roanoke.com Real Politics / Preston Bryant

Preston Bryant is a Republican who has represented Lynchburg and part of Amherst County in the Virginia House of Delgates since 1996.

It isn’t every day that more than 300 people in the sleepy foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains turn out to have breakfast with a bunch of politicians. Especially a high-dollar fund-raising breakfast.

But that’s precisely what happened last week in a downtown Lynchburg hotel ballroom. That’s how many rose with the sun to join state Sen. Steve Newman and a few friends for a bacon-and-eggs Republican pep rally.

Alongside Newman was Attorney General Jerry Kilgore, a popular fellow who’s destined to be GOP’s nominee for governor in 2005. He’d risen early to leave Richmond for the Hill City to support the guy who’s done a lot to support him. Also out to show support for Newman were about a half-dozen or so Central Virginia legislators, including the only two independents in the House of Delegates.

But the marquee name that brought out so many so early was Sean Hannity, the unmistakably conservative voice on the Fox News Channel’s hit political debate and interview show, “Hannity & Colmes.”

Aside from it being a pretty darned conservative coffee klatch, the morning will be most remembered by those who attended for the energy generated for area Republicans, and for Newman in particular.

You see, timing is everything in a political campaign. No candidate wants to peak too early, and doing so too late can be just as bad. Knowing the right time to hit your high note is what’s important, and knowing just how to hit it is even more so.

Enter Hannity. And enter Hannity a mere six weeks before Election Day.

Newman is one of the best political strategists in the General Assembly. He’s not yet 40, and he’s been in elected office for 15 years. He was elected to Lynchburg City Council while in his early 20s. He then served four years in the House of Delegates. And he’s now finishing his second four-year term in the Senate. That he’ll go back for a third is not in doubt.

Newman didn’t get this far by not having good political instincts, including knowing just when to hit his stride in a race. Hannity’s flying into Newman’s base – and helping raise a ton of money to fund the campaign’s final push – is testimony to that.

And while the money raised is important, it’s only as valuable as the message it’s funding. Put another way, a huge war chest can certainly be wasted if the voters aren’t buying what the candidate’s got to say. With Newman, though, that isn’t the case.

Newman’s district – which includes the cities of Bedford and Lynchburg and all or parts of Amherst, Bedford, and Campbell counties – is a conservative one. Looking at Virginia’s 40 Senate districts, his is the sixth most Republican. It’s a district whose voters are social and fiscal conservatives in most every sense.

So when Newman’s Democratic opponent, Lynchburg businessman Bob Clarke, says he’s against a ban on partial-birth abortions (a procedure even most pro-choice voters decry) and is in favor of same-sex civil unions, well, you can imagine how well that goes over. And when Clarke doesn’t slam the door shut on tax increases, as Newman has, then the row he’s got to hoe to unseat the incumbent gets even tougher.

It all gets down to knowing the values of the people you seek to represent. And Newman clearly does.

When Fox’s Hannity – who also is heard every day by 14 million Americans on 400 radio stations – swooped into Lynchburg, it wasn’t unusual to those gathered to hear him talk about conservative values and the leadership it takes to promote them. Oh, sure, he took good-natured shots at Bill Clinton (and Hillary, too, of course), as he regularly does on the air. But most of his talk was about leadership, principled leadership.

Hannity spoke of “principled leaders” like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and he wondered aloud why we don’t have more people like them in politics today. He stood Reagan and Bush, to no one’s surprise, in stark contrast to Clinton, calling them “guys who actually lead.”

The Republican Party of Virginia has thrust many men and women into public service who believe in a core set of values. Newman is just one of them. Kilgore, former Attorney General Mark Earley, and U.S. Sen. George Allen also spring immediately to mind.

The point Hannity was making to the party faithful is that there need to be evermore principled leaders in what he calls the “Reagan model” to delve into public service, not just in Virginia, but everywhere. These are folks who have a compass within whose needle doesn’t quiver. They’re not those who define themselves by daily polls and focus groups. They’re not people like Clinton.

There are few who believe that Newman won’t win pretty big. He’s practical and political enough to have down to a science the way to run a winning campaign – to know just when to peak – and he’s philosophically in tune with the vast majority of his district’s voters, preaching the message they already believe.

Hannity gave Newman a big push into the final six weeks of his campaign. But he also did much more than that. He made a point about principle – with Newman at his side – that wasn’t lost on anyone who heard him.

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