DATE: Sunday, July 6, 1997                  TAG: 9707060058

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B7   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY D.W. PAGE, ASSOCIATED PRESS 

                                            LENGTH:   63 lines

ETHICAL CAMPAIGNING SEEN AS CURE FOR VOTER CYNICISM INSTITUTE WOULD LIKE TO TEACH CANDIDATES TO FIGHT FAIRLY - AND STILL WIN RACES.

Bill Wood sees an antidote to voter cynicism and low voter turnout: teach candidates to run clean campaigns.

``You can win by campaigning ethically, and voters would be a lot less cynical about the process,'' said Wood, director of the University of Virginia's Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership. ``It's not a choice between winning and running an ethically sound campaign.''

The institute, with the help of a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts, is devising a program to teach candidates for local offices such as the school board or city council how to win by running clean campaigns.

``Sure, I'm cynical,'' said Wood, former editorial page editor for The Virginian-Pilot, ``but I'm convinced that the majority of people who go into public services do so for all the right reasons.''

Hopefully, as the successful candidates continue their political careers, the ethical lessons learned will stay with them, despite the temptations of expediency.

``Candidates, like everyone else, get into habits. What they learn early matters,'' said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist who will be teaching portions of the institute's program.

``The point of this is to come up with strategies that are as effective as dirty campaigns . . . to show them they can gain as much by playing it clean,'' said Sabato, who co-wrote the book on foul campaigning. He and reporter Glenn Simpson are authors of ``Dirty Little Secrets,'' a compendium of dubious political tactics published last year.

The institute will put together a 2 1/2-day training program that includes case studies of victorious clean campaigns and discussions of what constitutes an ethically sound campaign. Campaign consultants, faculty, ethicists and elected officials would help design the program, to start in 1998.

``It will not just be academics - it will involve real-world components,'' Wood said.

Sabato said the program could work in local races but doubted its effectiveness for statewide or national races.

``At that level, you hire a consultant to get elected. Most of them will do anything - anything! - to get their candidate elected. Success allows them to jack up their fees for the next round of elections.

``If it turns off millions of voters, so be it, if it gets the candidate elected,'' he said.

Nevertheless, Sabato said he was willing to give the program a try, ``but I've been around politics too long to be overly optimistic.''

The institute, established in 1993, is a bipartisan center for civic, educational or business leaders interested in becoming involved in politics.

``We approach it with a strong ethics component,'' Wood said. ``We emphasize that as a means of luring people into politics with policy issues.''

Political activist Mike Salster sees the institute as a new source of political candidates and its clean-campaign program as a logical next step for such candidates.

``Rather than coming up through the party ranks, these folks are actually going to school to learn the ropes. It will present a challenge to both state parties to see how able they are to meld these people into their existing organization,'' he said.

Wood says judging the success of the program will be simple.

``If the candidates don't get elected, what's the purpose?''

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