Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 10, 1993 TAG: 9310100093
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ROCKY MOUNT LENGTH: Long
Amid the antlers and the ammo, Mike Farris hit the bull's eye Saturday.
The Republican candidate for lieutenant governor was working his way through the crowd at the Franklin County Hunting & Fishing Classic when one skeptical voter wanted more than a handshake.
"What are your views on gun control?" Sam Brown wanted to know.
Farris grinned, looked around to make sure others in the crowd heard him, and said, "I've been quoted in the papers saying, `The only kind of gun control I believe in is hitting your target.'"
Brown's quizzical face lit up with a spark of recognition. "Oh yeah, I've heard of you," he said, clutching a piece of campaign literature tighter and eagerly nodding his approval of Farris' position.
"We've got to get these crazy people out of here that believe in gun control," said the Rocky Mount factory worker.
Another voter bagged, Farris moved on triumphantly - to shake the next hand and, perhaps, get a chance at a political upset over Lt. Gov. Don Beyer, the Democratic incumbent.
If that happens, it'll be partly because of voters such as Brown and his hunting buddies in Franklin County.
This swath of Southside Virginia is rural, blue-collar, conservative and - historically - Democratic. For some reason, the red-clay country breeds yellow-dog Democrats.
Until this year.
The Democratic candidate for governor, Mary Sue Terry, herself a daughter of Southside Virginia, has made guns the centerpiece of her campaign - and if it's one thing politicians can't mess with in rural Virginia, it's guns.
Terry has long acknowledged that her call for a five-day waiting period for buying handguns is costing her support in rural areas that normally vote Democrat. She hopes to make up that deficit by winning the votes of crime-conscious suburbanites who normally side with Republicans.
But the gun issue isn't just confined to Terry's race with Republican George Allen.
In the contest for lieutenant governor, Farris likewise is using the issue to target traditionally Democratic voters in rural Virginia - by making visits to gun shows and hunters' shows a campaign priority.
From the polls - which show the lieutenant governor's race a dead heat - and the looks of Saturday's outdoors show in Franklin County, Farris is doing quite well at it.
There were two dominant colors inside the Rocky Mount National Guard Armory: the green of camouflage, and the teal of Farris-for-lieutenant-governor campaign stickers.
On a sultry weekend in early October, hundreds of hunters filed through the armory to watch turkey-calling contests and how-to videos, their thoughts squarely on November. But for many, the event they had in mind in November wasn't the start of deer season, but the close of the election season.
"This county used to be Democratic, but I think a lot of people are changing right now," said Mark Wood, who works at the water plant in Rocky Mount and was busy Saturday helping a friend sell hunting supplies.
The gun issue alone is enough to sway many voters in Franklin County, Wood said. "There's a shirt I saw that said `I'll give up my gun when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers.' A lot of people in this county are the same way."
For them, Terry's call for a five-day waiting period - a position echoed by Beyer and Bill Dolan, the Democratic candidate for attorney general - is heresy. "They won't stop with the five-day waiting period," said Noah Mills, an orchardman from Callaway. "Gun control is not really what they want. What they want is to ban all the guns, and that's the way Mary Sue Terry sees it."
Mills said he was "born and raised a Democrat. I was from one of the strongest Democratic families in Franklin County. If my daddy knew I was voting Republican now, he'd turn over in his grave."
The curious thing, though, is that when these hunters talk about how mad they are about the gun issue, they have little to say about Terry's opponent - although they clearly like Allen. Instead, they turn to extolling Farris.
Statewide, Farris is best known as an advocate of home-schooling; the Loudoun County lawyer is president of the Home School Legal Defense Association. But in this crowd, Farris is identified more as the man who will defend the rights of gun owners.
It's a reputation Farris plays on as he pumps one hunter's hand after another. "Vote Republican, otherwise your Second Amendment rights are in jeopardy," he tells one voter.
Ferrum truck driver Ricky Smith complains that the news media have unfairly tried to pigeon-hole Farris as a single-issue candidate. "He's never presented as a constitutional lawyer," Smith said. "He's always presented as a home-schooling candidate."
That's a characterization Democrats have seized on to brand Farris, a former leader of the Moral Majority in Washington state, as an extremist - a "lieutenant" of the Religious Right, as Beyer's current television ads put it.
But the deadlocked polls suggest that the Democrats' attempt to portray Farris as a radical haven't worked so far.
And, to judge by the voters' response Saturday, they still aren't.
Farris spent the morning at a railroad festival in Appomattox and came away overjoyed at what people were saying about Beyer's attack commercials that decry Farris' ties to Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. "His TV ads have done me a whole lot of good at his expense," Farris chuckled. "I had at least 100 people say they saw my ad on TV. He has definitely solidified my base vote - and saved us about $100,000, maybe $200,000."
Maybe Farris is exaggerating. After all, he once described the public schools as a "godless monstrosity," a description he now blames on a tendency for hyperbole.
But clearly, to Saturday's hunting-and-fishing crowd in Rocky Mount, there was nothing controversial about Farris' links to conservative Christian causes.
Instead, truck driver Smith mentioned Farris' values as another reason to back the Republican. "They're traditional, not liberal and loose." And Doris Mills, the cafeteria manager at Callaway Elementary School, praised the father of nine for being a "family person" at a time when "family values are going down the hill."
Indeed, the Mills family can't understand what the Democrats' fuss is all about.
"The news media has tried to pin Farris to Jerry Falwell and the so-called Religious Right," Noah Mills said. "But if it is the Religious Right, that's me. I go to church. I believe in the same things he does. I don't believe in abortion. When you say pro-choice, that's just giving the woman the right to kill her baby. I'd say Mike Farris fits the people pretty well in this area."
How well? "I think he's got it in the bag," said Doris Mills.
If that's an accurate reading of what used to be Democratic sentiment in Franklin County, then there's more changing colors this autumn than just the leaves on the trees.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB