Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, December 29, 1993 TAG: 9312290099
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROB EURE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
While Allen has tested the bounds of his new power, he has stumbled, picking battles he hasn't won.
And Allen - who on Jan. 15 will become the first Republican in the governor's chair in a dozen years - has been gathering headlines for his tiffs with GOP leaders and state workers that do little to advance his agenda for changes in criminal justice and welfare and his pledge to concentrate on job creation.
"He's making the same missteps Clinton did in his first weeks in office," said Mike Salster, a former state Republican spokesman who now edits a newspaper in Amelia County. "He's wasting political capital for very little gain."
Allen has shed the boyish demeanor of the campaign, when he often appeared in television commercials in shirtsleeves and leaning against a fence post to decry Democrats. In its place is a determined figure whose first exercises of authority were an attempted coup against the state Republican chairman and a demand for the resignations of 450 of the state's senior bureaucrats.
"I doubt it has hurt him much with the public," said Robert Holsworth, a political scientist at Virginia Commonwealth University. "But he runs the risk of appearing somewhat mean-spirited and not very competent.
"Allen has shown he intends to have an aggressively conservative administration," Holsworth said. "He believes he's got a mandate and intends to deliver. But his transition has not been as smooth as the campaign."
Some legislators said the flaw in Allen's transition has been in overreaching.
Democrats smell a Republican who will sharpen partisanship in the legislature but who has been foiled twice before even taking office. Republicans wonder if Allen is developing the same taste for retribution that he ridiculed in departing Gov. Douglas Wilder.
"I would not expect the transition to be flawless," said House Majority Leader Richard Cranwell, D-Roanoke County. "I would expect some people to do some overreaching. It's got to be a bit intoxicating to win, and with such a handsome margin that one might assume there is a greater mandate than there really is."
Allen, who in campaign speeches railed against the "petty bickering" of Wilder and U.S. Sen. Charles Robb, made the alleged disloyalty of Republican Party Chairman Patrick McSweeney his first target.
Within a month of the election, Allen's aides were lobbying party leaders for McSweeney's ouster.
They won solid backing from the party's ruling committee, asking McSweeney to resign. But Allen lacked the votes to force McSweeney out, and the chairman refused to leave.
McSweeney also partially succeeded in turning his personal spat with Allen into a cause for the party's conservative wing. The party chief narrowly won his job in 1992 with backing from that faction; Allen has its support to thank for his nomination and election.
Some Republican legislators privately question the timing of Allen's move against McSweeney. They suggest he should have quietly signaled his displeasure with the chairman to party leaders and contributors and squeezed McSweeney out in the spring.
Others argue Allen has a right to a chairman he trusts. "George Allen . . . rescued the Republican Party of Virginia from oblivion," Holsworth said.
Allen could point to concrete signs that McSweeney favored another candidate for the party's nomination last spring and worked to keep Allen's fund raising sluggish in the critical early months of the campaign.
If the battle with McSweeney ended in a standoff, his confrontation with state workers saw Allen back off after seeking resignations before Christmas from 450 middle- and senior-level bureaucrats.
Allen's initial demand brought protests from state workers, some of whom received letters by mistake. Allen, who made bureaucrats in Richmond a frequent target of his campaign rhetoric, may risk alienating a work force he will need if he plans to overhaul state government, some observers say.
One former cabinet official said state employees have started referring to Allen as "the Republican Doug Wilder." For most of his term, Wilder froze state worker pay and trimmed agency budgets in response to the recession.
Ironically, the major defense of the targeted employees came from Wilder, who told them to ignore Allen's resignation request.
Allen first scoffed at Wilder's order, "as if he would do anything anyway," but eventually withdrew the resignation request and told the bureaucrats they should reapply to his office if they want to be retained.
"It looked like it was scripted by Dr. Seuss: The Grinch who stole Christmas paychecks," said Salster, the former GOP official. "I think the biggest problem he's got is that among his senior staff. There are no graybeards to say, `Let's think about this.' It's as if state government was a computer and somebody hit `format hard drive' and wiped out the institutional memory."
Republican legislators like Sen. Mark Earley of Chesapeake defend Allen's assault on the bureaucracy.
"It is important early on to establish that he wants to use these four years to lead and not continue with the policies of the past," Earley said.
Earley argued that because Democrats have controlled state government for 12 years, many senior-level state workers are connected with that party. "Clearly there are those who are very political. George has to sift those out," he said.
Allen has had little opportunity to address promises he made on the campaign trail. He has announced a special legislative session in the spring to deal with parole and sentencing reform - two of his key proposals.
Democrats, meanwhile, are eager to hold Allen to his election promises. They sense in Allen's early action a youthful governor - Allen is 41 - and staff with a potential for missteps.
"Candidate Allen says, `Abolish parole.' Gov. Allen says, parentheses, `in 12 years,' " said state Democratic Vice Chairman Ken Geroe of Virginia Beach. "Candidate Allen says, `Repay the [federal] retirees.' Gov. Allen says, parentheses, `over time.'
`Candidate Allen says, `Hold tuition costs down and stop the cuts to higher education.' Let's see how he deals with the budget."
by CNB