DATE: Sunday, September 21, 1997            TAG: 9709210092

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Decision '97

SOURCE: BY LEDYARD KING, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  172 lines

GILMORE EXTOLS VALUE OF HARD WORK, TRUTH CANDIDATE SAYS HIS PAST HELPS HIM RELATE TO FOLKS.

The year was 1967. Teenagers were experimenting with drugs, protesting the Vietnam War and shattering social boundaries in the ``The Summer of Love.'' Clean-cut Jimmy Gilmore, still sporting a well-sculpted flat-top reminiscent of a calmer era, was stocking shelves and running a cash register in a Richmond area grocery store.

Judged the most talented in his high school senior class where he was an All-American clarinet player and the drum major of the marching band, Gilmore hated the menial work, according to his mother.

But he persevered, earning money to pay his way at the University of Virginia and become the first in his family to graduate from college.

James Stuart Gilmore III has never doubted his course in life - even when others were constantly reassessing their own. ``Not me. I was probably in the minority but I never deviated,'' Gilmore says. ``I don't think the focus of the counterculture was ever to preserve freedoms. I think it was to extinguish them.''

For Gilmore, much like characters portrayed by his favorite movie stars Burt Lancaster, Gregory Peck and Harrison Ford, life's canvas appears largely black or white, with not much room for grey.

So, as he runs for governor against Democrat Donald S. Beyer Jr., the former attorney general of Virginia views his campaign as a clear choice for voters: a principled conservative who knows what the average worker endures vs. a wavering liberal who has led a privileged life.

``My parents are working class people,'' says Gilmore, 47. ``I started working in a grocery store. I worked as a bank teller. And I haven't had doors opened. I've had to go create those doors. And I think I have.''

It might seem hard these days to ascribe blue-collar rank to Gilmore, who dresses in well-cut suits and cuff links, who earned more than $100,000 last year and sent his children for years to the private St. Christopher's School. (By his choice, oldest son Jay is a freshman this year in public high school). But he'll never forget that his father was a meatcutter or that his mother worked as a secretary when most women of her generation stayed home.

``Most people have to tough it out and make decisions about their lives. They have to make sacrifices,'' he said on the campaign trail one September Friday. ``The American dream is to work hard and make something out of yourself. (My background) gives me a better idea of what people have to deal with.''

``You the one that's going to get rid of the personal property tax?'' Carolyn Anthony - at a campaign stop on the Northern Neck - wants to know whether the guy with the square jaw, serious demeanor and pressed chinos is responsible for that idea.

``I'm the one,'' Gilmore beams in a scene repeated often on the campaign trail.

Anthony explains that she can scrape up the $400 tax bill on her car every year. But her retired parents struggle to pay their bill.

It's that kind of response that convinces Gilmore how right he is to propose the virtual elimination of the personal property tax on cars and light trucks. And it doesn't hurt that ``no car tax'' resonates at chicken dinners and along the parade routes. His marquee issue, as directly communicated as ``just say no'' or ``a chicken in every pot,'' fits his to-the-point style.

Some state legislative leaders have denounced his proposal as reckless. But this is more than just a tax cut to Gilmore. This is, he explains, an avenue to assist the state's poorest folks, who tend to have the greatest portion of their wealth tied up in their cars. Working stiffs like his parents and grandparents. ``The tax cut issue goes to the very foundation of the way they live day in and day out.''

Jim Gilmore wouldn't budge.

Camped outside the dean's office at the University of Virginia law school on the first day of classes, the former Army sergeant was seeing who would blink first: him or one of the top five law schools in the country.

It was 1974 and he was on the school's waiting list. He'd already started at the University of Richmond Law School, but there was never any question about where he would get his degree. During his time in military counter-intelligence in Germany, he wrote steadily to the university hoping to gain admission.

By day's end no slot had opened. He left in despair. Jim Gilmore had blinked first.

But determination paid off. The next day, U.Va. called: A slot was available, if he wanted it. He gladly surrendered the $1,200 he paid for tuition at Richmond and headed west to Charlottesville.

``Jim has always been a guy who's made up his mind and gotten into things,'' said Boyd Marcus, a U.Va. law school classmate.

Would he do it again today?

``Sure, sure,'' Gilmore said, riding between campaign stops on his gubernatorial quest. ``I'm doing this, aren't I?''

By the time he left law school, the spine of his conservative tenets was ramrod: free enterprise, personal choice and fiscal responsibility.

That approach to life would manifest itself when, as attorney general, he weighed in against gun control, gay rights and federal pollution controls.

But education is where Gilmore's political views mesh the tightest with his personal life.

Products of public schools, he and his wife, Roxane, like the curriculum and individualized attention St. Christopher's School provides youngest son Ashton. No coincidence that the widest plank of his education platform is reducing student-teacher ratios.

He supports charter schools - publicly funded and privately run alternative institutions - and vouchers, the use of public dollars for children who want to attend private school.

``Every parent has to make the best decision for their children,'' Gilmore says. ``I do it in my family, and everybody ought to be able to do it in their family.''

``I feel like I'm missing something.''

Eyebrows furrowed and usually rumbling voice trailing off, Gilmore looks bewildered - and annoyed.

The sleeves of his checkered dress shirt meticulously rolled up, he looks out of place at a fish festival in the eastern Virginia hamlet of White Stone.

The candidate has just worked a line of potential voters in the fried oyster line and now finds himself at the front of the crab cakes booth with no hands left to shake.

He reluctantly accepts a paper plate with two cakes, then hesitantly meanders to an adjoining booth for an ear of corn.

For Gilmore, the focused campaigner, the venue is an opportunity to perform, not nibble. Eating steals precious minutes better spent wooing a swing voter.

Relentless ambition and political shrewdness, whether to better himself or help others, has never seemed to stray far from him.

C. Richard Cranwell, the Democratic majority leader in the House of Delegates, said he's seen that combination in another politician: Bill Clinton.

``Cut from the same cloth,'' said Cranwell, D-Vinton. ``He gets up and looks at a poll to figure out what he's going to do every day.''

Cranwell said Gilmore's actions as attorney general were not the actions of a man who holds firm to conservative principles.

The majority leader lists two recent examples: Gilmore's support of a measure banning guns in Fairfax County recreation centers, which Gov. George F. Allen opposed; and a bill Gilmore championed transferring environmental prosecution powers from local commonwealth's attorneys to his office.

Cranwell, whose committee killed the bill, said it was simply a way for Gilmore to shore up a weak record by being able to bring more polluters to justice.

And other critics have said his office's support of socially conservative positions were little more than attempts to appease the Christian right wing of the party, which dominates the nominating process in the GOP.

In effect, they said, his ambition superseded his principles. To all that, Gilmore says he has never regarded himself as inflexible.

``I'm a conservative Republican, but I think I can find common ground on a number of issues.''

``I like to address issues on their own and to examine all the facts before making decisions on them,'' he said at another stop. ``But it is certainly from a foundation of a belief in the liberty of the people. I believe that people ought to have the ability to control their own lives. I assess issues on what works, but it's always from a foundation of a certain idealism. I think I'm an idealist.''

At a stop in tiny Matthews, Gilmore eases out of the van onto a crowded street so he can mingle.

In Gilmore's 1993 race for attorney general, friends said he seemed more comfortable in a courtroom than on the stump. But Marcus said he's a more polished campaigner.

And, in many ways, Gilmore remains the drum major.

Instead of a tune, he carries a message. Instead of a band, he leads a campaign.

Synchronized, in locked step, on the same beat, his campaign remains, like its leader, focused.

In between handshakes and a stop at the local newspaper, Gilmore talks to a group at a picnic table.

``Where do you stand on gun control?'' asks George Quinlan.

``I was Henrico County Commonwealth's Attorney for six years, and I never thought gun control helped. But I do believe you can stop criminals by being tough on crime. Nobody's going to be tougher on crime than I will.''

Quinlan, an admitted ``yellow-dog'' Democrat, isn't impressed after Gilmore leaves.

``I thought his response was wishy-washy,'' he said.

The drum major doesn't hear that evaluation much. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

BETH BERGMAN/The Virginian-Pilot KEYWORDS: GUBERNATORIAL RACE VIRGINIA CANDIDATES

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