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

DATE: MONDAY, October 23, 1995                   TAG: 9510240007
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CREIGH DEEDS FOR RE-ELECTION

TALK OF any legislator's leadership potential is speculative. But Democratic Del. Creigh Deeds seems a safer bet than many for a future leadership role in the Virginia General Assembly. At 37, the former Bath County prosecutor is seeking his third two-year term and is beginning to accrue seniority. His nonconfrontational style should help him build influence with colleagues.

For the 18th Legislative District - based in the Alleghany Highlands and extending into portions of Augusta, Rockbridge and Botetourt counties - such considerations are important. As a rural district in Western Virginia, it is losing political clout to Virginia's faster-growing urban corridor to the east. One way for places like the 18th to get their voices heard is to send effective legislators to Richmond.

The future is one reason for recommending Deeds' re-election; past performance is another. Deeds supported the governor on parole-reform and other initiatives. But in the 1995 session, he joined with others to block George Allen's ill-considered, ill-fated budget amendments that would have cut taxes and education funds while increasing state indebtedness.

As chairman of the Blue Ridge Economic Development Commission, Deeds has been in the forefront of regional job-recruitment and job-retention efforts. Among his other interests: health insurance consumer-protection legislation and clean-ups of abandoned private landfills, an interest arising from the mess at the Alleghany County site of the closed Kim-Stan landfill. Working with Republican state Sen. Bo Trumbo of Fincastle, Deeds has sought to establish an abandoned-landfill authority in Virginia; the next step is to find money to fund it.

Unopposed in 1993, Deeds this year has drawn two challengers who in different ways reflect the flux under way in American politics.

Ben Nicely, elected to the Rockbridge County Board of Supervisors in 1991 as an independent, attended the 1993 state Democratic convention and until this year was a member (unbeknownst to him, he says) of the Rockbridge Democratic Committee. Now he is the Republican nominee for Deeds' House seat. Nicely appears to have progressive and informed attitudes on county issues. On the state issues he would face if elected to the House, he seems less surefooted.

The other challenger is Stephanie Porras, a Green Party candidate on the ballot as an independent. Porras, a mental-health nurse, and her party raise intriguing points on environmental and other issues. But their contention that Democrats are no different from Republicans is not shared, at least not this year in this district, by mainstream environmental groups that have endorsed Deeds.

In 1991, when Deeds first was elected to the House, we endorsed his Republican opponent - noting, however, that the district "would be well-served by either candidate." This year, the district would be well-served by Deeds' re-election.

Keywords:
POLITICS ENDORSEMENT

by CNB