Word: evens
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...remember that just one other black has been elected to major statewide office since Reconstruction: former Republican Senator Edward Brooke of Massachusetts. Only two black Congressmen and a handful of the nation's other 7,000 black elected officials serve constituencies in which blacks are not a majority. Even David Dinkins' triumph in New York City was a reminder of the constraints on black political power; most big-city mayors operate in a no-win environment, where their capacity to be blamed for insoluble urban problems far exceeds their powers and resources...
...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...
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...
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...
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...