Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 3, 1995 TAG: 9509050079
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER NOTE: Below
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
``My husband and I have a very small farm,'' says the homemaker and school bus driver from Copper Hill in Floyd County. ``By the time we get up at 6 in the morning and go out and, you know, just try to make a living, you don't have time to sit down and watch a news report or even read the newspaper. It's not that we want to be just stupid people, it's that we've got our priorities in other places.''
This fall, she may have a harder time than usual keeping up - 1995 will be Virginia's busiest election season ever.
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: All 140 seats in the General Assembly will be on the ballot, and, thanks to an aggressive candidate-recruiting effort by Republicans who hope to end the Democrats' century-long monopoly of the legislature, there will be more contested races than ever.
CONSTITUTIONAL OFFICERS: Counties will elect their ``constitutional'' officers - sheriff, commonwealth's attorney, treasurer and commissioner of the revenue. Most clerks of circuit court, another constitutional office, aren't on the ballot this year, although Radford does have a three-way race for its clerk's post while Roanoke and Salem have unopposed candidates.
BOARDS OF SUPERVISORS: Most counties also will be electing some or all of their boards of supervisors.
SCHOOL BOARDS: Most counties also will be electing some or all of their school boards for the first time. In the past, Virginia's school boards were appointed, rather than elected.
OTHER: Finally, there will be a smattering of other elections in some localities. Bedford County voters will decide on a bond issue for libraries and, with their counterparts in Bedford, also will vote on whether to consolidate the two governments.
The local and state offices on the fall ballot are the ones that are closest to the people. Yet, paradoxically, these elections typically prompt the lowest voter turnout.
In the 1992 presidential election, for instance, some 84 percent of Virginia's registered voters made it to the polls.
But the last time this election cycle of General Assembly races and local contests came around, in 1991, fewer than half of the state's registered voters- 49 percent, to be precise - bothered to cast a ballot.
University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato, the state's foremost observer of election trends, predicts this year's turn-out will be somewhat higher, perhaps in the high 50s. ``The reason is you have more candidates spending more money in more contested races than ever before,'' he says. ``Turnout in an off-year election is driven mostly by the degree of controversy and competition and the aggregate spending.''
Nevertheless, these local and state races don't capture the public's imagination in a way that other elections do.
``I don't see anything that focuses people on state government,'' laments state Sen. Brandon Bell, R-Roanoke County. ``Eighty percent of the average person's focus is on the federal government and it needs to be 80 percent on state and local government.''
That, he says, is because state and local governments are starting to assume more and more responsibilities that once were handled at the federal level.
``Before, the feds made all the rules,'' he says. ``If Congress goes where they're headed, they're not going to be setting all the rules. They'll send us money and we'll have to set the rules.''
That means decisions once made in Washington - on welfare, on Medicaid - will now be debated in Richmond.
Take that, figure in the competition between the two parties to see who will control the General Assembly,``and this may be one of the most important elections in Virginia in 100 years,'' Bell says. Democrats have had a lock on the General Assembly since the 1870s but now Republicans stand within striking distance of a majority.
With that in mind, The Roanoke Times and its sister paper in Norfolk, The Virginian-Pilot, conducted a series of roundtable discussions this summer with more than 100 citizens across the state to find out what was on their minds as they pondered the upcoming elections.
Many expressed frustration with the tone of politics these days. Frank Wilkerson, a Roanoke restaurateur, complains that politics aren't ``fun'' anymore.
Campaigns emphasize too many negatives, he says, and paint the choices in such stark contrasts that voters can't identify with them. ``I think they put too much pressure on us,'' says the owner of The Lunchbox. ``A lot of people are getting to where they are so fed up with it, they just won't come vote.''
His was a common complaint. ``In the Oliver North-Chuck Robb campaign [for the U.S. Senate last year] there was so much garbage being spilled by both camps,'' says David Simmons, a retired police officer from Roanoke County. ``Quite a few people just said, `the heck with it, I'm just not going to vote.'''
Other citizens lamented the increasing professionalism of campaigns. This year, even some of the candidates for local offices - most notably, in the five-way race for sheriff of Bedford County and a high-profile contest for commonwealth's attorney in Botetourt County - are hiring political consultants.
``A cap should be set because they're just spending more and more and more and they're buying their way in,'' says retiree Wanda Walrond of Salem.
Yet these local and state races remain the ones where citizens can have the most influence. A presidential election - even a statewide election for governor or U.S. senator - plays out largely in the media. But these races are the ones where citizens are likely to meet a candidate knocking on their door, or shaking hands at the local supermarket.
Sabato suggests other ways citizens can take a more active role in shaping the campaigns: ``They can go to public forums. They can call in questions when public radio holds debates. They can volunteer in a candidate's campaigns. Any parent with children in school should be interested in the school board races. This is a friends-and-neighbors campaign. It's not especially burdensome to carry leaflets around or put a sign in the yard.''
And if citizens don't like the way a candidate is campaigning, he says, they should call the candidate to voice their complaint directly. "Raise hell when something offends your sensibilities," Sabato advises. "Complain. Complain to the candidate, or write a letter to the editor, talk to your friends."
In addition, he says, civic groups can, and should, sponsor debates.
What kind of debates are most useful to citizens?
``The less interference by moderators or journalists, the better,'' Sabato says. ``A free-form debate. Let the candidates question one another. Have a moderator who is, at best, the timekeeper and doesn't interfere unless one candidate slugs another. And there should always been a question period at the end.''
If you're not already registered to vote, the deadline to get signed up is Oct. 10.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB