eran of the General Assembly. Although he u i

eran of the General Assembly. Although he u i staunch conservative, the elder Gray remained faithful to the Democratic party.

Rick Gray, a political moderate, early on cast his lot with the GOP.

A 1975 graduate of the University of Virginia Law School, he supported Sen. Harry F. Byrd’s bid for reelection in 1976. The following year he chaired the Chesterfield County Committee of Virginians for Dalton in the latter’s successful campaign for governor.

In 1977 he became an early and enthusiastic supporter of Sen. John Warner, and was Warner’s 3rd District floor leader at the tumultuous GOP state convention that summer. He was, in due course, elected a member of the Chesterfield Republican Committee.

The following year, Gov. Dalton appointed Gray to the post of Secretary of the Commonwealth. At 27, he was the youngest secretary in the nation. Clearly he was being groomed for big things by the state party.

But then his interesting odyssey to the Democratic Party began.

In 1980 he bitterly opposed the nomination of Ronald Reagan for president. Finding himself unable to support Reagan, he eventually resigned from the county GOP committee.

Then, the next year, he stunned Dalton and the state Republicans by refusing to fly to a national convention of secretaries of state while the air traffic controllers were on strike. His gesture in support of the strikers cost him his job a few weeks later."

“Gov. Dalton and I decided we couldn’t work together,” he later joked. “So we flipped a coin to decide who would go and who would stay. He won.”

There followed a period in which Gray described himself as an independent. In mid-February, however, he formally associated himself with the Democratic Party.

He also picked a favorite candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. His choice was one of the longest of long shots, Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado.

Hart’s surprising showing in the Iowa caucusses and astonishing victory in the New Hampshire primary have suddenly thrust Gray into a new and unexpected role.

“I feel like I bought a penny oil stock and the company hit a gusher,” he remarked.

Thus it was that Gray’s first public appearance as a reborn Democrat and the first known speech in the state on behalf of Gary Hart’s presidential bid occurred at the same time last week. Gray took his case for Hart before a meeting of the Goochland County Democratic Committee. In his address to the gathering, the former Republican flayed the Reagan administration.

“His foreign policy is in chaos,” he told the Goochland Democrats and a number of visiting candidates for statewide and congressional offices.

“His domestic policy—his mountainous budget deficits—can only be compared to a man who tears the walls off his house in the middle of the winter to use as wood for his stove! Old Harry Byrd would turn over in his grave over what’s going on.”

Gray says he is not looking for a statewide role in the Hart campaign, but since there is no Hart campaign at all in Virginia at this point, he is providing the candidate’s national headquarter with names and information. “I would hope more experienced people than I would run it,” he said.

In Gray’s view. Hart would be the best candidate to field against Reagan because he is a new' name, unburdened with the old Democratic solutions of the past and full of new ideas.” Also he said he finds the idea of John Glenn on the ticket as Hart’s running mate attractive. “John Glenn was my boyhood hero,” he said, “it would be a comfortable team.”

The Democrats at the Goochland meeting also seemed comfortable with Gray. It was an impressive performance, and in the view of many on hand he is, indeed, a rising star in state politics.

Although, to be sure, not quite in the way his early Republican mentors intended.