Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 4, 1993 TAG: 9311040593
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROB EURE and GREG SCHNEIDER STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
It was Chuck Robb's fault.
It was the fault of 12 years of Democratic rule.
Mary Sue Terry blamed everyone but herself Wednesday in the aftermath of her election disaster. The only thing she would have done differently, she said, was "run for governor four years ago."
Gov. Wilder, for whom Terry stepped aside in 1989, ripped her campaign and said he wasn't responsible for her defeat. Sen. Robb issued a statement from his Washington office praising Terry and staying away from analysis of her effort.
Terry went from posting in 1989 the most votes ever won by a Virginia politician to suffering on Tuesday the worst defeat by a Democrat for governor in this century.
In a morning-after news conference, she was in no mood to take responsibility for her political demolition. "When you hit a tidal wave . . . to try to analyze it drop by drop I don't think is very useful," Terry said.
She barely acknowledged that changing her campaign - which has been roundly criticized by other Democrats as flat, pointless and without message or personality - would have changed her fate. Terry said such speculation "doesn't lead to any substantially different results."
"The tidal wave" of voters hungry for change doomed her, Terry said. "There was clearly an impulse for change, not just in Virginia but up and down the East Coast," she argued. Democrats also lost the New Jersey governorship and New York City mayoralty Tuesday, to go with losses earlier this year in Georgia, Texas and Los Angeles.
Terry argued that the sentiment for change was compounded in Virginia by the notorious intraparty feud between Robb and Wilder.
"I looked at the map of George Allen's win," she said. `It was very, very impressive. It reminded me of some of my [previous] statewide wins.
"I run far better as Mary Sue Terry than as Robb-Wilder-Terry. Far better."
Wilder, however, would have none of the blame. "The bottom line is, I don't care how you cut it, when the campaign is over the question is who won and who lost. The candidate has to take some degree of responsibility for it."
Wilder painted a picture of a campaign in utter shambles that not only failed to woo voters but actively drove them away. He ticked off a list:
"She did not want labor support and wrote that off."
She alienated 200,000 federal retirees by declaring "No, you're not entitled to a penny" in refunds of illegally collected state income taxes.
She angered Virginia Military Institute supporters by endorsing the admission of women to the school; Wilder cited polls showing 67 percent of Virginians favor his plan for a parallel education for women at Mary Baldwin College.
"I don't know of any politician in the South . . . that has ever gone on television or gone on record personally attacking people because of their affiliation . . . or involvement with religion. . . . I think it did backfire."
She ignored blacks.
She took too strong a stand on abortion: "I was pro-choice, not pro-abortion."
The advisers who steered Terry's campaign, however, were only too happy to back up the candidate's contention that the loss was inevitable.
A different type of race "might have been a few points closer," said Bob Squier, Terry's media consultant. But he argued that "if Robb and Wilder had not feuded, if Clinton had carried Virginia, she was still running the anchor leg" to become the fourth straight Democratic governor in Virginia. "That's tough."
The campaign's own polls showed at the end that 41 percent of Virginians don't like Chuck Robb and 50 percent don't like Wilder. In fact, after Wilder bragged two weeks ago that he could have whipped Allen, the Terry pollsters checked it out. The result: Allen 58, Wilder 34.
Wilder continued claiming Wednesday night he would have derailed the Allen juggernaut by running a better campaign.
Lt. Gov. Donald Beyer, the sole statewide survivor of Tuesday's GOP slaughter, was less critical of Robb and Wilder.
While many Democrats dread compounding Terry's defeat by having a brutal Senate nomination fight next Spring between Robb and Wilder, Beyer praised both men.
"Both gentlemen have given much to Virginia and have much left to offer," he said. In typical fashion, Beyer fetched a quote from Shakespeare: "Sweet are the uses of adversity."
He also made it clear he will not be the compromise candidate some Democrats long for in that battle.
"If you'd like a Shermanesque statement, I will not get into that race."
by CNB