Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 6, 1994 TAG: 9403080011
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Margie Fisher
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Butler, many recall, was part of the first Republican surge in the legislature 32 years ago. Taking his seat in the House of Delegates in 1962 - the first Roanoke Republican to be elected to that body since 1901 - Butler helped swell the GOP ranks in the 100-member chamber to five (up from three the previous session.)
Then-Speaker E. Blackburn "Blackie" Moore, who believed God to be a Byrd Democrat and the House the Byrd Democrats' temple, welcomed this hotbed of Republicans like he'd welcome roaches in the kitchen of the Commonwealth Club. And, until he retired as speaker in 1968, he treated them accordingly: assigning them to committees that never met and trying to squash them.
But he couldn't. By 1964, the Republican ranks had grown to a mighty 13 - 10 delegates and three senators. The assembly's first GOP caucus was formed, with Butler as its chairman.
In 1969, Virginia Republicans elected their first governor - Butler's law partner and fellow Roanoker, Linwood Holton. Some mountain-valley upstarts, like John Dalton of Radford and Pete Giesen of Staunton, began imagining a day when Republicans might have majority status in the legislature, but this was roundly dismissed as GOP hallucinations.
And though several Republicans - Del. Giesen, Del. Andy Guest of Front Royal, Del. Clint Miller of Woodstock, former Del. Jerry Geisler of Hillsville, for instance - were well-liked and treated f+ialmosto as equals, GOP lawmakers as a group were regarded as ineffective nerds, nuisances and knuckleheads.
We're not talking ancient history here, either. As recently as 1987, the late House Speaker A. L. Philpott of Bassett warned voters in Danville that they'd be throwing away their votes and lose all benefits that flow from the assembly if they elected Republican legislators because only the Democrats had sway.
Oh, he allowed as how Republicans might occasionally come up with a good idea. But "if it's good legislation, we certainly aren't going to let it go through with a Republican's name on it." The Democrats, Philpott candidly admitted, would simply steal it - "have it redrafted and put a Democrat's name on it."
Make no mistake: Were Caldwell Butler to visit the '94 assembly, he'd find the Democrats still very much in control. But much of their old arrogance, their bully-boy bluster, is gone. There's simply no room for their swashbuckling - because every place they swash, they buckle into Republicans.
Butler, of course, knows the base numbers. In the House, 47 Republican legislators. In the 40-member Senate, 18. Just whiskers away from claiming first-time majority status in both chambers.
But that base isn't the half of it. Republican lobbyists prowl the corridors. Legislative offices are crowded with GOP aides, activists, hangers-on. State agencies are filled with new faces - Republican faces. And, with Republicans George Allen and Jim Gilmore installed in the governor's office and attorney general's office respectively, Republicans - some who never set foot in Richmond before January - stream out of the executive branch into the halls and meeting rooms of the Capitol and the General Assembly Building.
You really have to see it to believe it, Caldwell.
Maybe, as old-time denizens sniff, some of these newcomers are so dopey they can't find the restrooms, much less stuff hidden in the budget bill. But darned if they don't act like they belong there, have a right to be there.
What's more, they act like they're there to stay, as if majority status is inevitable. The only doubt in their minds seems to be whether they'll win it in both houses with the 1995 elections, or whether it will come first in the Senate, then in the House (or vice versa).
Now I hate to kick a party while it's up, but majority status may always elude it. If it were left to the Giesens, the Guests, the Millers - to former lawmakers like Butler, Steve Agee, Wiley Mitchell - it might be a wrap. Moderate Republicans like these f+iearnedo the respect the GOP is now getting at the state capital. Not by partisan bombast, and not merely by years of steady-as-you-go efforts to build numerical strength, but also by being highly competent, sound-thinking, hard-working and effective legislators. Folks you'd trust to govern.
But such Republicans have nevernot yet been able to divert the GOP from its instincts for self-destruction. Can they this year?
My hunch is this: If the party does the expected in June and nominates zealot Ollie North as its U.S. Senate candidate, the assembly's Joint Republican Caucus better learn how to subtract. If North should actually be elected - a curse, perhaps, wished on Republicans by Blackie Moore or Philpott from the grave - all the GOP gains in the assembly will gradually disappear. The assembly's Democrats sense it. That's why they're not yet shaking in their boots.
Go to Richmond now, Caldwell Butler, while there's much to gloat about. Enjoy, Pete Giesen, et al., the big numbers on your side of the aisle - while they last.
Moderate Republicans, of course, may keep dreaming of majority status in Richmond. But Ollie North, posturing as a dream candidate, surely is their worst nightmare.
Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1994
by CNB