THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, March 7, 1995 TAG: 9503070009
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 44 lines
The same politics that makes those strange bedfellows also makes some interesting adversaries.
Consider that James C. Miller III enjoyed strong backing from U.S. Sen. John W. Warner just nine months ago when Miller sought unsuccessfully to wrest the Republican nomination for Virginia's other Senate seat from Oliver North. Now the former federal budget director says he'll try to deny Warner the GOP nod for a fourth Senate term.
``Senator Warner's disloyalty to the Republican Party and to our nominees must not go unchallenged,'' Mr. Miller wrote in a recent letter to state party leaders. He was referring to the senator's actions after the party nominated North to challenge the embattled Democratic incumbent, Charles S. Robb. Warner refused to support North and indeed persuaded Marshall Coleman, former Republican state attorney general and a two-time gubernatorial candidate, to enter the Senate race as an independent.
Warner describes his efforts as ``putting principle ahead of politics,'' but he outraged the North camp and disappointed staunch party loyalists. Among them is state GOP chairman Patrick M. McSweeney, who has said he also may seek the 1996 Senate nomination.
Meanwhile, Miller has his own problems with North backers, some of whom are still sore over his seeking the 1994 nomination.
Undeterred, Miller said of Warner: ``It's his arrogance, his aloofness, his not being connected to the people who put him there in the first place. It's also his patent disloyalty. . . . This has put him in very hot water.''
But next year Virginia Republicans will pick their Senate nominee not in a convention but in a primary, expanding the choice to the voters at large. And the voters are the ones who actually put Mr. Warner in the Senate not just in the first place but twice more as well. ILLUSTRATION: Drawing
SENATOR WARNER
by CNB