Political Notebook: “Civility at shad event—or not”

By Bob Gibson

Published: April 19, 2008

Political Notebook

Sunday April 20, 2008

WAKEFIELD

The Wakefield Shad Planking is probably Virginia’s biggest and oldest bipartisan political event and usually shows how well all parties can play together.

At the 60-year-old social event attended by many statewide hopefuls and activists of all stripes, candidates are expected to reach out and speak lightly, offer a glimpse of their personality and save the toughest red-meat rhetoric for more partisan crowds.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bob Marshall used humor to good effect at the April 16 event and had the crowd laughing with him.

Democratic Senate hopeful Mark R. Warner likewise poked fun at himself and others without burning any barns.

GOP Senate hopeful Jim Gilmore didn’t get the no-slash-and-burn memo and decided to treat the crowd of about 3,000 Virginians to the same kind of blistering rhetoric he might offer to a nominating crowd at a Republican convention.

“You all know me,” Gilmore said before proceeding with an attack on Warner that accused him of wanting to pull out of Iraq by a date certain and of raising taxes as governor after saying in his campaign that he would not.

“He broke his word and did that,” Gilmore said. A few of his supporters chanted, “Liar, liar.”

While Gilmore was perfectly at home with his hard-edged attack, some Republicans in the crowd were not. A few said they are supporting Warner, who said that as a senator he would work as a bipartisan centrist.

After Gilmore’s remarks, Warner told reporters that he was not surprised at the tone, adding, “It was the way he governed.”

Warner said Gilmore misrepresented his positions and made a false claim by charging he favors a pullout date for American troops in Iraq. Warner said he does not favor a specific time-line for troop withdrawal.

Gilmore faces a May 31 GOP convention nomination contest with Marshall, a Prince William County Republican who has served in the House of Delegates since 1992, but the former GOP governor behaved as if Marshall was not even in the Senate race.

He did not mention Marshall in his remarks and had supporters carry signs that showed him as the GOP nominee by pushing John McCain for president and Gilmore for Senate.

That’s nothing new, Marshall said.

“I am the space alien in this race to him,” Marshall said. “I will walk in a room and he will not even look at me.”

“He doesn’t want to admit he’s got an opponent,” said the veteran delegate campaigning as a populist.

“Gilmore and Warner are both part of the establishment,” Marshall said between bites of the bony shad served by the Wakefield Ruritan Club. “I am the anti-establishment guy.”

Marshall said he is being supported for the GOP nomination by “Right-to-lifers, home schoolers, anti-tax people, libertarians and people who are mad at Gilmore.”

Asked which of those five groups of Republicans is the largest, Marshall laughed and declined to respond “on the record,” indicating that each is sizeable but the last group might be biggest.

Dick Leggitt, a longtime Gilmore aide, insisted that the Marshall-Gilmore nomination contest “is over,” saying Gilmore employs consultants who can count the already elected and committed delegates to the May 30-31 Richmond convention.

“We call them and talk to them. We count them,” Leggitt said. “Bob Marshall is a good candidate and we hope he’ll be supporting us in the fall.”

Ray Ashworth, a former delegate attending his 48th Shad Planking in the Southside area he once represented, said he thinks that Gilmore will win the GOP nomination.

“I don’t think Marshall can do anything with him, but conventions are strange things,” Ashworth said.

He agreed with the belief of many Shad Plankers that Gilmore does face an uphill fight against Warner in a battle of former governors if Gilmore manages to win the nomination.

Ashworth surveyed the large bipartisan crowd and pronounced satisfaction with the large numbers of young political activists.

“This year, there’s a pile of young people here,” he noted, approvingly.

To Ashworth, there are some Virginia political traditions worth preserving.

Bob Gibson is becoming executive director of the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia as of April 21.