Word: virginias
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Rural areas, always strong for the Machine, no longer have the strength they used to. Now, most of Virginia's voters live in cities and suburbs--before 1960 most voters were rural. 65 per cent of the Old Dominion's population lives in the urban corridor which slashes diagonally across the state from the suburbs of Washington, D.C., on south through Fredericksburg to Richmond, and then down into the densely-populated complex around the Navy installations at Norfolk. At the same time that the Byrd Organization has trouble in this area, its traditional margins in Southside have been severely...
...Byrd Machine and the forces and policies it represented, was suddenly jeopardized. In 1954, a large group of liberal-to-moderate delegates were elected to the General Assembly in Richmond. These "Young Turks," as they were called, vociferously questioned the whole range of conservative ideas imbedded in Virginia's political life. This in itself was an almost unprecedented situation for the Old Dominion, but when federal courts ordered school integration, the conflict was brought to a head...
After a dramatic battle in the Assembly, the Byrd people managed to pass a series of laws which had the effect of closing down any Virginia public school which integrated. It was a sad maneuver--some schools remained closed for over hall a decade--but it saved the Organization. In plotting this course, the Machine branded the young Turks as the integrationists. Yet after the storm dies down, the Machine embraced the tokenism that gradually spread across the nation. This slow change was demonstrated by Mills E. Godwin, who was elected Governor last year, but who only ten years...
...votes), and went on to defeat his Goldwater-Republican opponent in the November election by almost two-to-one. In what the press labeled "The Big Race," Spong outran his running-mate Senator Harry F. Byrd, Jr., by 56,000 votes. It was a striking display of how far Virginia has come in the past few years...
...likely that power within the Democratic Party will shift more and more toward the moderates, and its leaders will be more in line with the national Party. Spong's impressive victory could also dampen a potentially explosive split among Virginia's Democrats. His candidacy against Robertson in the Primary was closely watched by the "extreme" liberal wing of the Party. Should he have failed, strident anti-Machine candidates would have been in a much stronger position to demand a crack at statewide offices in 1969. If this polarization ever occurs, it will seriously impair Democratic chances in Virginia for many...