ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, August 27, 1996 TAG: 9608270077
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO CONVENTION
DATELINE: CHICAGO
SOURCE: ROBERT LITTLE
In Democratic Party politics, some states have more pull than others. And at national conventions, those others get assigned seats way in the back with
Unlike the San Diego Convention Center, where Republicans held their convention two weeks ago, Chicago's United Center offers few genuinely dismal views.
But compared to the breath-smelling vantage point Virginia Republicans enjoyed in San Diego, Virginia Democrats might as well be sitting with the janitors.
It's nothing a pair of good binoculars couldn't fix. And Virginia's Democrats are still buffered from the back bleachers by a few dozen Wyoming colleagues.
Besides, a few delegations have even more remote locations. Delegates from Guam and American Samoa travelled a bazillion miles to sit a $2 cab ride from the podium.
The front-sitters are the homes of the front-runners - Bill Clinton's and Al Gore's Arkansas and Tennessee. Kansas and New York? The homes of Bob Dole and Jack Kemp? The rear, of course.
It's all politics, and it's no surprise. Even the press has its own system of politics and payoffs. Among the pencil pushers with the best seats: Capitol Hill's Congressional Quarterly, better than The New York Times. CQ has an elected representative to the congressional press galleries; the Times does not.
Still alive and well
Maybe doctors don't generally tell cancer patients to hire political strategists, but Rep. Norman Sisisky, D-Petersburg, could have used one for his recent bout with colon cancer.
The rumor had spread - he thinks by Republicans - that the 69-year-old congressman was going to die last Oct. 31. It wasn't true, according to Sisisky's doctors. But who could know? Maybe the GOP's opposition research was much better than anyone was aware?
So when the fateful day came, Sisisky stayed awake until midnight, ready to stare death in the face. It never came.
``Then I thought maybe they meant Pacific time. So I'd better stay up until 3.''
Sisisky has so far got no closer to the Great Beyond than Capitol Hill. Doctors say the cancer is gone.
``A good thing happened out of it, though,'' Sisisky said Monday, after the state Democratic Party's breakfast meeting. ``When they tried to cut money for prescreening out of the budget, I knew enough to tell them they were crazy and make them put it back in.''
LENGTH: Medium: 57 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICS PRESIDENTby CNB