Toughest Race Yet For Robb

For Virginia Democrats, Sen. Chuck Robb is the last man standing. For Republicans, he's the one obstacle to dominating every statewide elected office and government institution.

Now, as Robb seeks a third term, he faces an all-out blitz from George Allen, a popular and amply funded former governor, in a contest that seems certain to make Robb's bruising battle against Oliver North six years ago look like a cakewalk in comparison.

"I doubt that any incumbent likes to be considered the most endangered incumbent in the country," said Robert Holsworth, a political analyst who heads the Center for Public Policy at Virginia Commonwealth University. "Chuck Robb is certainly facing the most formidable challenge of his career here."

By the end of March, Allen had raised $5.2 million in direct campaign contributions to Robb's $2.8 million. Allen submitted petitions bearing 77,000 signatures last month to qualify for the ballot; Robb's petitions had 15,000 names. Allen hit the campaign trail late last year; Robb inaugurated his campaign in late March. Neither man faces primary opposition.

If Robb is worried, he hasn't shown it. Often stiff and awkward in his 25 years as a politician, the lean, ruggedly handsome ex-Marine and son-in-law of President Lyndon Johnson appears relaxed and confident, and with reason. He has never lost an election, even when at an overwhelming financial disadvantage.

"I wouldn't know what to do if I wasn't outspent at least 2-to-1," a grinning Robb said last month as he and Allen stood almost side-by-side signing autographs and chatting with supporters at the Shad Planking, an annual political picnic in the piney woods near Wakefield, about 50 miles west of Norfolk.

"Ollie North had a 4-to-1 advantage over me six years ago. I'm still here," he said.

The Iran-Contra figure and 1994 GOP nominee raised $20.7 million to unseat Robb, who raised $5.5 million. North finished three percentage points behind Robb in a three-way race that included a Republican who ran as an independent backed by Sen. John Warner, R-Va.

But this year, the GOP is enthusiastically united behind Allen, who finished his term as governor in 1998 high public approval ratings.

The Democrats are just as determined, girding for a last-stand fight to stanch a decade of losses capped last fall when the GOP took control of both houses of the General Assembly for the first time.

"You always tend to fight your best with your back in a corner," said Craig Bieber, executive director of the Virginia Democratic Party.

The differences between the men and their politics are clear.

Allen is the strapping namesake son of the former Washington Redskins coach. He wears cowboy boots with his business suits and often nestles a pinch of snuff in his lower lip, using the nearest empty cup as a makeshift cuspidor. He can be boyishly charming or coldly confrontational.

In exhorting the GOP faithful to win legislative majorities in the 1995 elections from the Democrats, he said, "Let's enjoy knocking their soft teeth down their whiny throats."

The meticulously circumspect Robb was once in the vanguard of moderate Democrats who emerged to redirect their party in a less liberal course. His career was damaged by a former beauty queen's allegations that she had an affair with him and by persistent rumors that he attended parties with drug figures in Virginia Beach.

But Robb remains a wily political fighter, and in taking up Allen's challenge, he invokes his past as a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War.

"...No warrior I ever met at Quantico (Marine Corps base) was frightened by big talk, big-heeled boots or a big chew of tobacco, and neither am I," Robb said in his campaign kickoff.

Allen is a hero of Virginia's GOP conservatives the pro-gun, anti-abortion champion of a tax-cutting agenda akin to that of the party's presumptive presidential nominee, Texas Gov. George W. Bush. He advocates cutting the inheritance tax and the so-called marriage penalty, among others. He proposes a $1,000-per-child tax credit parents could use to pay for computers, tutoring and other educational tools for their children, but pointedly notes that the credit would not extend to private-school tuition. All totaled, Allen's tax cuts would come to about $58 billion over six years.

Allen portrays Robb as a liberal bent on raising taxes. As gas prices crested around $1.50 per gallon in March, Allen manned the pumps for morning commuters at a suburban Richmond service station to highlight Robb's proposal in the wake of Gulf War fuel shortage to raise fuel taxes by 50 cents a gallon. He also attacked Robb's 1993 vote for a 4.3-cent gas tax increase that was part of President Clinton's deficit reduction package.

Robb, however, is proud of his vote for Clinton's tax plan and credits it for creating the strongest economy in U.S. history by ending a generation of federal budget shortfalls and deficit spending. That vote, he says, was a triumph of character over political expediency, and one that cost many of his Democratic colleagues their careers a year later in the 1994 GOP takeover of Congress.

Rather than offer massive tax cuts, Robb says the government should first use its budget surpluses to retire its still-growing $5.6 trillion debt, assure the solvency of Social Security and strengthen the nation's schools and its military.

Robb favors abortion rights and gun controls. He has the endorsement of the state's largest teachers organization, the 55,000-member Virginia Education Association.

In the end, the two candidates combined will raise and spend at least $20 million, probably more, Holsworth said. Because they are political opposites on most issues, millions more will flood into the race from special interest groups unrelated to either campaign.

Sucindependent expenditures, or "soft money," will pay for advertising, direct mail campaigns and telephone solicitations as the campaign heats up, Holsworth said. The Sierra Club began running ads last week assailing Allen's environmental record as governor.

"That sort of thing will become a much more frequent occurrence because of the national attention this campaign will get," Holsworth said.