Robb, Wilder Call an End to Bizarre Public Dispute : Politics: Virginia’s two top Democrats stand side by side but offer no apologies to each other and no clear explanation of their behavior.

Virginia’s two top Democrats, Gov. L. Douglas Wilder and Sen. Charles S. Robb, called an end Tuesday to a bizarre public argument involving allegations of wiretapping, womanizing and political skulduggery that may have hurt their once-favorable prospects for national office.

Beaming as they stood side by side at an outdoor press conference on Capitol Hill, the two offered no apologies to each other and no clear explanation for their recent behavior. Instead, they suggested that the brouhaha was mainly a media invention.

“We have just had a very delightful, very cordial, very friendly conversation that lasted just an hour,” Robb said as he opened the press conference. “Both of us have been trying to convince all assembled for some period of time that to the extent there was a perception of a feud, you are going to find it really difficult to establish that for any story you may file tonight.”

“I agree with that,” Wilder chimed in. And after dismissing reports of his past disagreements with Robb as “revelations to me,” he sought to cut off further discussion of the recent difficulties, which had centered on his complaint that his car phone was tapped.

“As of today, I don’t intend to answer any more questions relative to that and to where we stand,” he said. “Because if people are friends, they are friends. The people who are investigating whatever took place will have their opportunity. I will cooperate to the extent that I have to, and he (Robb) has indicated the same.”

The meeting and press conference marked the first joint effort by Wilder and Robb to cut off the dispute, which has been an embarrassment not only to them but, to some degree, to their party. Many Democrats looked to Robb and Wilder, because of their moderate-to-conservative views, for help in broadening the party’s appeal to moderate voters.

Robb, currently chairman of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, has been regarded as a long-range presidential prospect who could help his party regain badly needed support in the South. Wilder, the nation’s first elected black governor, is actively considering a run for the presidency in 1992 and has been regarded as a balancing force to the liberalism of the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

But a recent poll released by Mason-Dixon Opinion Research indicates that both men have lost prestige in their own state as a result of the feud and prior allegations about Robb’s personal behavior. The survey showed that the proportion of voters favoring Robb’s reelection to a second Senate term in 1994 dropped to 39% from 57% last January, while Wilder got a favorable job rating from only 32% of those interviewed, compared to 44% in January.

Though they went to great pains Tuesday to disavow past differences, clashing ambitions and personalities have made the two men political rivals and sometimes adversaries for years. Their differences came to a head--and to national attention--two weeks ago when Wilder charged, as he was traveling in Europe on a trade mission, that conversations from the phone in his state limousine had been taped and passed on to Robb. Wilder described himself as the victim of “a criminal act.”

Robb subsequently confirmed that his staff had possessed a transcript of a five-minute taped conversation, made in 1988, during which Wilder could be heard commenting gleefully about the damage done to Robb’s career by allegation of philandering and other indiscretions. Robb, who is married to Lynda Bird Johnson, the daughter of former President Lyndon B. Johnson, was said to have attended wild parties in the resort community of Virginia Beach while he was governor from 1981 to 1985. Drugs allegedly were used at some of the parties.

Robb has denied rumors of philandering and involvement with drugs and also has denied passing on the transcripts of the Wilder tape to anyone else. Nevertheless, the publicity reinforced damage already done to Robb’s reputation last April by the NBC television show “Expose,” which broadcast some of the charges about Robb’s misbehavior.

The show included an interview with a former Miss Virginia USA, Tai Collins, who claimed she had an affair with Robb in 1984. Robb acknowledged having been alone in a hotel room with the woman but claimed that she had only given him a massage.

The strained relations between Robb and Wilder were subsequently aggravated when members of Robb’s staff hinted to reporters that Wilder had ordered a state police probe into Robb’s private life. Wilder denied this, and state police said the investigation was limited to threats allegedly made against some critics of Robb, including anonymous death threats against Collins.