THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 23, 1994 TAG: 9410250485
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICH SQUARE LENGTH: Long : 115 lines
Republican Ted Tyler is a fixated 1st District congressional candidate who is convinced that if Mr. Smith could go to Washington against great odds in the old-time movie, so can Mr. Tyler.
This is the second time in two years that Tyler has been abandoned by his own Republican party, but has struggled ahead anyhow, spending his own money in a lonely effort to beat U.S. Rep. Eva M. Clayton, the incumbent Democrat.
``I'm surprised every day to find out how much new support I have,'' Tyler said last week. ``Don't forget - I got over 54,000 votes in the 1992 campaign, and I got more votes than George Bush did in the 1st District. I feel like I'm way ahead of that already.''
Tyler at 59 is a successful businessman, a conservative who also kept a town budget balanced for the nine years he served as mayor of Rich Square in Northampton County.
He is most of all an unsinkable congressional candidate who never seems to think about the odds he faces in a traditionally Democratic U.S. House District that was redrawn by the N.C. General Assembly two years ago to give it a black voter majority.
When Eva Clayton beat Tyler in 1992, she became the first African American and the first woman to go to the U.S. House of Representatives since the turn of the century.
So it is perhaps all the more remarkable that when Tyler appears at bipartisan candidates' forums, veteran Democrats are often among those who come up to shake his hand after the speeches.
Tyler's Republicanism is politically proper - balance the budget, cut taxes, curb welfare - but it is also hand-tooled by Tyler to reflect some of his personal convictions.
He doesn't come down flatly against abortion, for instance.
``I just don't think the government should pay for abortions,'' he says.
This year he is increasingly concerned about federal spending for social programs that are ``outside the budget.'' ``We can't balance a budget if there's no way to control mandated spending that has been locked in place by previous legislation,'' he says.
Tyler's independence may be one reason why the GOP fails to give him financial aid or even the comfort of a little support from party headquarters.
``The Republican Party hasn't spent a dime on me, but I think it's a business decision,'' he says without rancor. ``They only seem interested in the 3rd District this year.''
The GOP has supplied substantial sums and brought in heavy political hitters from Washington, D.C., to help Republican Walter B. Jones Jr. try to beat Congressman H. Martin Lancaster, D-Goldsboro, in the 3rd Congressional District race.
The 1st and 3rd District campaigns are heavy with political irony.
When the legislature redrew the two districts in 1992 under voting rights guidelines, the 1st District became a string of heavily black voting enclaves that stretches from the Virginia border to South Carolina. The 3rd District received many of the white voters who had been in the old 1st District.
And Jones is a former Democrat who beat Eva Clayton in the initial 1992 1st District Democratic primary. Jones didn't have the required 40-percent of the votes to get the nomination, and Clayton eventually won a runoff and later a spot in Congress.
Tyler has no time for irony.
``I'm going to win this thing,'' he said Friday night after a long drive home from campaign talks in the Wilmington area - a southeastern corner of the 1st District.
``I've spent more than $10,000 of my own money on the race so far,'' Tyler said. ``It's a good investment because I think being a member of the U.S. House of Representatives is the most important job a person could have, even though I signed up for term limitations that would hold me to no more than three two-year terms.''
For years Tyler has traveled throughout North Carolina as a pharmaceutical salesman, and the same professional friends who helped him in his first single-handed race against Clayton are ``sort of'' helping out again.
``They send me an occasional check, but I never ask for anything.
While Clayton's campaign is coordinated by a busy staff from offices in Greenville and Warrenton, Tyler's ``headquarters'' is a front table in a downtown Rich Square restaurant.
David and Lynda Johnson, who own the restaurant, have known Tyler for years and they keep him posted on campaign information that often results in strategy revisions around the big table by the door where Tyler's wife, Kathryn, presides as campaign manager. The three grown Tyler children are ever-ready to help out with posters and placards and required voter-buttonholing where needed.
It would be out of character for Tyler to criticize his Democratic opponent in the campaign.
``Mrs. Clayton's a nice lady, but I really don't have any reason to mention her,'' he says, ``I know what I stand for and I know what I can do in this race.
``Dizzy Dean, the great baseball pitcher, used to say it ain't braggin' if you can do it.
``I can do it.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Herbert Marion ``Ted'' Tyler
Graphic
HERBERT MARION ``TED'' TYLER
Age: 59.
Elected offices: Town Board and for nine years mayor of Rich
Square, Northampton County.
Education: Wake Forest University, political science degree;
Northampton County public schools.
Party: Republican.
Occupation: senior pharmaceutical salesman; more than 28 years
with Squibb drug company.
Military service: ROTC at Wake Forest University.
Memberships: Mason, Sudan Temple; Rotary.
Family: wife, Kathryn; three children, Cynthia Tyler Moore,
Herbert M. Tyler Jr., Jeffrey S. Tyler.
KEYWORDS: ELECTION NORTH CAROLINA CANDIDATES by CNB