Word: almosts
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Wilder himself provided Virginia voters -- and, by implication, the nation as a whole -- with the most ambitious referendum on black political progress since Jesse Jackson first dabbled in presidential primaries. With Wilder, the grandson of slaves, battling to become the nation's first elected black Governor, it seemed almost commonplace that black mayoral candidates from Seattle to New York City were winning their own landmark races...
...longer did Wilder risk racial polarization by talking about putting prejudice to the test. Now 58, his hair silver, his manner reassuring and his smile infectious, Wilder had grown far too adroit to speak of racial issues in anything other than soft, almost dulcet, tones. Throughout the 1980s, Wilder had consciously shaped his persona to make his blackness and ground-breaking achievements seem almost boring and quietly inevitable. He did not disown his racial identity, tossing off laugh lines like, "How can I not think of myself as a black man? I shave." His style, rather, was to envelop...
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...
...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...
...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...