Word: blacks
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...