Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 4, 1993 TAG: 9311040185
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: from staff reports
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
At the Christiansburg Armory Tuesday, voters noticed that House of Delegates candidate Morgan Griffith worked the polls at Montgomery County's largest precinct from sunrise until the doors closed at 7 p.m.
Not only did Griffith remember voters by name from his earlier campaign stops at their front door, but they found the Republican candidate even remembered the issues he had discussed with them during his campaign visit in their living room.
That may account for the whopping 72 percent to 28 percent margin he piled up in that precinct, drawing 1,354 votes to Democrat Howard Packett's 525. The race was for the House's 8th District, which for the first time this year included seven precincts in Montgomery County.
\ Republican gubernatorial candidate George Allen wasn't the only statewide GOP candidate to do well across the New River Valley on Election Day.
Mike Farris, the party's candidate for lieutenant governor who has close ties to the religious right, also carried three of the valley's four counties: Pulaski, Floyd and Giles.
Incumbent Lt. Gov. Don Beyer Beyer, however, carried the valley as a whole thanks to his strong totals in Montgomery County and Radford.
Although Beyer carried Montgomery with a 58 percent margin, Farris won or tied in nine of the county's 20 precincts.
Beyer won easily in Blacksburg precincts, but starting with Belmont Community Center off Virginia 114 where the two tied with 603 votes each, Farris pulled ahead in a string of county and Christiansburg precincts.
Precincts voting at Shawsville Elementary, Christiansburg Church of Christ, Halls UnitedMethodist Church on North Fork Road in the Ironto area and Good Shepherd Baptist Church near Christiansburg Mountain all went for Ferris.
Also Christiansburg Armory, Auburn High School, Bethel Elementary School in the Virginia 177 area near Radford and Pilot Pentecostal Church at Pilot Mountain voted for Farris over Beyer. Most of the margins were fairly close, except at Auburn where Farris won by 455-323 votes for Beyer.
\ More people voted on the bond issue for the Human Resources building than voted on the library issue in Montgomery County. The Human Resources issue drew 18,411 votes, while 18,362 voters marked the ballot for or against the new library.
\ Del. Tommy Baker, R-Dublin, got 8,319 votes of confidence in Pulaski County for his unopposed re-election to the House of Delegates. But seven voters in his home county chose others.
Names that got seven write-in votes were William D. Stump II, Dr. Donald Dingus Jr., H.G. Bolden, Gary D. King, Collins S. Knighton, Carol Pratt and "Any One Else."
On the state level, Pulaski County voters went Republican right down the line: George Allen over Mary Sue Terry for governor, 6,804-3,747; Jim Gilmore over Bill Dolan for attorney general, 6,270-3,852, and Mike Farris over incumbent Democrat Don Beyer for lieutenant governor, 5,348-5,005.
\ Both District D candidates for the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors were campaigning in front of the Armory precinct in Christiansburg Tuesday afternoon without topcoats. Although the day was mild, when the sun dropped behind the armory, the temperature dropped precipitously.
Henry Jablonski, the Republican incumbent, had taken the trouble to put on his thermal underwear Tuesday morning; James Martin, the Democratic challenger, had not. But the forward-thinking Jablonski probably could have come to the armory in Bermuda shorts and never felt the chill. The warm response of armory voters to Jablonski carried him to his fourth consecutive term on the county board.
\ More than 1,000 people had voted at the Christiansburg Armory, the county's largest precinct, before noon Tuesday. Poll workers called it a good turn-out.
One voter confounded poll workers with her questions of how to go about voting for "none of the above."
She felt that choice should be on the ballot, saying she didn't want to choose between the lesser of two evils or vote against someone as much as vote for someone else.
Then just don't vote, someone told her. No, she responded, she should be able to make her vote heard. She was told she could use the write-in vote option to say none of the above.
\ In Montgomery County, the registrar estimates that 70 percent of the county's 28,699 registered voters made it to the polls. In 1989, the last governor's race, 71 percent of 25,326 registered voters cast their ballots.
\ Veterinarian Jim Shuler won nine of the 12th House District's 17 precincts, and he won big - with more than 70 percent of the vote - in five vote-rich Blacksburg areas.
But delivery driver Nick Rush narrowly defeated Shuler in traditionally Democratic Giles County.
The Giles result may have stemmed from straight-ticket voting. All three statewide GOP candidates won there.
Still, the 25-year-old Christiansburg Republican's margins were in the low 60s in his three hometown precincts, and he narrowly lost the Ellett Valley - part of his Montgomery County Board of Supervisors district - to Shuler.
The results show the 49-year-old Democrat's strategy worked, campaign official Paul Mitchem said Wednesday.
The idea was to bank on heavy turnout in Blacksburg, and then cut into Rush's anticipated wins in Giles and Christiansburg, he said.
A tracking poll the Shuler campaign commissioned late last week showed the Blacksburg resident with a 20 percent lead. But Shuler and his staff discounted that and estimated a win of 10 percent to 12 percent. They won 57 percent to 43 percent, a 14-point margin.
Rush, for his part, was proud of the Giles win and noted he tied Shuler in the Longshop-McCoy precinct of northwestern Montgomery and came close in the adjacent Merrimac area, where he won 46 percent of the vote.
Shuler's age and 20 years of business experience may have been the deciding factor for many voters. Early polling showed that undecided voters leaned toward Shuler once they knew more about the differences in both areas between the candidates, Mitchem said.
"The public has a certain expectation of what a delegate should be," Mitchem said. "People like Nick . . . but he still doesn't have the kind of maturity that Jim has."
by CNB