Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 7, 1995 TAG: 9510090032
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY AND LISA APPLEGATE STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: MARION LENGTH: Medium
Call it dueling top dogs.
State Sen. Madison Marye, D-Shawsville, and Republican challenger, Pat Cupp, each brought in his political party's top elected official Friday for simultaneous stump stops 70 miles apart.
While Gov. George Allen sang Cupp's praises in Marion, Lt. Gov. Don Beyer backed Marye's call in Christiansburg for more spending on computers in classrooms.
Speaking to a dozen supporters, Marye announced a plan he said would decrease educational disparity in Southwest Virginia.
"I think the best, fastest way to overcome disparity in education is to put computers on the desks of ... as many children as we can," Marye said.
Marye wants to see a computer for every three students in Virginia. Statewide, there's an average of one computer per 10 students. Marye said adding the new computers would cost about $10 million - to be paid for from a $700 million growth in revenue - and take about four years.
"Shall we spend our revenues on prison cells or on the best tools to keep our youth" educated? Marye asked.
Beyer cited his own experience as a father with a son whose learning disability kept him at a second-grade reading level. After using a home computer for six months, Beyer said, his oldest son's reading ability caught up with his seventh-grade peers'.
Allen, who also stumped Friday for Roanoke-area candidates, said electing Cupp and re-electing Del. Barnes Lee Kidd, R-Tazewell, is crucial to continuing the Republican "renaissance" and turning the tables on an "arrogant, tax-and-spend Democratic majority" in the General Assembly.
"I look at the Democrats as outdated: They're out of ideas; they're out of touch with the people," Allen said. "We the people need to take back control of our Virginia government."
At a campaign breakfast before 34 party faithful, Allen outlined his party's seven-point "Pledge for Honest Change," the knockoff of House Speaker Newt Gingrich's successful "Contract With America" in last year's congressional races.
Whether opposing the attempt to return lottery profits to local governments or opposing the effort to grant teachers immunity from frivolous lawsuits, Democrats in the General Assembly have obstructed the agenda at every turn, Allen said.
Kidd, a contractor, defeated a 12-year incumbent in 1993 and is opposed this fall by John Tate, the county attorney for Smyth County. Ever since former Gov. John Dalton of Radford left office in 1982, Kidd said, the attitude from the Democratic-controlled governor's office has been, "well, the state stops at Roanoke.
"Now we have a governor who genuinely cares about Southwest Virginia," Kidd said.
On the campaign trail in the New River Valley this fall, Cupp usually has taken great pains to distance himself from Allen on higher-education issues. But Friday, he waved a copy of Allen's pledge from the stump. "I have been saying this since May," Cupp said.
Cupp repeated his charge that, after 22 years, Marye is out of touch with and inaccessible to the people of his district, which covers Montgomery, Smyth and Grayson counties, Galax and parts of Pulaski and Carroll counties.
"The senator that don't know the people and does not respect his people needs to be replaced; he's been there too long," Cupp said.
Cupp said starting Monday he would be in Smyth County nearly every day of the last month of the campaign.
Cupp gave Marye a run for the money Friday in storytelling ability, with a tale of pigs and politicking. To describe what he'll do to get elected, he recounted running into a potential voter at a fair who asked if he wanted to pet her potbellied pig. Though apprehensive, he petted it and fed it an apple. Later, a friend teased him that he'd do absolutely anything to get a vote.
"I said, 'I haven't kissed that pig,''' Cupp recounted. "But the election's not over yet. I won't say I won't kiss a pig if that's what it takes to get elected."
Chimed in the governor: "I had to kiss a pig one time."
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB