Word: whiteness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...contrast to Jackson's often divisive politics of prophecy, Wilder was now the candidate of consensus progress and a united Democratic Party. If successful, he would become the model for future black crossover politicians who could triumph in places like Virginia, where the electorate was 80% white...
...topsy-turvy world of political analysis, this Virginia victory was measured against the unrealistically optimistic expectations raised by the pre-election surveys and as a result was somehow found wanting. According to the final CBS/New York Times exit polls, Wilder won an impressive 39% of the white vote. In 1988 Democratic primaries, Jackson never came close to this type of biracial mandate. Moreover, Wilder ran neck and neck with Coleman among all voters over 45, the group most likely to remember the era of "massive resistance" in the mid-1950s, when Prince Edward County shut down its public schools rather...
Political pundits have vied to quantify what is virtually unknowable: the precise number of Democratic-leaning white Virginians who could not bring themselves to vote for a black candidate. Polls are unreliable on this point, since few voters are secure enough in their bigotry to confess such blatant bias. Wilder strategists, perhaps reflecting their candidate's de-emphasis of racial issues, argue that their putative lead was always exaggerated. "In none of our polling did we expect to have Doug much over 51%," says Wilder pollster Mike Donilon. In other words, if the election was always destined...
...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 is a bit facile. "You've got to look at the races separately," says Mandy Grunwald, Beyer's media consultant. "Coleman ran a better closing campaign than Dalton...
...this Byzantine maneuvering was but a prelude to Wilder's breakthrough: his nomination for Lieutenant 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...