RICHMOND--
When Republicans meet in Richmond this weekend to choose a U.S. Senate candidate, it will in some ways be a test of the strength of the party's social conservatives.The race is between a former governor Jim Gilmore and Del. Bob Marshall.
Marshall has based his campaign largely on his credentials as a give-no-quarter pro-lifer, and he believes that without the like-minded members of his party, Gilmore has no prayer of beating Democratic former governor Mark Warner in the November election.
"You cannot win if you alienate the social conservatives," Marshall said in an interview this week. "They are the biggest conservatives, the most intense. They will walk to more doors, stuff more envelopes, register more voters than anybody else."
Gilmore says he's pro-life too, but he's betting that abortion isn't the defining issue for the majority of delegates. He thinks his own platform, focused more on economic issues, will appeal to more convention delegates and to voters in November, and makes him a stronger candidate against Democrat Warner, also a former governor.
The convention will prove which man's vision of the Republican Party's priorities is true.
Marshall and his supporters say Gilmore isn't pro-life enough because he accepts Roe vs. Wade as the law, and hasn't opposed abortion in the early weeks of a pregnancy.
Gilmore has advocated waiting periods for abortions and outlawing partial-birth, late-term abortions. Marshall supporters also oppose Gilmore's position on the board of Barr Labs, which makes the emergency contraceptive pill Plan B.
While Marshall has positions on other issues, he says abortion is the top issue for his supporters.
"Jim Gilmore is going to infuriate the right-to-lifers, there's no way he's going to get their votes," Marshall said. "The only way you're going to beat Mark Warner is precinct operations. Gilmore can't do that, he can't get the hardest-working people. I can."
In a nearly hour-long interview in his campaign consultant's Richmond office last week, Gilmore talked about social issues only when asked, saying that he has "shown a record of being concerned" about pro-life and pro-family topics. But what he really wants to talk about is gas prices, energy and taxes.
Gilmore said the top issue among voters he has talked to is high gas prices.
"I'm worried about the impact on people's lives," he said. "People have got to drive to work."
He blames congressional Democrats for blocking efforts to find more domestic sources of oil, such as drilling off the coast (including the coast of Virginia) and in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, both of which Gilmore supports.
"The Democrats have fought for almost a generation to prevent more energy creation," Gilmore said. "That has to change."
He also wants the United States to declare its intentions to increase domestic oil production, which he thinks would immediately pressure world oil traders to reduce prices.
For the past few months, Gilmore has touted himself as the Republican best suited to beat Warner this fall. His speeches and positions are focused on Warner, not Marshall, and he says he's confident of winning the nomination Saturday--in fact, he declared more than a month ago that more than half of the delegates had already committed to him.
"I think we're going to be fine," he said last week. "The issues really favor the Republicans and favor my candidacy."
Marshall says not so fast. He points to a mailer Gilmore sent out this week attacking Marshall as evidence that Gilmore isn't as confident as he sounds.
"These are desperate, last-minute, not just distortions of a voting record, they go beyond that to question motives," Marshall said. "That is not the way gentlemen debate. Why would you be doing this unless you are worried that I'm making headway on these points?"
Because of the nature of a convention, it's hard to tell which candidate really has the most support. Delegates who have signed up to attend did not have to declare their support for a candidate, so Gilmore and Marshall have had to rely on informal promises, often garnered through phone calls to the 5,000 or so delegates expected to attend.
But in the Fredericksburg area, some local party officials said earlier that Marshall appears to be leading.
Spotsylvania Republican committee chairman Bryce Reeves said last month that out of 133 delegates, 118-- about 88 percent--are Marshall supporters, as is Reeves himself.
Marshall supporter Herb Lux said his polling indicates that Marshall leads among Stafford and Fredericksburg delegates as well.
Either man may have an uphill battle against Warner, who was popular as governor and who has led several polls already.
Gilmore, though, thinks that people are rejecting Democratic policies on the national level, and will in this race. He cited the desire of many congressional Democrats to roll back the Bush tax cuts as one example of bad Democratic policy that voters should oppose.
"It's urgent now that we have a change," Gilmore said. "This is real for people We have a difference in direction here."
Chelyen Davis: 804/782-9362
Email: cdavis@freelancestar.com