Word: virginias
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Harry Byrd's uncle, Congressman Hal Flood, was one of the Machine's leaders till his death in 1921, and Byrd's father was speaker of the House of Delegates. But Byrd's own cleverness won him the governorship in 1925 at age 38, extraordinarily young for Virginia. With intelligence and attention to detail, he soon gained control of the already thirty-year-old Machine...
Byrd has dominated Virginia politics through networks of county officials entirely subservient to the Democratic organization. Men who disagreed with the Senator on any issue were simply denied public office for the rest of their lives. Dissenting candidates simply cannot win elections with the small, well-to-do electorate and incredibly low voter turnout. Few Virginia Governors have received the votes of as much as 10 per cent of the state's adult population in the decisive Democratic primary...
...Harry Byrd controlled Virginia politics from 1925 through the 1960's as much as any one man has ever controlled the political life of any one state. But lately, the Senator has been too sick and too tired to give the Machine the kind of close attention it demands. When Governor J. Lindsay Almond abandoned Massive Resistance (to integration) in 1959, he was committing apostasy. The Machine was forced, against its will, to compromise on white supremacy...
...also a sign that the political situation in Virginia is finally changing. Voter turnout is increasing, and not only because of recent increases in the number of Negro voters. Virginia's population is growing rapidly in suburban areas around. Washington and the Norfolk-Newport News areas; new voters in these areas do not care for the Machine's country courthouse politicians...
...Godwin campaign suggests that the Machine is adapting to new conditions. Godwin lost votes to a third party Conservative in the Southside, the heart of rural segregationist sentiment in Virginia. He gained a huge percentage of votes from urban Negroes, most of whom had voted Republican before Goldwater. He ran fairly well in the city and suburban areas in general, where the Machine has always been weak...