Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 29, 1995 TAG: 9509290035
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KIMBERLY N. MARTIN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
At a Greater Raleigh Court Civic League candidates forum, House of Delegates hopeful Jeff Artis picked a seat near the back of the room.
He wasn't there to speak, just to show his support for his fellow Republicans.
But his presence didn't go unnoticed. Before the forum began, the speaker stopped to introduce "Delegate Jeff Artis."
It was an honest mistake that Artis quickly rose to correct.
"I'm challenger Artis - as of now," he said.
Laughter engulfed the room. But the implication was lost on no one: Come Nov. 7, he intends to be Del. Jeff Artis. And it's a conviction he says is totally justified.
Just look at the polls, he advises.
There it is in blue and white on a board propped against a wall in his cluttered study, which doubles as his campaign headquarters. Of 831 people surveyed on Aug. 31, 237 said they'd support him. That's 22 more people than his opponent, Del. Vic Thomas, got. (The undecided vote had them both beat.)
Of course, the poll, like much of the Artis campaign, is completely homegrown. He scripted the phone survey, and his campaign workers conducted it.
He admits that the poll is not scientific.
"This doesn't show I'm going to win; it shows that I have a legitimate shot," he says.
Artis, a former Patrick Henry in-school suspension teacher, is a newcomer to politics - and to the Roanoke Valley.
He's lived in Roanoke for a total of six years - for three years after he graduated from James Madison University in 1984 and for another three since 1992. And his only political experience is a stint this year studying at the University of Virginia's Institute of Political Leadership.
But Artis and Roanoke GOP Chairman William Fralin paint Artis' newcomer status as a selling point.
"People are looking for citizen legislators now, not professional politicians," says Fralin, who encouraged Artis to run.
And Artis is working that perception for all it's worth. Across the bottom of his campaign literature, it reads: A Fresh Face With New Ideas for the 21st Century.
But some in the Roanoke Valley apparently are not ready for the 21st century or a black delegate in a predominantly white district.
Artis, a self-proclaimed black conservative, says he started receiving death threats just after he announced his candidacy in May.
The callers' comments varied, but Artis says the general message was the same: No black man is going to beat Vic Thomas.
It was a point he believes was driven home by two incidents: Artis' car, which was parked in front of his Southeast Roanoke home, was vandalized; a few weeks later, he found broken glass strewn across his back porch and deposited in his 7-year-old daughter's wading pool.
At the time, Artis called a news conference and matched the callers' threats with one of his own.
"If someone comes into my home, I'm not going to get on my knees and pray. I've got something waiting for him," he said.
Despite that attitude, last week when Virginia Republicans were in Richmond signing their version of the congressional Republicans' "Contract With America," Artis was at home - for safety reasons.
He's cut any campaign appearance that's more than one hour from his home.
But that doesn't mean he's giving up. On the contrary, he said, the threats and the more subtle racism he's run into on the campaign trail push him to do more.
"When someone tells me they're not going to vote for me because I'm black, it motivates me to hit 50 more houses that day," he says.
"If anything, the threats will make him work harder, if he can work harder," Fralin said.
|n n| Clad in slacks, a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and suede cowboy boots, Artis is pounding the pavement of Southeast Roanoke. It's just after 9 a.m., but his day started hours earlier, behind a mop.
He's his church's janitor. It's a part-time job, but these days, it's his sole source of income. The West Virginia native quit his job at Patrick Henry High and put his year-old Black Conservative Newsletter on hiatus so he could devote himself full time to campaigning.
"We'll be eating a lot of pinto beans and corn bread," he jokes. "I made the decision early on to concentrate more on name recognition than fund raising."
It shows. The $7,840 he's raised for his campaign is the least of all of the Roanoke Valley candidates.
That doesn't bother him. It's part of the plan he's been drafting for more than 20 years, which is how long he's been dreaming of running for office.
"Before I started, I decided that we could run a winnable campaign on approximately $10,000," Artis says. "Ten years ago, if I would've raised this much money, then the press would've said that I was trying to buy the election. ... Times have changed, but the people haven't changed."
So he's running the old-fashioned way. Armed with his self-designed brochures, Artis has been knocking on doors every day since early this summer, talking to parents at school bus stops in the morning and stopping people in grocery store parking lots. (Ironically, that's the way Thomas unseated an incumbent for his seat in 1973.)
When people aren't home, Artis leaves a brochure with a "Sorry I missed you. Jeff" scribbled on it - even on the doors of homes that look abandoned.
To those voters he does find at home, he goes over a sheet stuffed inside his campaign materials called "The Facts About The Thomas Record." It charges that Thomas, whom Artis calls a "1960s liberal masquerading as a conservative," supports racial quotas, is soft on crime and doesn't support small businesses.
Thomas has countered that some of the bills Artis cites were killed in committees that Thomas doesn't sit on.
Artis, however, is standing by his Thomas fact sheet. He says it's his equivalent of a TV ad.
"If I had a dollar for everyone who says 'I did not know that' when I hand them the brochure, I'd have more money than Trixie," Artis said, referring to Republican House of Delegates candidate Trixie Averill from Roanoke County.
But he doesn't. At last count, Averill reported raising $117,426. Artis' lack of funds is the one thing that concerns Frank Penn, his friend and former supervisor at Patrick Henry.
"I'm not sure he has the resources to get his message to enough people," said Penn, who has heard that message during lunch hours, before and after work.
Artis preaches what he calls "old-time personal responsibility."
He's for welfare changes - he says the current system enslaves its recipients; against affirmative action, which he says undermines minorities' credibility; for abortion rights; for charter schools; and for tougher crime legislation, including bringing back chain gangs to discourage juvenile offenders from becoming career criminals.
The fact that his sermonettes sound like a hybrid between two of radio's notable conservatives - "Black Avenger" Ken Hamblin and Rush Limbaugh - shouldn't be surprising. He's a fan of both and has called in to their shows.
Like Hamblin and Limbaugh, Artis is known to be plain-spoken. Artis calls it "calling a spade a spade." And he sometimes uses colorful language to do it.
That frank style worked with the sometimes troubled students Artis worked with, Penn says.
"He has a real knack for communicating with kids who are in trouble. He has a way of coming straight to the point, without whitewashing things," Penn says.
But how does that approach fare outside the classroom?
Here are a few examples of Artis' candor in action:
nIn November, he attended a Roanoke City Council meeting. He was there to tell local officials that the residents of Southeast Roanoke felt neglected by the city, but he put it more bluntly, saying that the people of Southeast Roanoke feel that government doesn't "give a damn about them."
nThree weeks ago, Artis was upset by six words in an article about his proposed domestic violence legislation, so he faxed a letter to the newspaper saying, "your paper, your editors, and the reporter covering my campaign, whoever is responsible for insulting my family, can kiss my behind."
"Maybe he doesn't assess his words for their political impact before he says them, but people may find that refreshing," says William Wood, executive director of the University of Virginia's Institute of Political Leadership.
That's what Artis is counting on, since he says he has no intention of softening his approach.
"We live in an age where we're so afraid of hurting people's feelings that nothing's getting done. While we're worried about political correctness, young people are graduating with degrees they can't even read, and young people are getting pregnant," he says. "You need people like me. I'm not going to lie or deceive people. I'm not interested in being politically correct, and those who are are a bunch of candy-asses."
Fralin puts it a little more diplomatically.
"What he's saying is that [political correctness] shows a lack of moral courage," Fralin explained. "I would discourage him from speaking in those terms in public. But Jeff is very intelligent, and I trust him."
Since Artis announced his bid for the House of Delegates, there have been whisperings that his campaign is a ploy to get him a City Council seat next year.
Artis concedes that he, too, has heard the talk that if a run for council isn't in his playbook, it should be.
"Some people have asked me as far back as April, don't run for the House of Delegates; wait and run for mayor. ... All I can say is it's very, very flattering, but my focus right now is getting into the General Assembly," he says. "If the people decide they want me to run for City Council or mayor, then I'll do what the people want. But I think the whole question is going to be moot, because I'm going to win this race in November."
JEFF ARTIS
Party: Republican
Age: 38
Occupation: Former Patrick Henry in-school suspension teacher, publisher of Black Conservative Newsletter, which is on hiatus until after the election, and part-time custodian for his church.
Residence: Southeast Roanoke
Family: Married, three children.
WHAT THE CANDIDATE SAYS ABOUT HIS:
CORE VALUES: "Everything I do is based on personal responsibility and accountability.
"People have got to step up to the plate and realize for us to continue to be the best state, they're going to have to depend more on themselves and less on government."
INDEPENDENCE: "I'm at odds with the Republican Party on a couple of issues. They're pro-life; I'm pro-choice. And they're leaning more and more to the right, and I think we can go too far to the right.
"It's important for a member of the House of Delegates or any politician to promote party politics and bipartisan politics. You have to be able to draw the line between what's best for the party and what's best for the people he's representing.
"A politician's first responsibility is to the people who elected him. The views of the people in the district come first; the party comes second."
VISION: Artis says the state needs "an efficient welfare program. An efficient criminal justice system that deals not only with punishment but prevention and rehabilitation.
"An education that works for all students instead of a small number of students. A working relationship between government, communities and the individuals who live in those communities to solve the problems facing them as equal partners.
"Also, massive economic development with a working relationship that benefits businesses, its employees and the community at large."
Keywords:
PROFILE POLITICS
Memo: ***CORRECTION***