be the best senator the Commonwealth has sent to

be the best senator the Commonwealth has sent to Washington in at least a century.

But he would be going into the race with severe handicaps. Although he appears to have the energy of a man decades younger, his age (70) would be a factor. Beyond that, he has yet to put together the campaign and a fund-raising organization needed for a statewide effort.

Thus the Democrats are in a position not unlike the one in which they found themselves in 1982.

That was the year, you will recall, when a Senate seat was open following the retirement of Sen. Harry F. Byrd Jr.

The Democrats, after an abortive effort by Gov. Chuck Robb and the party leaders to come up with a “consensus” candidate, arrived at the state convention in Roanoke badly divided. In the end, and against his better judgment, Lt. Gov. Dick Davis accpeted the nomination. He had just four months to organize his campaign.

He lost by a narrow margin to 1st District Congressman Paul-Trible. The decisive difference was that Trible had been carefully building the organiza- * tional and financial foundation for his senate drive for two years.

The situation was similar in the 1978 race for the seat then being vacated by retiring Sen. William L. Scott. Democrat Andrew Miller lost to Warner by fewer than 5,000 votes. Warner was only in the race for about 12 weeks before the election, following the death of Richard Obenshain, who had defeated him in the contest for the nomination at the state convention earlier that year.

Warner, however, was the beneficiary of the months of thorough groundwork laid by Obenshain, and he inherited the latter’s massive and well-oiled campaign organization. Then too, the popularity of Warner’s wife, actress Elizabeth Taylor, vastly assisted his effort.

Miller on the other hand, was still reeling from his upset defeat at the hands of Henry Howell in the Democratic gubernatorial primary the year before. Thus he got a late start in the senatorial race, and suffered all the political disadvantages with which late starters are plagued.

And so we come to the U.S. Senate campaign of 1984.

The Democrats are at a double disadvantage this year. In 1978 and 1982 the seats were open. The one at stake this time around is occupied by a generally popular and succesful incumbent. He has a campaign organization in place and reportedly already has a war chest of nearly $1 million. He will not, however, have the benefit of his marriage to Liz Taylor. The two were divorced several year ago.

The pattern is the same. As in the two earlier elections, a Republican candidate (this time an incumbent) has stepped forward early, done his homework, laid the foundation for his campaign and prepared for the election which all the world knows will take place next November.

All the world, that is, except the Democrats who seem to have been taken completely by surprise by the approaching event.

Just why this should be true for the third Senate election in a row is something of a mystery. Surely a U.S. Senate seat is a political prize worth any party’s interest in capturing and worthy of any politician’s ambition. At least the GOP finds it so.

But somehow, while crowds of Democrats of statewide stature come out the woodwork to vie energetically and early for the offices of governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general, for a decade they have taken a “too little, too late” approach to winning an office which should, at least, share top billing with the others in the party’s order of electoral priorities.

However, until the Democratic party leaders and ambitious Democrats learn to value Senate victories enough to plan for them, identify and promote candidacies to achieve them, and organize the coalitions necessary to support them—months or even years in advance of elections—they will have to live with the consequences of Santayana’s warning.

And they will also have to live with Republicans representing Virginia in the U.S. Senate.