In The News It's a 'Dirty' Job, but Six Want It Race for Soil Conservation Panel Is County's Most Crowded By Carol Morello Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, October 10, 2001; Page PW01 When Martin E. Nohe decided to run for a seat on the Prince William County Soil and Water Conservation Commission, his own mother essentially said: You're running for what? Nohe understood her question well. He had much the same reaction when Sean T. Connaughton, the Republican chairman of the Board of County Supervisors, mentioned it as a good first step for a budding politician. Although a lifelong resident of Prince William County, Nohe remembers thinking: Why run for something I don't know what it does? On Nov. 6, Prince William County voters can cast ballots for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and five seats in the state House of Delegates. But the most hotly contested local race is for the barely known Soil and Water Conservation Commission. Six candidates are vying for three seats on a panel that attracted so little interest last time that two members won as write-in candidates. "I'm not running a humorous campaign," said Nohe, head of an appliance store in Woodbridge and vice chairman of the county GOP. "But the irony doesn't escape me." On the face of it, there is not much to suggest the commission is a good place to build the foundation of a political career. It is so obscure that even the challengers have had to educate themselves on the basics: Three of its five members are elected for three-year terms. One member is appointed by the governor on the recommendation of the elected members, and one works for the Virginia Cooperative Extension Service. The board oversees a staff of five professionals whose primary job is to promote conservation techniques for the county's handful of farmers and to put on conservation education programs at area schools. They sponsor Arbor Day poster contests, for example. The agency's annual operating budget is minuscule, only $250,000. In addition, the commission can award cost-sharing grants to area farmers, typically to build fences that keep their animals away from streams. In each of the past three years, the grants have totaled about $200,000. The task is even more daunting than is immediately apparent. With only five or six dairy farmers and one cattle rancher in the county, there's a natural limit to how many grants the commission can award. So the current commission has reached out to residents who own a few horses or breed a few exotic animals such as ostrich and buffalo. Some commission members have been disappointed to discover how little power the job has. "I got on because I thought we would have the ability to control growth, but I found out what we do mostly is help farmers build sludge tanks," said William Lawry, elected three years ago with less than 100 write-in votes. He is not running for reelection. In the past, it hasn't been easy to find candidates for the job. Melvin D. Bellinger, in his third term as an appointed member and now a candidate for an elected seat on the commission, said he has tried in vain to recruit candidates for a position that carries no salary and requires about 30 hours of work a month. "It's a job that has no real power, is a lot of work, for no pay," said Bellinger, a retired economist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture who grew up on a farm in Nebraska. In the last election, only one candidate was officially on the ballot; she resigned after only a few months and was replaced by Robert P. Shiner, a retired accountant and horse owner who is running this year as an incumbent. Lawry and Jeffrey M. Guide, a technical specialist with the Library of Congress and a member of the local Democratic committee, got on as write-in candidates. Connaughton acknowledges casually mentioning the commission to several people after so few candidates showed any interest in it the last election. He noted that a current member, whom he would not name, told him the commission members deserve more respect and visibility because, "We're elected countywide, just like you." "It's an extremely interesting little agency," Connaughton said. "On one level, it can be looked at as a dogcatcher post. But it has an important function. If someone is looking at potentially running for office, it's a good place to start." Guide says he has helped expand the commission's mandate. While it remains a low-profile job, he said, a savvy member with ambition could plumb its opportunities for publicity. "If you do it right, you can get yourself in the paper," said Guide in a cell phone interview from New York City, where he was touring the ruins of the World Trade Center to get ideas how to protect the local environment should a terrorist attack occur in Prince William County. "There are a lot of photo ops, like Arbor Day. I don't do it that way. I'm not interested in self-promotion like some of the people [running for the office] are." The three challengers are active in the local Republican committee: Steven M. Danziger is the chairman; Nohe is the vice chairman; and Daniel W. Berrios is chairman of the Neabsco District. Although the commission posts are nonpartisan and all the candidates are listed as independents on the ballot, the Republican committee has endorsed all three challengers and the Democratic committee has endorsed Guide, who maintains the committee's Web page. Some, like Danziger, are barely campaigning at all. Danziger said that when he goes knocking on doors to drum up votes for the gubernatorial race, he intends to mention that he is running for the Soil and Water Conservation Commission, too. Fliers, he said, would be "a little ostentatious." Nohe said he tells customers and vendors in his appliance store that he's running for the office. Guide held a Labor Day kickoff, with a press conference and a news release touting his accomplishments in the job. No reporters showed up, he said, but some friends came. Then there's Berrios, a former bank loan officer who says he is now a "professional campaigner" in his first run for public office. He has raised $1,500 from friends and supporters, and bought a used Winnebago that he has plastered with photos of himself and George W. Bush. He drives it around planting stakes on which he posts the 500 campaign placards he has printed reading "Daniel Berrios. Soil and Water Director. God Bless America." Berrios said he wants to be elected precisely because he thinks it can be turned from a commission hardly anyone knows exists into a board that has relevance to any homeowner with a lawn. "Nobody I talk to knows about this thing," he said, meaning the commission. "It would be a great opportunity if you could add some spice to it and get kids interested in conservation. I just tell people it exists, and it can be important." Other candidates acknowledge the most crowded race in the county is probably not the most important. "On election night," Nohe said, "if I win and the rest of the party does poorly, no one will come up to me and say, 'Good job, Marty.' " © 2001 The Washington Post Company Return to Homepage

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