "If Cuomo eventually declares and wins the nomination, this will make us look better."
But will it make up for those McNeil-Lehrer shots of the Munster House?
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB