Breakthrough In Virginia Dougas Wilder

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All this Byzantine maneuvering was but a prelude to Wilder's breakthrough: his nomination for Lieutenant Governor in 1985. Virtually no leading white politicians wanted Wilder on the ticket; the issue was whether they would risk his wrath to keep him off. Wilder cemented a successful alliance with Baliles, the underdog for the gubernatorial nomination, because he was in the weakest position to resist a black running mate. "There were people in the Baliles campaign," Wilder recalled afterward, "who didn't want me on the ticket either."

Wilder's statewide campaign in 1985 can best be understood as the test marketing of the candidate for the 1989 gubernatorial race. Strapped for campaign cash, Wilder made news by touring each of the state's 95 counties. He neutralized stereotypes by filming a TV ad trumpeting his endorsement by a prototypical rural policeman, who looked like an extra from Smokey and the Bandit. Even when his G.O.P. opponent attacked him for owning slum property and being reprimanded by the state supreme court for unduly delaying a client's case, the normally combative Wilder turned the other cheek. As Paul Goldman, Wilder's longtime backstage strategist, explains, "One of the things we learned in 1985 is that if you don't think about race, it doesn't matter." Wilder won with what, compared with last week's results, seems almost a landslide margin: nearly 52% of the vote.

Wilder never faced a serious challenge for the gubernatorial nomination once he pressured State Attorney General Mary Sue Terry to defer her own ambitions until 1993. There was grumbling in the Robb faction of the state party, but once again, no one wanted to risk an open schism by trying to deprive Wilder of his moment on the mountaintop. There was no chance of a racially divisive primary, since Virginia Democrats, unlike those in other Southern states, nominate by convention. In a sense, Wilder was the beneficiary of old- fashioned back-room politics, just as Irish, Italian and Jewish candidates were in the urban North decades ago. With the aid of the Robb and Baliles organization, plus his own ties to Richmond business interests, Wilder was able to raise $7.2 million, avoiding the traditional fate of ill-funded black candidates.

Find a silver-bullet issue even more powerful than race. The Wilder camp braced for a close contest, even after Coleman, perhaps their weakest Republican challenger, won a bruising three-way G.O.P. primary. Coleman immediately launched a fusillade of negative spots, dredging up the personal charges against Wilder from the 1985 campaign. Without a cutting issue to transform the debate, the internal calculus in the Wilder campaign was that its candidate was mired at around 45% support, partly because of Democratic defections stemming from a rancorous coal miners' strike in southwestern Virginia and a Labor Day riot among black college students in Virginia Beach.