Senate candidate brings campaign to local Democrats

By Todd Jackson

U.S. Senate candidate Jim Webb brought his "kitchen table tour" to Roanoke's Malvern Road on Monday in an attempt to get his campaign cooking. Webb, sitting in an easy chair in Democrat Warren Campbell's living room, acknowledged that he's got name recognition issues -- particularly in Western Virginia -- a day after a Mason-Dixon poll revealed that 33 percent of 625 survey respondents statewide don't know who he is. The same poll showed that incumbent
Republican Sen. George Allen's name recognition is 97 percent.

Moreover, 58 percent say Allen is doing a good or excellent job. Three months from Election Day, Allen leads Webb by 16 percentage points, the poll found.

Webb, who some Democrats believe must spend more time in this part of the state, said his campaign is trying to pack two years' worth of work into five or six months.
"We really have to get out and see more people and do all the normal things," he said. "But at the same time we have to raise funds."

Webb, a Vietnam veteran, author and former secretary of the Navy during the Reagan administration, said, however, that he will not do anything that will taint who he is.
"George Allen is a career politician," he said. "I'm not. What you see is what you get."

It was easy to get a read on Webb on Monday because he, some inquisitive Democrats and a pack of reporters were crammed into Campbell's living room like a family gathering at Thanksgiving. Webb was supposed to listen to a group of selected Democrats tell him what's on their minds, but the session turned into a grilling of Webb on multiple issues from the Middle East to the economy to affirmative action.

Those participating included: Campbell, a former Roanoke County Democratic chairman; Sheryl Martin, a Roanoke County Democratic official; Laurie Wallace, a Roanoke real estate employee; Randy Leftwich, a vice chairman of the Roanoke Democratic Committee; Tom Mall, a Roanoke County teacher; and Steve McGraw, Roanoke County's clerk of circuit court.

At one point during the hour-long discussion, Webb joked that "you guys just keep interrogating me."

On the current situation in the Middle East, Webb said he believes the U.S. must befriend Syria and try to use that country as an ally to broker peace between Lebanon and Israel.
"We need to talk to Syria," he said. "Is that foolish? Look where we are now."
Webb also said he's concerned about the current state of the U.S. economy, driven by the Bush administration, that he believes is carving a dangerous chasm between the wealthy and the middle class, which includes tax breaks for the wealthy and the outsourcing of jobs that should stay in America.

The country, too, should tailor an affirmative action plan that would aid only blacks, Webb said, because that's the only group of people to be systematically held down decade after decade in the U.S. "It's not very popular to be saying that," he said. "But it's the truth of it."

http://www.webbforsenate.com/pdf/roa_aug_1.pdf