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

DATE: FRIDAY, October 29, 1993                   TAG: 9310290078
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DEMOCRAT DOLAN HIT BY FALLOUT FROM REPUBLICAN SURGE

When Dolan finally arrived, the small crowd of supporters erupted in squeals of joy. By then, they were surprised he had shown up at all.

Dolan faces similar head winds in Tuesday's election: With Republican George Allen continuing to lead in the polls in the governor's race, Dolan finds himself leaning into a GOP gale that threatens to blow all the way down the ticket.

Yet so few voters have paid attention to the attorney general's race that, even at this late hour, the contest is still up for grabs - a point that is beginning to energize some otherwise dispirited Democrats and worry some Republicans.

"Yes, we're concerned, because there is a large number of undecided voters," said Al Thomason, the Republican chairman in Roanoke County.

Two polls this week put Republican Jim Gilmore's lead over Dolan at only 5 percentage points - with one-quarter of the voters yet to make up their minds.

For Dolan, that's both a frustration and an opportunity.

It's a frustration, he said Thursday, because thus far, his campaign against Gilmore has been "like having an argument in a closet."

But it's an opportunity, he believes, because there's still time to take his message to voters.

The question is: How much time will it take for Dolan to deliver it?

Gilmore, the commonwealth's attorney in Henrico County, has boiled his message down to a single, hard kernel: He's a prosecutor. You want someone tough on crime? Vote for Gilmore.

Dolan's message is more complicated. First, the Arlington County lawyer - a former state bar president who has never sought elected office - tries to explain that only 15 percent of the work in the attorney general's office deals with criminal cases.

Furthermore, Dolan points out, while he's not a prosecutor, he's no stranger to the criminal justice system. "I've been a very active criminal defense lawyer," Dolan said. "I've tried more criminal cases than Gilmore has, but that's only a small part of my credentials."

Only then does Dolan get around to talking about what he'd like to do as attorney general: Toughen the juvenile court system so youthful offenders get more attention and push for a five-day waiting period on handguns and a ban on assault weapons.

"The truth is, as attorney general, you're primarily the state's lawyer," Dolan said. "You're not the state's prosecutor, you're not the top cop." But he admits he's had a tough time getting that word out.

Political analysts say they're not surprised.

Ray Garland, a former Republican state legislator turned newspaper columnist, reads Dolan's campaign this way: "He was probably a guy who said, `I'll have a long career in Virginia politics. I may have to spend eight years as attorney general, but eventually I'll be governor, so why make a lot of crazy statements I'll have to live with? Why can't I do what Gerald Baliles and Mary Sue Terry did? I can be a safe, sane Democrat.' And most of the time a safe, sane Democrat who gets a statewide nomination is going to win."

But that may not be the case this year, Garland says, so Dolan is stuck late in the campaign with a low profile - and without a hard-hitting, easily understood issue to help him raise that profile.

In addition, as Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political analyst, puts it, "He was going to ride the Terry-Beyer bandwagon, but now he's trying to grab onto the bumper of a Beyer Volvo."

Privately, many Democrats are writing off Terry's chances of winning the governorship - and shifting their focus to re-electing Lt. Gov. Don Beyer. Come the attorney general's race, whose coattails will prevail?

"Normally, the attorney general's race takes very strongly off the governor's race," Garland points out. Only twice in modern history - 1969 and 1973 - has Virginia elected governors and attorneys general from different parties.

However, Sabato notes, "once a coattail is cut off, it's hard to regenerate."

Dolan is careful not to appear to be casting Terry aside, but he's also done his arithmetic on recent elections. "If you look at the math, there has been a lot of ticket-splitting," he said. He's hoping he'll be the beneficiary of some of that Tuesday.

Keywords:
POLITICS