Breakthrough In Virginia Dougas Wilder

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Enter Doug Wilder, divorced, father of three and abortion-rights crusader. Coleman was a tempting target, since he had placated the Republican right by opposing all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest. Wilder media consultant Frank Greer prepared an abortion ad, almost certain to be emulated by other pro-choice Democrats in 1990. Framing the issue in age-old conservative rhetoric, the spot featured images of Thomas Jefferson as an announcer intoned, "Doug Wilder believes the government shouldn't interfere in your right to choose. He wants to keep politicians out of your personal life." It was the next sentence, perhaps the most important in the campaign, that provided the thematic subtext: "Don't let Marshall Coleman take us back."

That line was much more than just a reminder of the era before Roe v. Wade. It also consciously harked back to segregationist, backwater Virginia, a sleepy Southern state dominated by the oligarchic Byrd machine. The implication was that not only abortion and race were at stake but even the state's economic prosperity. It is oversimplistic to attribute too much influence to a single TV ad in a media-glutted statewide campaign. But the abortion issue was framed in a way that allowed Wilder to make inroads among racially tolerant, upscale voters who might be tempted to vote Republican on economic grounds. In affluent northern Virginia, Wilder ran a crucial two percentage points ahead of his 1985 showing. "Abortion is the symbolic issue for a tremendous life-style change," says Goldman. "And so is voting for Doug Wilder."

Virginia has always been in the forefront of racial change. It was at Jamestown in 1619 that the first shipload of captive Africans later destined for slavery disembarked. It was at Appomattox in 1865 that the Confederacy surrendered. It was in Virginia in the 1950s that men who fancied themselves learned penned some of the last erudite-sounding but morally bankrupt justifications for segregation. And it will be in Richmond on Jan. 13 that there will be a black hand on the Bible when Lawrence Douglas Wilder is sworn in as Virginia's 73rd Governor. It is not only in Berlin that ugly walls and once impassable barriers are tumbling down in a world bright with change.

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CREDIT: [TMFONT 1 d #666666 d {Source: CBS News/New York Times exit poll}]CAPTION: Winning by a whisker

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CREDIT: [TMFONT 1 d #666666 d {Source: CBS News/New York Times exit poll}]CAPTION: The vote by race... and sex

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CAPTION: What mattered in Virginia