Breakthrough In Virginia Dougas Wilder

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Wilder's ascension inevitably prompted journalists to dust off their favorite Virginia cliches ranging from "Capital of the Confederacy" to political scientist V.O. Key's 1949 description of the state's old-family oligarchy as a "political museum piece." But, in truth, Virginia has changed almost beyond recognition in the past 20 years. A booming urban corridor, which includes two-thirds of the state's voters, curves south from the Washington suburbs of northern Virginia, crosses Richmond and heads east to the bustling Tidewater area around Norfolk. Although no Democratic presidential contender has carried Virginia since Lyndon Johnson in 1964, the party has controlled state government since the 1981 election of L.B.J.'s son- in-law, the popular Governor (and now Senator) Chuck Robb. The respected current Governor, Gerald Baliles, cannot succeed himself under state law. As political scientist Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia puts it, "I think of Virginia today more as a Middle Atlantic state than a Southern state."

In Richmond the hurrahs over Wilder's election have been tempered by an almost equal amount of hand wringing over his meager margin. But no one should have expected Wilder's candidacy to usher in the millennium of a color-blind electorate. Coleman has contributed to this yes-but mood by threatening to call for a recount, though his chances of a resurrection appear scant.

Political pundits have vied to quantify what is virtually unknowable: the precise number of Democratic-leaning white Virginians who could not bring themselves to vote for a black candidate. Polls are unreliable on this point, since few voters are secure enough in their bigotry to confess such blatant bias. Wilder strategists, perhaps reflecting their candidate's de-emphasis of racial issues, argue that their putative lead was always exaggerated. "In none of our polling did we expect to have Doug much over 51%," says Wilder pollster Mike Donilon. In other words, if the election was always destined to be a cliffhanger, there was no dramatic last-minute drop-off of Wilder's white support.

But the prevalent interpretation is that Wilder was forced to eke out such a narrow victory only because he was a black candidate. The most common benchmark is to measure Wilder's vote against the come-from-behind 54% to 46% triumph of Democrat Donald Beyer over Edwina ("Eddy") Dalton in the battle for Lieutenant Governor. What gives piquancy to this comparison is that Beyer, a Volvo dealer and political neophyte, was running against the widow of a former Governor. "Wilder would have won a victory similar to Beyer's if he had been white," contends Sabato. But this is a bit facile. "You've got to look at the races separately," says Mandy Grunwald, Beyer's media consultant. "Coleman ran a better closing campaign than Dalton."