KING OF THE HILLS.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: North Carolina Representative, Charles Taylor - Brief Article

How the mountains' most powerful politician minds his own business, as well as the people's.

A white beard covers the old man's chest, and y his side stands a woman with leathery cheeks creased by years spent over fireplace store-bought skillets. In the photograph, his suit and her store-bought dress are pained over the homespun clothing they were wearing. Charles Taylor stops and looks up at them. At 60, he's younger, but his eyes are as stern as the old man's. "My great-grandfather was born in 1824. He carved shoes that he wore to work in the fields so he could save his leather ones for Sunday. People tell me I'm tight, but if I ever spent too much for anything, he'd come down and give me a whipping."

The old man can rest easy. Standing before him, in a 50-room mansion over-looking the valley of the French Broad River outside Brevard, is the most powerful politician and one of the wealthiest businessmen -- maybe the wealthiest -- in the North Carolina mountains. Charles Taylor went into business for himself in grade school, and despite more than a decade in Congress and, before that, eight years in the General Assembly, business, not politics, is what defines him. What drives him, in either endeavor, is the tight-fisted, fierce conservatism his great-granddaddy passed down in his genes.

Talking to a reporter, Taylor pulls on a camel-hair blazer and gets ready to give a speech in Asheville, an hour away. He has 45 minutes to get there. In his official photograph, the eagle on his lapel pin is upside down. Some sort of symbolic statement? No, he says, rummaging in a scuffed leather satchel for his cellphone. "We had a whole bunch printed before we noticed. No need to waste 'em." His wife reminds him of the time. He's at the front door, just short of the two life-size stone lions that flank it, but goes back to cut off a bathroom light.

Last year, Roll Call, a newspaper that covers Capitol Hill, ranked the 535 members of Congress by their wealth. Taylor was 24th. He trailed two Tar Heels: Cannon Mills heir and fellow GOP Rep. Robin Hayes, No. 8; and, at No. 12, Sen. John Edwards, a Democrat who made a mint as a trial lawyer, a species conservatives despise. Taylor's financial-disclosure form puts his net worth between $12 million and $57 million, but the law allows vast leeway. Property records and other sources indicate he's worth a lot more than that. While some politicians' fortunes wither while they're in office, his has flourished. He makes no apologies for hurrying home from Washington each week -- by Thursday, when he can -- to tend to business. He lists his occupation as tree farmer, but his holdings include a savings bank, a mortgage brokerage, other investments and more land than he can keep track of.

So entwined are his twin pursuits -- making money while making law -- that his businesses have become the club his foes try to beat him with in campaigns fought, on both sides, as ferociously as blood feuds once were in these parts. "I went through enough of his business documents to form a clear impression of how he operates," says Grier Weeks, an Asheville nonprofit-housing executive who managed Democrat Maggie Lauterer's 1994 campaign to unseat Taylor. "He's incredibly focused on making money. If we were all like Charles Taylor, there'd be a lot more millionaires in this world." But no matter how hard they've tried to topple him, the multimillionaire mountain man is still king of the hills.

There's some confusion in western North Carolina as to whether Charles Taylor is a congressman or a saint," Lauterer says. Or, if you're running against him, the devil incarnate. The pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Burnsville, she lost a race so vicious, even by mountain standards, that it was turned into The Political Education of Maggie Lauterer, a documentary public television aired nationwide. Word was spread that she -- a pro-choice, married white woman -- was sleeping with a black man. When Vice President Al Gore came to campaign for her, police had to control chanting Taylor supporters carrying "Maggie the Baby Killer" signs. A candidate can't be held responsible for everything his supporters might do, Taylor says.

Six months after his latest election, well-wishers keep interrupting him as he dips into a noonday bowl of tomato soup at a downtown Asheville cafe. One, balding and 70ish, thrusts out his hand. "I sure am glad you won," he says, beaming. "That other character was just 80000 unsavory." In western North Carolina's most-expensive campaign ever, Democrat Sam Neill, a Henderson County real-estate lawyer and former chairman of the UNC Board of Governors, called Taylor "a rich tax cheat" and ran ads of children attacking Taylor's environmental record. He spent about $1 million, not counting -- by Taylor's estimate -- $1.5 million in soft-money attack ads paid for by the National Democratic Party, Sierra Club and others. Taylor spent about $1.2 million, plus $325,000 he lent his campaign and probably as much as Neill did in soft-money acts. Major support came from the North Carolina Republican Executive Committee and business political-action committees, including those of the American Textile Manufacturers Associa tion and Philip Morris Inc. Taylor branded Neill a "liberal, million-dollar lawyer."

As it has six straight times since 1990, the 11th District backed Taylor, this time by a 55%-45% margin. "He took a district that was seesawing back and forth by margins of 1,000 to 2,000 votes in the '80s and made it pretty much a safe seat," says Bill Sabo, a UNC Asheville political scientist who contends Taylor plays down his wealth to play up to his blue-collar constituency. "It's remarkable how he's built such a bond of trust with small businesses and conservative voters. Attacking him just backfires."

It doesn't stop people from trying. That's why Taylor remains a mystery, like the shadows in a laurel thicket. He rarely grants interviews and, when he does, skirts questions about himself. Not only are the media scandal-hungry, he believes, but allied with his enemies, who plant stories, then tout the headlines. Last fall, federal investigators targeted reporters for The (Raleigh) News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer who based stories on Office of Thrift Supervision documents taken from Taylor's Blue Ridge Savings Bank Inc...