Martinsville Bulletin, Inc.
P. O. Box 3711
204 Broad Street
Martinsville, Virginia 24115
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| A 'meet and greet' planned at Rania's |
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Monday, October 30, 2006
Former Gov. Mark Warner and Democrat Jim Webb, who is trying to unseat incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. George Allen, will pay a visit here on Tuesday.
Lorene Martin, chair of Martinsville’s Democratic Committee, said she worked on the visit all weekend and the event is set for 11:30 a.m. at Rania’s restaurant on East Main Street.
“It will be a meet and greet,” she said and the public is invited.
Martin said Webb and Warner will be at Rania’s “for about an hour.”
Rhetoric was expected to again heat up today between Webb and Allen.
Both spent a low-key Sunday on the campaign trail.
In contrast to hard-hitting attacks on his Democratic challenger, Allen campaigned in traditionally Democratic Portsmouth with retired football greats David “Deacon” Jones and Roger Brown.
In Richmond, Webb was also subdued, campaigning with Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, a fellow Democrat, at the Festival of India.
Webb sipped drinks indigenous to India and posed for photos, stopping at one booth to help pour the batter to make a masala dosa, a spicy South Indian crepe.
“Jim just made the best dosa anybody has ever made,” Kaine told hundreds of festival visitors. Webb did not address the crowd.
Webb’s presence left the festival co-chairman, Ranjit Sen, to reflect on remarks Allen had made in August that belittled a 20-year-old Webb volunteer of Indian descent at an Allen campaign stop.
Allen referred to S.R. Sidarth as “macaca,” an obscure racial slur and a word that denotes a genus of monkey. The remark earned Allen weeks of searing news coverage and international calls for an apology.
Allen eventually apologized to Sidarth, but the reaction melted Allen’s comfortable lead in the polls and made what was to have been a warm-up race for a possible 2008 Allen presidential bid competitive.
Sen said the remark alone would not galvanize all Indian-Americans against Allen.
“I don’t think we are that small minded,” he said. “We’ll vote the issues. But nevertheless, it will have a negative impact in some people’s minds.”
Webb spent the late part of last week denouncing Allen’s use of a few selective passages from Webb’s six bestselling novels to level the claim that Webb was insensitive to women. There are scenes involving sexuality in the novels, but they are scarce amid the brutal descriptions of death and depravity that surrounded him as a Marine infantry commander in the killing fields of Vietnam’s An Hua Basin in 1969.
On Sunday, however, there was scant mention of it.
Allen and Jones visited church services Sunday morning, but the afternoon was all football.
Allen addressed a handful of supporters at the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame in downtown Portsmouth. Then he walked a few doors down to Roger Brown’s, a sports bar that doubles as a museum to Brown’s All-Pro career with the Detroit Lions and with Jones during the late 60s as part of the Los Angeles Rams’ famous “Fearsome Foursome” defensive line.
Allen sat with Brown and campaign aides, intently watching the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ game with the New York Giants, grimacing at Giants touchdowns in a room with considerably more New York fans. The Giants won 17-3.
Allen’s younger brother Bruce is the Buccaneers’ general manager, and the senator refused to leave until the game ended.
Jones, a 1980 enshrinee in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, was a favorite player under Allen’s late father, who coached the Rams and later the Washington Redskins.
Once a Democrat, Jones said he was campaigning for Allen out of friendship, not partisan kinship.
In the late 1960s, Jones and his Rams teammate, Roosevelt Grier, were campaigning for Robert F. Kennedy when Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles. Grier was with Kennedy at the time and wrestled Kennedy’s assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, to the ground.
“I’m an independent. I quit the Democratic Party in 2000 because they quit fighting,” Jones said, voicing disgust with nominee Al Gore’s campaign. “They just gave up.”
Later, Allen and Jones campaigned with Republican Rep. Thelma Drake, who’s also in a closely contested race, at a farmer’s market in Norfolk. As Allen addressed about 100 supporters, a few dozen opponents of the proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage gathered on the street about 50 yards away, chanting and holding signs.
Allen has campaigned in support of the amendment, which will also be on the statewide ballot. Opponents say it is too broad and could threaten legal agreements between all unmarried people.
Also on Sunday, the Daily Press of Newport News and the Roanoke Times endorsed Webb, citing his views on the Iraq war and national security.
“Allen and the Republican majority of which he is a part have had their chance, and we’re not better off for it — not in terms of national security or fiscal soundness, and certainly not in terms of political health,” the Daily Press editorial said. “Webb offers the best opportunity for new and better directions.”
The Roanoke paper said Webb “is as independent a thinker as Allen is an administration parrot. Plus, Webb is feisty and smart.” |
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