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

DATE: SATURDAY, July 3, 1993                   TAG: 9307030264
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ROB EURE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium

CLINTON LETTER BACKS ROBB FOR SENATE JOB

"My job as president involves making tough choices," Clinton says in a letter that began arriving Friday in the mailboxes of thousands of Virginia Democrats. ". . . And you, as a Virginian, will face a critical choice next year. I hope you will choose to re-elect Chuck Robb."

Wilder responded by saying Robb "has traded his vote" for the president's backing. He argued that Clinton's endorsement was a payoff for Robb's "support [of] an anti-Virginia federal budget."

Robb backed Clinton's budget and deficit-reduction package in a Senate vote last week. It passed only after Vice President Al Gore broke a 49-49 tie.

Wilder's chief political adviser hinted that the endorsement increases the chances Wilder will run as an independent rather than a Democrat, creating a three-way contest that also is expected to include Republican Oliver North.

"This demonstrates that it's not an open party anymore," said Paul Goldman, a former state Democratic chairman. Such presidential involvement in an intraparty contest is unprecedented in Virginia, he said.

In the letter, which includes an appeal for contributions to Robb's re-election bid, Clinton hails Robb as the man who "rebuilt the state's Democratic Party and established a foundation that made it possible for Democrats to sweep all three statewide offices" throughout the 1980s.

Of Robb's political and legal troubles in recent years, Clinton says Robb is "a man of integrity and honesty and I'm proud of the dignified way in which he has handled adversity . . . .

"Chuck has had some tough times, but through it all, he has repeatedly demonstrated what `grace under pressure' really means," the letter adds.

Wilder has said Robb is unfit for office. The senator has spent much of his term denying allegations of infidelity and that he partied with drug users in Virginia Beach while governor in the early 1980s. Last year, Clinton weathered his own storm of allegations about infidelity.

Robb's long-running feud with Wilder escalated in 1991 as reporters obtained tapes of an illegally intercepted cellular phone call between Wilder and a Chesapeake businessman. The leak, traced to Robb's staff, led to a federal grand jury investigation and convictions of three former Robb aides; the senator was targeted by the grand jurors but ultimately cleared.

Robb's campaign office issued a brief statement Friday about the Clinton letter, saying Robb intends "to hold back on a full-court fund-raising effort until after the November statewide elections" so he won't compete with the Democrats running this year. Clinton offered to send it "because he recognizes the important role Senator Robb has played in state and national Democratic politics," the Robb statement said.

Susan Platt, a Robb campaign spokeswoman, said suggestions Robb traded his vote for the endorsement are "categorically untrue." Robb and the president are longtime friends, she said, but Robb's voting record in the Senate does not put him among Clinton's most reliable supporters there.

Keywords:
POLITICS