Will Sen. Allen's Cowboy Boots Fit Virginia Voters?

"Are y'all ready to win one month from today? This is victory weather!" Allen roared. If voters choose based on issues, he vowed, "we will win."

On Nov. 7, Allen will follow his custom and wear cowboy boots when he goes to the polls to vote. This time, he is in a tight race against a candidate who has his own meaningful footwear. Democratic nominee James Webb, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, wears combat boots in recognition of his son's deployment to Iraq with the Marines and to symbolize his own opposition to the war there.

Allen's detractors mock the cowboy image as an act dreamed up by an ambitious surfer boy from California to appeal to rural voters in Virginia. To them, it screams phony.

"With all due respect, I know cowboys," said Steve Jarding, who was raised in South Dakota and is now a senior Webb adviser. "I grew up with cowboys. I have nephews who bull ride. I'm sorry, George, you're not a cowboy."

To Jarding, Allen's penchant for cowboy boots and a wad of snuff is as contrived as Billy Crystal's character in the faux-cowboy movie "City Slickers."

"I put on a Superman outfit for Halloween," Jarding said. "It didn't make me a superhero."

Allen declined to be interviewed for this article. But people who know him well say he came under the spell of TV westerns while growing up in a fancy Southern California suburb. His sister, Jennifer, wrote in a memoir that Allen often dressed "like a character on 'Hee Haw' -- cowboy hat, flannel shirt, blue jeans and boots."

His favorite series, according to friends, was the shoot-'em-up classic "Gunsmoke." His brothers nicknamed him "Festus" after a character on the show who was an illiterate deputy marshal in Dodge City.

As a law student, Allen summered twice at a cattle ranch in Winnemucca, Nev., while many of his peers clerked for judges or toiled over briefs at law firms. He roped cattle for a cow boss named Joe Brown. Later, he tried to invite Brown to his gubernatorial inauguration, only to learn he had died.

His law office in Charlottesville was festooned with Western paraphernalia: a saloon sign, lassos, a saddle, a stuffed armadillo and a cowhide rug. One of the items he displayed -- a hangman's noose -- later caused him trouble. Adversaries accused him of displaying a symbol of lynching as part of a pattern of insensitivity toward minorities.

Even today, one room in his Fairfax County house is dedicated to Western memorabilia.

"He's been that way for years. He's been enamored with that since he was a kid," said Chris LaCivita, a consultant who managed Allen's 2000 Senate campaign. "This is not new to a lot of people. What's being done, it's being repackaged in a negative light to assault the guy's character."