THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 6, 1994 TAG: 9406040018
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Medium
DATELINE: 940606 LENGTH:
Politics, however, is usually messy, and the choices facing voters are often not pretty. For now, Virginians can console themselves with the fact that both North and James Miller ran a generally clean, well-fought race. Miller - a decent man who was an excellent budget director for President Reagan - undoubtedly suffered by appearing to be a tool of Sen. John Warner and the GOP establishment. He deserved a better fate.
{REST} But it is the Oliver North phenomenon that will draw the most attention. His supporters back him fervently as a true American hero. Not even former President Reagan could convince them otherwise. His detractors, notably Senator Warner, detest him with equal passion. Most voters, according to surveys, are vaguely uneasy about North.
Whatever his past involvement in covert operations, no one can charge that North has run his Senate campaign by anything other than the rules. In an extraordinary feat for a non-incumbent, North has raised more money for his campaign than any other Senate candidate in the country except Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy.
For the past 2 1/2 years, North has traveled the length and breadth of the Old Dominion, winning support and building his party the old-fashioned way: with shoe leather and personal contact. The fact that he was able to do so over the strident opposition of the party establishment does not speak well of the latter's standing with the grass roots.
Indeed, it is hard to take seriously Senator Warner's claim of being motivated solely by his concern that a man convicted of federal crimes (though the convictions were overturned on appeal) not be allowed to sit in the U.S. Senate. Warner has never hidden his distaste for the party's conservative activists (who loyally supported him in most of his political career). Warner's opposition to Michael Farris' campaign for lieutenant governor, for instance, betrays the ideological source of his animus. Few were surprised when Warner said he would bolt the party if North were nominated.
Why does North seem to get stronger the more he is attacked? The answer might be viewed in a worldwide context. North's campaign seems to be a part of a global grass roots revolt against entrenched politicians that has been taking place since the end of the Cold War.
In last year's parliamentary elections, for instance, Canada's establishmentarian Progressive Conservative Party was reduced to a rump of two seats, displaced by the populist anti-tax Reform Party. Italian politics has been turned inside out by the rise of the low-tax, anti-big government Northern League. Japan's Liberal Democratic Party has split into warring factions and lost power.
Here in the United States, California high-tech entrepreneur Ron Unz is making a surprisingly strong challenge to tax-raising incumbent GOP Gov. Pete Wilson. Virginia's own Gov. George Allen was given little chance against Mary Sue Terry, as was Christine Todd Whitman, who upset James Florio in New Jersey.
The much-heralded ``peace dividend'' was not returned to the people who earned it, but has been used by politicians to fuel more social spending. As foreign policy and the private sector are turned on their heads, the civilian side of government just keeps grinding on - at great expense - as though nothing had changed.
Oliver North is offering a vision of change, whatever one thinks of it: lower taxes, less regulation and term limits. John Warner has discovered that, when up against a vision, it is tough selling voters on the status quo.
At least North's flaws are evident before the election, so the voters can judge his worthiness. The heat of the campaign will show of what mettle all the candidates are made. Let there be politics.
{KEYWORDS} U.S. SENATE RACE REPUBLICAN NOMINATION
by CNB