Word: wilder
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Wilder's strategy appeared to be working so well that few expected election night to be a Maalox Moment. All the published pre-election surveys had shown Wilder leading his Republican rival J. Marshall Coleman by margins of 4% to 15%. Even an initial television exit poll had anointed Wilder with a 10 percentage-point triumph. But by the time Wilder felt comfortable enough to declare victory, his razor-thin lead had stabilized about where it would end up: just 6,582 votes out of a record 1.78 million ballots cast. That was enough, however, for Virginia's Governor-elect...
...Wilder's wafer-thin win should have been all the more satisfying, for it underlines the extent of the racial barriers that he has surmounted. But in the 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...
...Wilder, himself a product of segregated education and law school at Howard University, will be the embodiment of state government for the next four years. When he is inaugurated in January, he will command more day-to-day administrative power than any other elected black official in the nation's history. (P.B.S. Pinchback, hitherto the nation's only black Governor, served for just four weeks in Louisiana during Reconstruction.) But there is also an important symbolic dimension to Wilder's election. It is sobering to remember that just one other black has been elected to major statewide office since Reconstruction...
...Wilder's ascension inevitably prompted journalists to dust off their favorite Virginia cliches ranging from "Capital of the Confederacy" to political scientist V.O. Key's 1949 description of the state's old-family oligarchy as a "political museum piece." But, in truth, Virginia has changed almost beyond recognition in the past 20 years. A booming urban corridor, which includes two-thirds of the state's voters, curves south from the Washington suburbs of northern Virginia, crosses Richmond and heads east to the bustling Tidewater area around Norfolk. Although no Democratic presidential contender has carried Virginia since Lyndon Johnson...
...Richmond the hurrahs over Wilder's election have been tempered by an almost equal amount of hand wringing over his meager margin. But no one should have expected Wilder's candidacy to usher in the millennium of a color-blind electorate. Coleman has contributed to this yes-but mood by threatening to call for a recount, though his chances of a resurrection appear scant...