Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, May 28, 1994                   TAG: 9406030072
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PARTY LOYALTY

While Coleman has registered as a delegate to the convention, he won't sign the loyalty pledge until and unless he attends. And, while a Northern Virginia businessman is circulating petitions to get Coleman on the U.S. Senate ballot as an independent if Oliver North wins the GOP nomination, Coleman himself has not publicly endorsed (or repudiated) the effort.

Still, McSweeney has a point. It would be interesting to hear Coleman try to justify being both a delegate to the convention next month to nominate a Republican Senate candidate, and an independent candidate in November to oppose the GOP nominee.

Granted, it is hard not to sympathize with delegates who have enough sense to find a North candidacy repugnant. If they don't attend the convention, they can't help the effort to deny their party's nomination to a convicted felon; if they do, they must sign a pledge to support him should he emerge the nominee.

If the party of Linwood Holton, John Dalton and John Warner mutates into the party of North and Pat Robertson, a good many Virginia Republicans will be rethinking the depth of their party allegiance - as well they should.

Convention loyalty oaths, for that matter, are nothing to cherish. (A primary nominating system would helpfully get rid of them.) And you have to wonder at McSweeney's threat to excommunicate party leaders who can't stomach North. Are Warner and Holton to be cast out, too?

All this notwithstanding, it still should be noted that the two-party system would suffer if frustrated delegates resorted to independent candidacies every time they lost a vote. Parties require some discipline to hold together.

And whatever the merits of the party rules, they do say that part of being a convention delegate is plighting one's troth to the nominee of that convention, whoever he or she may be.

Troths get broken a lot these days, of course, and the loyalty pledge does not require active support of a nominee one finds objectionable. Golden Silence can still speak volumes. Hence, even if North wins the nomination, anti-North delegates to the convention have honorable options.

But is running against a nominee you have pledged to support one of them? At the least, to become a candidate by breaking one's word would be to lessen the contrast with North.

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POLITICS