But the simmering feud escalated into a bitter and embarrassing civil war last week, triggering a criminal investigation and forcing Robb to put his top three aides on leave. The angry tit-for-tat of allegations - tapped car phones, threats, rumormongering, a politically inspired state police investigation - have made both look by turns venal, petty and downright juvenile. It also suggests that with less than 17 months to Election Day, fratricide - rather than a compelling political message - seems to be the Democrats’ principal offering. After each side self-righteously contended for martyrdom (Robb claiming he was “piled on,” Wilder insisting he was the “victim of a crime”), the two camps scheduled peace talks for this week. But the damage from what Robb called “a political demolition derby” had already been done. “I have never seen anything like it in my 41 years in this business,” says former Democratic National Committee chairman John C. White. “Usually, political tiffs have a patina of substance. This is just two guys fighting each other.”
Robb’s career may be irreparably hurt. He was already fighting charges that he cheated on his wife and partied with cocaine users while governor from 1982 to 1986. Now his presidential hopes could be buried by the burgeoning scandal. “His national ambitions are dead,” says University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato. Wilder charged that someone was listening in on cellular-phone conversations from his state limousine. While he had no evidence linking Robb or his staff to the eavesdropping, the governor said he believed that they were circulating accounts of the conversations. Robb acknowledged that in late 1988, while running for the Senate, he received a tape of a Wilder phone call “over the transom. in a brown envelope.” He said the tape was kept in a file cabinet for two and a half years, and that he never listened to it. He also said it was recently destroyed. Robb’s defense conjured comparisons with his explanation for a 1984 evening in a New York hotel room with Tai Collins, a former Miss Virginia/USA. Robb said he drank wine, received a massage, but didn’t have sex. One Democratic consultant dubbed his latest rationalization “the audio equivalent of ‘I just got a massage’.”
His defense lost more altitude when The Washington Post published a partial transcript of the ostensibly sequestered tape. In the October 1988 conversation, the then Lieutenant Governor Wilder relished Robb’s alleged party-circuit problems and bragged about planting an anti-Robb story with a local reporter. “Robb is finished,” Wilder told Daniel Hoffler, a developer and political supporter. “He’s finished because [his behavior] can’t stand any kind of muster and I’m quite certain he knows it.” He added that he didn’t want Robb’s endorsement for his upcoming gubernatorial race. There may have been other tapes. A Virginia political source told NEWSWEEK that Robb’s office had several recordings of Wilder conversations, but destroyed them last week.
Robb all but blamed his staff for the leak. If it was intended to embarrass Wilder, the notion was a naive one; he said nothing shocking. But the episode fits an emerging pattern that will be difficult for Robb to blame entirely on zealous minions. In April the NBC show “Expose” played a tape on which chief of staff David McCloud (one of the three aides suspended last week) appeared to threaten a Virginia Beach private eye investigating Robb’s social life, saying he was “going to have problems with the IRS.” Last week a state Republican Party official said that in 1989 a Robb aide pressured him into disclosing that private detective Billy Franklin had been hired by the GOP to investigate Robb. Steve Haner, executive director of the Joint Republican Legislative Caucus, said he was told his name came up in a taped phone conversation and that if he cooperated Robb would omit him from a complaint he subsequently filed with the Federal Election Commission. Haner went along.
The fallout threatens to shroud Robb’s Senate career as well. He could face a challenge from Democrats to his chairmanship of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Colleagues may decide that the pivotal fund-raising role needs someone with fewer credibility problems.
For Wilder, the feud is likely to burn much of the historic luster from his national reputation. The crossover appeal he demonstrated with white voters positioned him as the one black Democrat who could take the wheels off Jesse Jackson’s quadrennial spoiler run for the presidency. Democrats say privately that the fight with Robb reveals Wilder to be even more opportunistic than Jackson. His taped boasts about planting an anti-Robb story and his hollow promise to shun Robb’s endorsement - he actually exploited it in his campaign - do little to boost his credentials. For white voters drawn to his conciliatory image, Wilder may become another grasping politician. A vice president slot on the 1992 ticket, believed to be his real goal, may also be out of reach: he doesn’t meet the “works and plays well with other” prerequisite.
Wilder may also have to answer to the Virginia State Crime Commission, which is reviewing the propriety of a state police investigation launched after NBC’s “Expose” segment. Legislators want the commission to determine whether Wilder ordered the probe as a political vendetta. (Wilder denies the charge.) Virginians say his vindictive, sharp-elbow style was honed through years as a black outsider in the clubby white culture of Virginia politics. It gives him a long memory. He recently tried to scuttle a legislative redistricting plan to give booming northern Virginia two new state Senate seats, bluntly explaining that the proposal was backed by an outspoken critic. Later, under criticism, he relented.
Under state law, Wilder cannot succeed himself. Come 1994, he’ll be looking for work. If Robb survives his current troubles, he’ll be up for re-election that year as well. It means that Virginians hoping for a respite from the Wilder-Robb wars may well have to endure a bruising primary battle between the two. ..MR5-
I may have set a record for having been piled on.
–Robb
Blaming the victim will not change the facts.
– Wilder
Virginia’s most prominent Democrats have been engaged in a bitter feud for more than a decade. Here are some of the highlights:
As a state senator, Wilder blamed the then Lieutenant Governor Robb for helping block appointment of a black circuit judge to the federal bench.
The then Governor Robb endorsed a U.S. Senate candidate whom Wilder considered too conservative. Wilder threatened to run as an independent for the seat. Robb’s candidate dropped out. A Republican won the election but Wilder emerged as a power broker.
A top aide accused Robb of taking credit for Wilder’s election as lieutenant governor while he supported efforts to find another candidate. Robb wrote a letter accusing Wilder of disloyalty.
Robb’s office received a tape of a phone conversation between Wilder and a friend expressing glee that Robb was hounded by rumors about his personal life. Tape was kept for two and a half years before staff destroyed it.
Senator Robb proposed Wilder’s defeated gubernatorial foe as national drug czar. Wilder called the recommendation “ludicrous.”
Robb suggested that Wilder had spread stories about the senator’s encounter with a beauty queen and his staff’s alleged threats to people who spoke to investigators about his personal life.
