Word: spong
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Like most of the moderates, Spong is a middleaged, socially prominent lawyer. He graduated from Hampden-Sydney College, where his friends included the sons of three past Virginia governors, and then went to Europe with the 8th Army Corps during the Second World War. After the war, he studied law at the University of Virginia and at the University of Edinburgh. In 1954 he won election to the state's House of Delegates and two years later entered the State Senate. While he was in the Senate, he earned acclaim even from the Byrd people for a four-year study...
AFTER a decade of working with the Organization in the legislature, Spong decided to challenge it in a state-wide contest. Projecting the image of an attractive young problem-solver, he entered the Democratic primary in July, 1966, in an effort to wrest the nomination away from veteran Sen. A. Willis Robertson. Although he was helped by abolition of the poll tax and the subsequent growth in the Negro electorate, Spong's most active support came from a whole generation of young voters who could not identify with the old men in the Organization. Robertson conducted the best-financed...
...Spong's first year in office, however, has disappointed Virginians who hoped for a bold new era in the state's politics. He has worked as conscientiously as everyone expected--his large, cheerful, busy staff is most unusual for a Virginian serving in Washington--but on 83 per cent of the Senate votes he has agreed with the state's senior Senator, Harry Byrd...
...Spong defends his seemingly conservative voting record by pointing out that most Senate votes are routine and that he has opposed Byrd on several important rollcalls. Their most notable splits have been over confirmation of Justice Thurgood Marshall, ratification of the Soviet consular treaty, raising the debt limit, and keeping Head Start in the poverty program...
...ALTHOUGH Spong has voted with the Southern bloc on tactical moves concerned with the civil rights bill now pending in the Senate, he hopes to cast the South's first vote for passage of a civil rights measure, but only if the open housing provision is deleted from the bill...