THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, December 10, 1994 TAG: 9412100034
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long : 190 lines
Congressman Robert C. Scott, Democrat of Virginia, first-termer, survivor of the massacre of '94, stepped into a Capitol building elevator last week with a warm smile for its young operator.
``How'ya doing?'' he asked.
``Worried about my job,'' she said.
Automation forced most elevator jockeys into other work years ago, but politics threatens the handful remaining in the Capitol. Newt Gingrich's Republican Guard is taking over the House and a 40-year-old Democratic order is crumbling.
Except in Virginia.
Against the electoral tide that swept Republicans to power in Congress on Nov. 8, the Old Dominion was a bulwark for Democrats. The party turned back Oliver North's bid to unseat Sen. Charles Robb and lost but one House seat - in a district that would have been tough even in a good year.
Only Rep. Leslie L. Byrne, a Northern Virginian who is the first woman ever to represent Virginia in Washington, was toppled. But her loss to Republican Tom Davis still leaves the GOP with only five of Virginia's 11 House seats.
With Republicans gaining eight Senate and 55 House seats nationwide, no other state of Virginia's size or larger had so little turnover in its delegation.
How could this happen in such a Republican year in a state with a popular Republican governor? Is Virginia still the ``center of social rest'' described by generations of scholars? Or have Virginia Democrats discovered - perhaps stumbled onto - some secret of survival missed by their brethren from Maine to California? And with the House going to the Republicans, will the influence of a Democratic majority delegation like Virginia's be diminished?
``Look at how strange we are,'' mused Bill Wood, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Political Leadership. Virginians are conservative enough to have favored GOP presidential candidates in every election save one since 1952, yet liberal enough to be the only Americans ever to elect an African-American governor, he noted.
``This isn't a Republican or a Democratic result, it's an incumbent result,'' argued Byrne, the only Virginia Democrat to lose in the Nov. 8 congressional races. Except for her district and Scott's, which did not exist until 1992, each Virginia congressional seat was created by the General Assembly to protect a particular incumbent, she said.
Scott's seat was drawn for an African-American, which Scott is, and essentially was conceded to the Democrats, Byrne said. But the 11th was envisioned as a swing district, and so no one should be surprised that it swung Republican in a Republican year.
Successful Democrats in the delegation see their victories as reflective of their effort to stay close to people back home.
``Republicans ran the same campaign all over the country,'' said Scott. ``It was a canned speech, the same phrases. You couldn't listen to a Republican candidate running for public office in 1994 for two minutes without hearing the phrases: `professional politician - term limits - tax and spend.'
``And if the voters didn't know the Democratic candidate very well, the canned speech might prevail. I think in Virginia, all of the incumbents are fairly well known in their districts and that kind of nonsense just didn't sell.''
Virginians tend ``to go with a known quantity,'' agreed Rep. Owen B. Pickett of Virginia Beach, another Democrat who won re-election.
``The idea of a national agenda,'' the Republican ``Contract with America'' through which voters were encouraged to vent their anger at President Clinton, ``just never took hold'' in Virginia, he said.
Scott observed that Democrats constantly must struggle to assemble and hold a winning coalition of African-Americans, organized labor, feminists, Jews and liberals. Republicans are less diverse and so can more easily bring candidates together on a platform like the one outlined in the contract.
``If somebody tried to give more than one Democrat a 10-point plan for his campaign . . .'' Scott chortled. ``Can you imagine two Democrats getting handed that . . . to say nothing of every Democrat running across the country?''
Wood said two words - Oliver North - also explain much of the Virginia Democratic success of 1994.
The threat of a North victory energized Democratic voters and workers across the state, he said, and alarmed moderate-to-conservative independents. The attention focused on North kept GOP candidates down the ticket from getting voters to pay attention to them and the Contract with America, Wood said.
The result was that even against Robb, who was weakened by personal scandals and a lackluster first term, North could manage but 43 percent of the vote. ``And if the top of your ticket, who's flawed, gets only 43 percent, then local factors kick in,'' he said. ``Everybody likes their own congressman.''
Up and down the hallways of the legislative office buildings around the Capitol last week, Republicans were electing their leaders, restructuring committees, announcing worker layoffs and generally shaking things up.
Democrats were taking down pictures, packing moving boxes and looking for jobs so energetically that at least one lobbyist had taken to calling his fax the ``resume machine.''
``There is no market for ex-Democratic Hill staffers,'' said Alice Alonge, an aide to Rep. Norman Sisisky, a Democrat who represents most of western Tidewater.
Alonge's job is safe, but plenty of her friends are facing unemployment. Republicans are promising to cut committee staffs by one-third, increasing the pressure on Democratic workers who would have seen their ranks shrink anyway in the shift from majority to minority status.
``It's a lot like death - the death of a friend,'' said Elizabeth Methany, Byrne's press secretary. Her current boss is the third member of Congress Methany has served; now she's thinking about a move to the private sector, and away from Washington.
``The debate has become more caustic, on every issue it seems . . .'' Methany said. ``It's gotten to be much less pleasant.''
Some Democrats, re-elected but nervous about the new political landscape, are further tightening the job market by shaking up their offices. Robb will be letting several people go at the end of the year; his top aides are understood to be ``painting pictures'' for those they hope will depart voluntarily.
``Any leads that people find are very jealously guarded,'' said one job-seeker.
Many Republicans are looking for work too, under more pleasant circumstances.
Dan Scandling, a senior aide to Rep. Herbert H. Bateman, a Newport News Republican, is getting resumes ``from all over the place'' as GOP loyalists scramble to be part of their party's takeover. He's happy with his staff, he said, but has told colleagues ``this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity - go out and see if you can advance your career.''
Individual members like Bateman have few if any jobs to dispense, unless they head full committees. But Scandling noted that the GOP's House leadership can fill dozens of patronage positions, down to the guy whose booming voice announces ``Mr. Speaker! The President of the United States!'' when the president comes to deliver his annual State of the Union message.
Bateman plans no hiring. Indeed, he's trying to protect the jobs of a couple of Republican staffers on the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee, which is being abolished in the GOP's House reorganization.
Bateman would have been the committee's chairman had it survived. Instead, he'll head a yet-to-be-determined subcommittee on the new House National Security Committee, formerly the Armed Services Committee. The job sounds less important but it could be more so, particularly with the huge military presence in Hampton Roads.
Two other Virginians, Reps. Thomas J. Bliley Jr. of Richmond and Frank R. Wolf of Fairfax, also figure to get major new responsibilities when the Republicans take control in the House.
Bliley, perhaps the tobacco industry's foremost defender in Congress, will head the House Commerce Committee. He has already announced there will be no more committee hearings on tobacco. Departing Chairman Henry Waxman of California battled the industry this year over what he said were efforts to produce more addictive high-nicotine cigarettes.
Wolf is expected to head the transportation subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, where he will hold sway over billions of dollars in federal highway aid.
Sisisky would prefer that Democrats had retained a majority, but is ``thrilled to death'' that three Virginians will be so well-positioned. His own plans to head an Armed Services subcommittee were ruined by his party's fall, but his ability to get things done won't necessarily suffer, he said.
``I haven't felt anything yet'' from Republicans who might want revenge for slights they suffered during the long Democratic reign in the House, Sisisky said. ``I get along with them fine,'' and generally there is bi-partisan agreement on defense issues in the Armed Services panel, he said.
Indeed, some sources suggest that with Republicans in control of Congress, conservative Democrats like Sisisky, Pickett and L.F. Payne, whose district covers most of Southside Virginia, may find it easier to hold their seats. The reason: The Clinton White House will now be forced to deal with Republicans directly to pass its programs instead of pressuring Democrats to hew to a sometimes unpopular party line.
Others are less sanguine. ``Nobody likes to lose an election,'' Byrne observed while cleaning out her desk last week. But with Republicans in charge, ``for me, it's kind of a relief'' not to be returning.
``It's going to be their Congress, their legislative agenda,'' she said, with Democrats assuming the spoiler's role to attempt to block policies they oppose.
Bateman waved off suggestions that once in control, Republicans will use House rules to block Democratic initiatives and settle scores that have been festering for decades. ``I would think that we would surprise people by our ability to rise above,'' such tactics, he said.
Still, he conceded that ``some Democrats are going to hear things they weren't accustomed to hearing,'' when they seek permission to bring particular issues to the floor or try to keep others from getting there.
Scott said he knows his next two years ``will be less fun.'' As a freshman, ``it was difficult enough to get anything done with a Democratic majority,'' he said.
Republicans are ``more homogenous, so they'll have a better chance,'' he conceded. ``But the big problem they'll have is that the majority of their members are way out of the mainstream. And it will be interesting to see how tough it is for more moderate Republicans to operate in that atmosphere.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color staff illustration by Sam Hundley
File Photos
Owen Pickett
Bobby Scott
Norman Sisisky
by CNB