Posted on 10/12/2008 9:10:11 AM PDT by Maelstorm
t can't be easy being Jim Gilmore these days.
Republican leaders in Washington long ago wrote off his campaign for the U.S. Senate. Political action groups have closed their checkbooks. Some Virginia GOP elders have endorsed his opponent. Pollsters have him trailing by 25 percentage points - or worse.
So what keeps him going?
The answer may lie - at least in part - in the former governor's pugnacious personality, what he's done, and where he came from. The Senate race is the kind of challenge that brought Gilmore into politics in the 1970s; he is both experienced and comfortable in the role of an outsider taking on the establishment.
American public life "is rough-and-tumble," Gilmore observed recently, but mild compared with what you can find elsewhere. Look at what happened to Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, he said.
"So what are we crying about?"
"I expect to win," Gilmore said of his current campaign, projecting a confidence that has been a constant of his public life.
His sureness about himself and his causes often has served him well. Associates have said it is born of careful thought and scholarship.
Gilmore is "one of the most intellectually curious people I've ever met," said David Anderson, his chief deputy during Gil-more's term as state attorney general from 1994 to 1997. "He is constantly delving into issues in ways that are deep and creative."
But Gilmore's unflinching pursuit of his goals, coupled with a public reserve that borders on stiffness, has sometimes unsettled his natural allies and earned him a reputation as arrogant, confrontational and vindictive.
As governor, Gilmore stopped meeting with GOP lawmakers who bucked him on his signature issue, repeal of an unpopular annual tax on automobiles. Former state Sen. John Chichester of Stafford County and former Del. Vince Callahan of Fairfax, Republican stalwarts who headed the General Assembly's budget committees at that time, have endorsed Democratic nominee Mark Warner this year.
More recently, Gilmore branded as "a travesty" a federal rescue plan for the nation's financial industry that was supported both by Republican leaders in Congress and retiring GOP Sen. John Warner, the man he hopes to succeed. Warner responded last week by hinting he might vote Democratic next month.
Gilmore makes no apologies.
"You have to stand for something," he said. "That's what I've tried to do."
It doesn't help Gilmore that he's running in a bad year for Republicans, with a historically unpopular president weighing down his party, or that he's running against a consummate schmoozer in Democrat Mark Warner. Political veterans have suggested that Gilmore's personality, his aversion to dealmaking and his willingness to buck fellow Republicans have helped to make him a long shot.
"Jim takes some things personally that he probably should not," said state Sen. Kenneth Stolle, a Virginia Beach Republican.
In more than a quarter century of lobbying and political activism, "I can't recall a single Republican who had this much trouble with the business community," said Clayton Roberts, director of Virginia FREE, a pro-business political action group in Richmond.
Lee Goodman, a top policy aide during Gilmore's governorship, calls his former boss "a man of determined conviction.... He has never been someone who lost sleep over dissension or disagreement."
In Gilmore's view, "the clarion call of compromise and bipartisanship meant failing to achieve positive objectives for the people," Goodman added.
Gilmore says he "gave up several years ago trying to defend Republicans.... There are bad Republicans and bad Democrats."
He added that his goal in dealing with everyone has been "to offer the correct management and philosophy to protect the public interest.... I'm not about to sit around and say that if a guy's got an R on his name and he didn't do the job that I'm going to stand up for him."
Those who share his views and admire his tenacity "would say that I'm passionate about my principles," Gilmore said. Those who've tangled with him "would say I'm obstinate."
Gilmore's independence has its origins in a blue-collar upbringing in Henrico County, just outside Richmond. His father was a Safeway meat cutter, a union man who lived from paycheck to paycheck and seems to have instilled in the son a determination to do better.
He reveres his parents and working people generally.
"They're honest, solid people who are the heart of America," he said. "But I wanted more. I wanted a chance to break out and try to create something that would give me some sense of independence."
In high school, he was a promising musician, playing clarinet in the all-county band. But after he was recruited as a senior to knock on doors for a Republican legislative candidate, his focus quickly shifted to politics and the law.
He was struck, he says now, that "the citizens were actually engaged." Almost immediately he decided that "this is where I can make a difference and have meaning in the long run."
More than 40 years later, politics remains his passion.
When he started in the mid-1960s, Republicans were outliers in Virginia politics. A network of conservative Democrats - lawyers, bankers, gentleman farmers - controlled the legislature, judgeships, local governments, all the levers of power.
There was an arrogance about them, Gilmore has said. They did not, it seemed to him, speak to or for people like his parents and the neighbors he met and talked with in his canvassing. Their idea of progress always seemed to involve reaching into the pockets of working folks.
Gilmore didn't like it. He still doesn't.
"I care about the welfare and interest of people that can't speak for themselves," he said.
That theme runs through his career, from his mobilizing of fellow attorneys general in the 1990s to crack down on arson attacks on black churches, to the car tax fight, to his current campaign's attacks on the financial industry bailout.
Boyd Marcus, his chief of staff as governor and a friend for three decades, said Gilmore has "always fought for and supported the little guy.... He has a low level of tolerance for people who live in ivory towers and people who sit at the country club and discuss over brandy how we need to raise taxes for a new arts center."
If the public man is pugnacious and perhaps standoffish, friends insist the private Gilmore is a warm pal and a great boss. Goodman's association with Gilmore goes back to 1992, including four years of daily contact in the high-pressure atmosphere of the governor's office.
"I've never seen him lose his temper," Goodman said.
Public life has helped Gilmore make thousands of acquaintances, but his circle of real friends remains small. He and his wife of three decades, Suffolk-reared Roxane Gatling Gilmore, live quietly in an expansive home near the James River west of Richmond and dote on their two now-grown sons.
"To do well in public life in America," Gilmore said, "really does require a full-time commitment."
It also carries a price. He "loves to play golf," but "it takes a long time." He'd like to go back to his clarinet, but "it requires a full commitment to be really good." So he diverts himself with things he can do "in bite-sized chunks" around his political pursuits.
He has assembled a personal library of some 3,500 books, well-stocked with histories.
"I read everywhere and I read constantly," he said.
He is a devotee of satellite radio - XM is "the greatest invention of the modern era," he declared - and a dedicated movie buff.
"I lose myself" at the theater, he said. He likes almost all movies, recommending that a reporter rent "The Holiday," a Cameron Diaz "chick flick" that he found particularly entertaining.
Gilmore "is mostly what you see, a down-to-earth guy," said Marcus, his former chief of staff. Through four decades in politics, "I can't recall anyone who was a friend who isn't still a friend.... They have intense loyalty to him, and he to them," he said.
"In the end," Gilmore said, "when all this falls away, and the public has moved on to other people and your detractors have moved on to other people... and your friends have moved on to private life and maybe even to other candidates, what you've really got left are your few close friends and your family."
Dale Eisman, (703) 913-9872, dale.eisman@pilotonline.com
I contributed last week after hearing about his principled stand against the bailout. Living on the other side of the country I didn’t know much about the guy before then.
Jim Gilmore should still be thanked every year by folks in VA who would other wise be paying their full share on the VA car tax. I do.
BTTT
“Jim Gilmore should still be thanked every year by folks in VA who would other wise be paying their full share on the VA car tax. I do.”
You really have no idea what a smoke and mirrors fiasco that was, do you? Over the years, you probably haven’t saved a penny.
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