Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 3, 1993 TAG: 9311030262
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-7 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ROB EURE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
Just after the polls closed, but 2 1/2 hours before Mary Sue Terry delivered her gracious concession speech, the factions loyal to Gov. Douglas Wilder and U.S. Sen. Charles Robb began assessing blame and offering defense.
Sylvia Clute, a Richmond lawyer challenging Robb and Wilder in the nomination battle for Robb's Senate seat next year, declared the loss "the death knell for Robb-Wilder. . . . They are finished."
Generally, Democrats agreed that a poorly run Terry campaign was at least as much at fault as was the intense unpopularity of Robb and Wilder. The pair have feuded for the past four years over the eavesdropping of a Wilder telephone call in 1988. A tape of that conversation ended up in Robb's Senate office and was leaked to reporters, spurring a federal grand jury investigation of the senator.
Asked Tuesday night if he was partly to blame for the Republican landslide, Wilder said, "I take responsibility for making the telephone call" that was taped and given to Robb's staff.
Robb was kept in Washington for a Senate vote, but his staff was fully represented in Richmond.
"I'd ask what Senator Robb has done in the past 2 1/2 years to contribute to this feud," said Susan Platt of Robb's re-election campaign. She pointed out that Robb campaigned for Terry "almost every weekend since May."
Wilder was out stumping for Terry twice in the final nine days of the race.
One district chairman argued that the party would be better off without Robb and Wilder next year.
"A lot of people active in politics and the community are very, very fed up with the Robb-Wilder construct," said Dan Alcorn, party chairman in the 11th Congressional District in Northern Virginia. "People would like to see a change - to get beyond this construct where Robb and Wilder define the divisions within the party."
Among the names being floated as potential alternative candidates in that campaign Tuesday night were former Gov. Gerald Baliles, who met over the weekend with the state's best-known political analyst - Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia - as well as Alcorn and Democratic Party Chairman Mark Warner.
While he breakfasted Sunday with Sabato, a possible indication of his interest, Baliles has not begun to call his key backers from earlier years to talk about a race.
Baliles "is pretty well-situated in life now, and I'd be surprised if he decided to give up that position now to take on a good personal and political friend" in Robb, said state party Vice Chairman Ken Geroe.
A crowd of Democrats that grew to about 500 by the time Terry conceded at 9:20 Tuesday night milled quietly about, watching numbly as two large screens projected television coverage of their growing disaster. The evening began with the announcement of exit polls showing the final margin for governor at 59-41, a landslide that astounded the hopeful Democrats. After that, they began anxiously asking whether their once-sure bet, Lt. Gov. Don Beyer, would survive.
Terry conceded in an upbeat talk, congratulating Allen "on his political victory," but declaring that her cause continues.
"My campaign, and as Democrats and Virginians, our cause, is to never forget our children," she said, "their schools, their safety, their economic security."
Terry also declined to lower the curtain on her political career as she promised that Virginia eventually will elect a woman governor.
"Somewhere in Virginia tonight, the first woman governor of Virginia is watching," she said. That woman, she said, might be a teacher, mother, student, business owner or lawyer. "She might even be giving a concession speech."
A number of Democrats complained bitterly Tuesday night - as they had for months to the Terry organization - about a campaign that never coalesced with public appearances, policy and advertising connected to a central message.
"We were never given a context within which to view her candidacy," said Geroe. "I think she was poorly served by the campaign consultants and media people. They are the people paid to weave that together for her."
Perhaps most bitter for Terry was the solid trouncing she took in rural Virginia. She had claimed solid backing from Southside and Southwest Virginia in her two attorney general contests - races in which she led the statewide ticket.
But her positions this year - from proposing gun control to backing abortion on demand - seemed to reject her upbringing in a tiny rural crossroads in Patrick County.
"If you write off the rural vote, it's a terrible blunder," said former state Democratic Party Chairman Paul Goldman, Wilder's closest adviser.
Goldman said he believed Terry never would have run a campaign so offensive to rural voters if A.L. Philpott of Bassett, the late House speaker, were still alive. Philpott, Terry's political mentor, died in 1991; he would have used his influence on her behalf in rural Virginia and forced her campaign to feature a less-suburban-centered agenda, Goldman said.
For the last two weeks of the campaign, Terry and her central advisers argued she was victimized by a bad "climate," by which they meant public distrust of fellow Democrats Wilder, Robb and President Clinton.
Terry spoke of "running into a wind shear" of voter discontent with Democratic leaders. She refused to talk about that Tuesday night, however. "I would hope we could let George Allen have his night," she said.
Among those mentioned as potential rivals for Robb and Wilder, Beyer now holds the strongest position for future races as the sole survivor of the 1993 Republican onslaught.
But he has expressed no interest in federal service, and he was immediately crowned the party's best shot at reclaiming the statehouse in four years.
"The last time we had a lieutenant governor elected between Republicans, it was the start of something great," said Warner, the party chairman, referring to Robb's first statewide victory in 1977.
Keywords:
POLITICS ELECTION
Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.