Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, December 24, 1993 TAG: 9312280242
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
That is not to say Beamer has been wanting for work.
It is just that Beamer, who has been raising funds and helping run Republican campaigns since 1984, found out this year what it is like to work for the guy who wins the big one.
After serving as Gov.-elect George Allen's chief fund-raiser, she was appointed secretary of the commonwealth Tuesday.
"I've never really been employed in the month of November," not to mention December and beyond, the Giles High School and Radford University graduate said.
Then again, "I never expected to become a full-time fund-raiser, that's for sure," she said.
That she has been.
Beamer raised money for John Chichester in his failed bid for lieutenant governor in 1985 and was Marshall Coleman's finance director in his unsuccessful run for governor in 1989.
In between, she worked for Stu Epperson, a Republican candidate from Winston-Salem, in a failed bid for a North Carolina congressional seat in 1986.
In her previous lone political victory - albeit a local race - she managed Jim Gilmore's campaign for commonwealth's attorney of Henrico County in 1987. Voters elected Gilmore this year to the state attorney general's position.
She worked as finance director for the state Republican Party in 1990 and did consultant work the following year.
She claims to have been undaunted by the fact that the Republican Party has been outnumbered in the General Assembly for generations and unrepresented in the governor's mansion for more than a decade.
"It gets tough sometimes, being the underdog," she said. "But we always felt we had enough money to get done what we felt we needed to get done."
"Enough money" amounted to $5.7 million for the Allen effort, still a half-million less than his Democratic opponent, Mary Sue Terry, raised. In the last crucial months of the race, however, when people began seeing Allen with a realistic chance of winning, his campaign brought in more money than Terry's.
"Early on, they were being out-raised, but they had everything stacked against them," said Tim Phillips, an administrative assistant for Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke. "They raised money when no one thought they could.
"We ran our first campaigns together back in 1984," recalled Phillips, who worked as youth coordinator for the late Jeff Stafford in his losing race against Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, while Beamer helped raise money.
Three years after graduating from Radford, Beamer had reported for two small-town newspapers and worked to raise money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association by the time she met Stafford, who asked her if she'd be interested in getting into politics.
"I thought, `Heck, I'm young, this would be fun for a year,' " said Beamer, who is now 34.
Stafford failed in his bid that year, but his campaign launched the careers of several young political staffers.
"It's amazing that, nine years later, we're still involved" in politics, Phillips said.
Phillips said Beamer is "one of the most friendly, most bubbly folks I've ever worked with in politics." Like many who know Beamer, he says it's her compassion and personable manner that have served her well. "She has a real human side that's rare.
"She's definitely a very down-to-earth person," someone proud of her Southwest Virginia roots, who talks about them often, he said.
Indeed, "If we don't get the mountains down here . . .," Beamer said wistfully of Richmond, where she lives and has been working for the past month on Allen's transition team. "We always say Richmond's too flat - if it only had mountains."
She and her husband, Jim, another Allen staffer whom she met during the Stafford campaign, came "home" this week to the New River Valley for Christmas. Jim Beamer's parents live in Christiansburg.
Stafford's widow, Barbara, a former House of Delegates member herself, lives in Pearisburg. A long-time friend, Beamer is her daughter's godmother.
"It's been a wild year-and-a-half," said Beamer, who was married in mid-campaign in August 1992. Early this year, she had to endure the death of her mother.
It was "personally difficult," she said. "She was always a great supporter of mine and was always with me." Her father, a staunch conservative who moved the family to Pearisburg from West Virginia when Beamer was 15, died while she was in college.
Beamer calls herself a shoot-from-the-hip, straightforward type who hates sitting behind a desk. She is comfortable working behind the scenes and has no plans to run for office herself.
But a job with the administration? That is a reward she has long waited for.
"It will be nice to be able to walk down the street and not have people turn the other way because they think I'm going to ask them for money," Beamer said, tongue-in-cheek.
Don Huffman, who was state GOP chairman when Beamer was the party's finance director, said Beamer was "so personable; she can talk to people at most any level." Calling her hardworking and competent, with a wide range of contacts, "she gets along with everyone," he said.
"She's smart as hell," said Lawrence Lewis, a Richmond investor who contributed more than $170,000 in cash and loans to Allen's campaign. And "She remembers names."
That is a good thing, because the job of secretary of the commonwealth is built on names, thousands and thousands of them. The secretary is charged with gathering names to form the pools of candidates from which the governor makes appointments to boards and commissions.
Over the course of a four-year term, the governor will make about 4,000 appointments. About half of those will come in the first year. The office also certifies records, prepares requests for clemency and processes extraditions.
"It's an awesome responsibility," said acting Secretary Penny Anderson.
"Traditionally, someone who knows the governor well and knows the people who know the governor" handles the task, Anderson said. "From what I know about Betsy Beamer, I think she's perfect."
And after a decade of being on the move from campaign to campaign, always asking for money, seldom reaping the spoils, "Maybe now she can work for four years and settle into a more normal lifestyle," Phillips said.
Beamer relishes the chance.
"You work so long for a certain philosophy of government," Beamer said, "and for it to finally come to fruition . . . it's a great feeling."
\ BETSY BEAMER\ BIOGRAPHICAL DATA\ \ Age 34\ \ Education: Graduated from Giles High School in 1977 and from Radford University in 1981 with a degree in journalism.\ \ Family: Married in August 1992 to Jim Beamer, also a longtime Republican campaign worker.\ \ Nonpolitical jobs: Worked as reporter for Pearisburg's Virginian Leader and Lexington's News-Gazette; fund-raiser for Muscular Dystrophy Association.\ \ Political jobs: First worked on Jeff Stafford's campaign for Congress in 1984. Has since worked for campaigns of John Chichester, Stu Epperson of North Carolina and Marshall Coleman; and, most recently, as George Allen's chief fund-raiser. Also former finance director for the state Republican Party.\ \ Fund-raising philosophy: "No one is ever going to give unless you ask. The worst they can say is `No' ."
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