Polls Give Allen Big Lead in Va. Governor’s Race

Republicans savored victory in the Virginia gubernatorial race Tuesday while both parties sweated out close contests in early returns from other elections around the country, especially in New Jersey and New York City.

Exit polls projected an easy victory in Virginia for Republican George F. Allen, a former member of the state general assembly, over Democratic Atty. Gen. Mary Sue Terry. With 51% of the vote counted, Allen led Terry, 59% to 40%.

Still too close to call were Tuesday’s other two high-profile races: the New Jersey gubernatorial contest between incumbent Democrat James J. Florio and Republican Christine Todd Whitman, and the barbed New York City mayoral rematch between Democratic incumbent David N. Dinkins and Republican Rudolph W. Giuliani. Television exit polls projected tight finishes in both contests.

With 23% of the vote counted in New Jersey, Whitman led Florio, 51% to 48%.

In addition to New York, voters in more than half a dozen other major cities--from Boston and Detroit to Miami and Seattle--selected mayors Tuesday. Also before voters Tuesday were a number of ballot initiatives, including a rollback of tax hikes in Washington, a repeal of a gay rights ordinance in Cincinnati and a term limits measure in Maine.

Both parties will be picking through the results of these contests for signs of issues and themes that could carry them to victory in 1994, when 36 gubernatorial and 34 Senate seats will be at stake.

In each of the most closely watched races, public uneasiness about the nation’s direction and a desire for change remained the driving force. “People are fed up and they want things to work better,” said Republican pollster Bill McInturff. “And they still want change.”

That was most immediately apparent in Virginia, where Allen seized on the change theme. As the Democratic nominee in a state controlled by Democratic governors for the last 12 years, Terry was seen by many voters as a virtual incumbent. Dissatisfaction over the state’s direction, disgust over the long-running feud between Democratic Gov. L. Douglas Wilder and Democratic Sen. Charles S. Robb, and disappointment over President Clinton’s performance, all weighed her down.

That boosted Allen, the son of the former Washington Redskins and Los Angeles Rams coach. His campaign stressed the elimination of parole for violent criminals and bucked a national trend toward support of tougher gun control laws by opposing Terry’s call for a five-day waiting period for handgun purchases. He wiped out the huge lead Terry held in the polls last summer.

“He struck a chord on crime that resonated powerfully,” said Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour. “Where she said the answer to crime was gun control, he said the answer was tougher sentencing . . . building more prisons and getting rid of the lax parole system.”

Once Allen gained momentum, nothing Terry did reversed the tide, not even a late advertising blitz that sought to portray him as a tool of conservative evangelical preachers Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

Particularly gratifying to Republican strategists was Allen’s success at deflecting such attacks even while attracting enthusiastic support from religious conservatives and anti-abortion activists. That suggests that Republicans may be better positioned to surmount their centrifugal strains over social issues than Democrats assume, McInturff said.

Allen’s victory raised the stakes for Democrats in the New York City and New Jersey contests. Unlike Terry, who distanced herself from Clinton, both Dinkins and Florio embraced the President.

The New Jersey gubernatorial race drew particular focus in the White House, because of the parallels between Florio’s situation and Clinton’s. Like Clinton, Florio imposed a huge tax increase immediately upon taking office in 1990. And like Clinton he saw his popularity plummet: at one point later that year, Florio’s approval rating dropped to just 18%.

Florio never entirely recovered: according to CNN, exit polls showed that 55% of New Jersey voters Tuesday still considered the tax hike a mistake, while only 41% thought Florio did the right thing. But pollsters say he has earned a grudging measure of respect for making tough decisions, largely because of his success at pushing through a law banning assault weapons and a welfare reform measure that denied additional benefits to women who had children while already on the rolls.

Voters who cited crime as their top concern preferred Florio by 71% to 29% in the exit poll, CNN reported.

Florio was further helped by Whitman. Her campaign was hobbled by a succession of distracting controversies (she admitted failing to pay Social Security taxes on household help) and a pattern of indecision on major issues.

Last summer, she denounced as “cynical” calls for a state tax cut when Florio was considering the idea. Then in September, she proposed a three-year, 30% income tax cut herself. According to the exit poll, New Jersey voters, by a narrow margin, also considered that proposal a bad idea, CNN reported.

Still, she was able to narrow the race in the final weeks with sharp television ads that shifted the focus back to Florio’s record. “Just to be in the ballgame for Florio is pretty remarkable,” said Geoff Garin, Florio’s pollster. “There is grudging acknowledgment of Florio, but it is also a statement of her weaknesses as a candidate.”

None of the other mayoral races reached the volcanic intensity of New York. But several provided their own drama and insights into the forces driving the electorate this year.

After New York, the most heated mayoral race took place in Detroit. Though both candidates were black, the election was sharply polarized along racial lines. Dennis Archer, a former Michigan State Supreme Court justice, ran on a platform of cooperation with the white suburbs--a sharp contrast with outgoing Mayor Coleman A. Young, who throughout his 20-year reign actively encouraged an us-against-them mentality in the overwhelmingly black city.

Young endorsed Archer’s opponent, Wayne County Assistant Prosecutor Sharon McPhail, a disciple of his confrontational style. During the campaign, McPhail dismissed Archer as the candidate of “forces plotting to take over the city of Detroit.”

Elsewhere, mayoral contests appeared likely to reaffirm the recent trend toward the election of relatively non-ideological pragmatists of all races.

In Atlanta, where voters were choosing a successor to retiring Maynard Jackson, the top three contenders were African-Americans who all ran as problem-solvers, minimizing the appeals to racial pride that characterized much of the earlier generation of black urban officials. City Councilman Bill Campbell was favored over Fulton County Commissioner Michael Lomax and City Councilwoman Myrtle Davis in pre-election polls. If none of the candidates receive a majority, the top two finishers will meet in a Nov. 23 runoff.

Two other centrist Democratic mayors faced only minor opposition: Michael R. White in Cleveland and Bob Lanier in Houston. In Seattle, Democrat Norm Rice was favored in pre-election polls over advertising executive David Stern.

In other mayoral elections, acting mayor Thomas M. Menino, bidding to become Boston’s first Italian-American mayor, faced state Rep. James T. Brett; in Miami, a vitriolic, but largely issue-less, three-way contest pitted Steve Clark, an Anglo, against Cuban-born Miriam Alonso and African-American T. Willard Fair.