THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 28, 1994 TAG: 9408300621
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: INSIDE VIRGINIA
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
For a guy who tried so many times to win office, Marshall Coleman sure isn't acting like a man in a hurry this summer. He gives the distinct impression of a candidate killing time, waiting for something to happen.
A relaxed, upbeat Coleman explains what this something is: Come October, voters will be so disgusted with both Robb and Republican Oliver North, they'll look around for an alternative. They don't like Wilder, so they're bound to turn to Coleman. A wave of indignation will swell up, and all Coleman needs to do is be there with his surfboard, ready to ride it into office. Great theory. Will it work?
Paul Goldman, the former Democratic Party chairman who directed Wilder's victory over Coleman in the 1989 governor's race, is skeptical. The problem with Coleman's campaign, he says, is that it's essentially negative.
``Everybody thinks the anti-North vote will be the swing vote this fall,'' Goldman says. ``The real swing vote will be voters who are both anti-North and anti-Clinton.''
Those should be Coleman's prime constituents - basically, Republicans who can't stomach the Republican nominee.
But Goldman warns fellow Democrats (and Coleman, if he'll listen) that North is doing a pretty good job this summer of winning those folks over. If those voters decide North isn't so bad after all, and it's more important to send Clinton a message, then Coleman's constituency evaporates, Goldman says.
But Coleman's laid-back approach is in keeping with his previous campaigns, says former Robb press secretary Steve Johnson. Johnson is best known as one of the Robb aides who got mixed up in the plot to leak a tape of one of Wilder's cellular telephone calls, and wound up pleading guilty to minor charges.
But Johnson, a former Charlottesville political reporter, also did part of his doctoral research on Coleman's come-from-behind victory in the three-way 1989 Republican primary for governor.
Remember, Johnson recalls, Coleman was considered washed up then, too. ``He didn't do anything until he went on TV; he didn't move a point until then. He's very telegenic, and then he put on this big television kick.''
Can Coleman pull that off again this year with an October television campaign? North staffers have to stifle their laughter, but Johnson isn't so sure.
``Don't underestimate Coleman. He always kind of jogs around the track and doesn't do anything until the last minute. It's uncanny. He came from behind and beat Ed Lane on election night in the 1977 attorney general's race, he came from behind and beat Paul Trible on election night, he almost came from behind and beat Doug Wilder on election night.''
Here's a candidate who knows how to pace himself. ``Politicians, if something works, they tend to go back to the well until it doesn't work,'' Johnson says.
Coleman's biggest problem may be staying afloat until he can try to catch that late-autumn electoral wave. ``Coleman's constituency is likely to be more passive than any constituency in the race,'' he says. Upper-middle-class suburbs are not hotbeds of political participation, at least not the envelope-licking and door-knocking kind.
But suburbanites do vote. ``Remember, the suburbs cast 58 percent of the vote in 1993,'' Johnson says. ``It could go to 60 percent this year.''
He figures Coleman's strategy is right. ``There's not much he can do right now.'' Come October, Coleman will buy some television time and hope for the best.
KEYWORDS: U.S. SENATE RACE VIRGINIA CANDIDATES
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