TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/041789/04178900.043

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 8KB | 134 lines

NATION, Page 26

Battling an Old Bugaboo

In Chicago it was black and white. Will Virginia be different?

By Laurence I. Barrett


    Chicago, April 4 -- On the 21st anniversary of the
assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Richard M. Daley was
elected mayor after a campaign that sundered the city along racial
lines. Richmond, April 10 -- Final Democratic Party caucuses gave
Lieutenant Governor L. Douglas Wilder the delegates necessary to
guarantee him the party's gubernatorial nomination. Grandson of
slaves, Wilder would be the first black to be elected a Governor
in U.S. history.

    Bulletins from the battlegrounds where race and politics
collide more often resemble the one from Chicago than the one
coming from Virginia. As the racially divided voting in the Windy
City demonstrated, American elections all too often remain a matter
of black and white. Virginia, once a bastion of segregation, seems
an unlikely setting for a brand of biracial coalition that could
break the depressing pattern of color-bound voting. Yet if Doug
Wilder wins the governorship, the old bugaboo of racial politics
will have been dealt a severe blow.

    The very fact that Wilder, 58, will head his party's statewide
ticket in a former stronghold of the Confederacy is an indication
of progress. Since 1964 the number of black elected officials has
grown from 103 to more than 6,000. But the numbers conceal a
disturbing reality: in many places racial antagonism is sharpening
rather than abating -- a process that politicians, both white and
black, have at times exacerbated. Republican TV spots on the Willie
Horton case in last year's presidential campaign tapped white
fears. The upsurge of drug-related urban violence, says Democratic
pollster Harrison Hickman, "has rekindled in people's minds the
connection between blacks and violent crime." Affirmative action
has provoked a second-generation backlash, particularly among
working-class whites. In combining the roles of protest leader and
political candidate, Jesse Jackson stokes this fear with his
demands for "economic justice."

    As in many Northern cities, the Chicago election was an ethnic
power struggle. Six years ago, the charismatic Harold Washington
became the city's first black mayor with a crusading campaign among
blacks that also won the support of some white liberals. That
coalition won him re-election in 1987. But his inarticulate
successor, Acting Mayor Eugene Sawyer, who took over after
Washington's death 16 months ago, was unable to hold the alliance
together. His cause was doomed when Alderman Timothy Evans, a
Washington disciple, rebuffed Jackson's appeal for black unity.
With the black electorate split and black turnout low, Sawyer was
easy prey in February's Democratic primary. He was humiliated by
Daley, son of the city's late political patriarch, Richard J.
Daley.

    Those same fractures undermined Evans' slender hopes in last
week's general election. Mimicking white Democrats' attempts to
override the 1983 primary by mounting an independent challenge to
Washington, Evans ran under the banner of the Harold Washington
Party. Jackson refused to endorse Daley, who had not actively
supported Washington's earlier bids. Instead, Jackson backed Evans
-- thereby opening himself to charges of putting race ahead of
party loyalty. But turnout in black wards went down. To win, Evans
needed at least 15% of the white vote; he got 7%. Daley attracted
8% of black voters, but his richly financed campaign produced a
large turnout among whites. Result: Daley, by 55% to 41%.

    Wilder faces a dramatically different challenge as he seeks to
become the first black Governor since P.B.S. Pinchback served
briefly as Louisiana's chief executive during Reconstruction after
his predecessor was impeached and removed. Wilder lacks a large
racial base; blacks make up just 18% of the state's population. But
given his ability to appeal to whites while retaining his black
constituency, the wily Wilder stands a chance of winning. Four
years ago, he became the black elected official with the largest
constituency in the U.S. by taking 44% of the white vote. Asked to
explain his success in conservative Virginia, Wilder responds
simply, "First I had to get past looking at myself as a black
politician."

    One of eight children of a ghetto insurance salesman, Wilder
worked his way through a local black college by clearing tables in
spiffy, segregated hotels. After Army service in Korea, he got a
law degree from Howard University. When Wilder won a three-way
contest in 1969 and became the only black in the 40-member state
senate, he was typecast as a liberal. By Virginia standards, he
was. He cast a lonely vote against capital punishment and led a
long battle to make Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a state
holiday. But on most other issues he allied himself with the
party's centrist establishment.

    Having trudged up the seniority slope to committee
chairmanships, Wilder by the early '80s was the most influential
black politician in Richmond. The white hierarchy liked what it
saw: a charming Horatio Alger type with a bootstrapping message for
blacks. "To look anywhere but to yourselves (for improvement)," he
liked to say, "is a mistake."

    Yet as a consummate insider, Wilder subtly practiced racial
politics. In 1982 party elders wanted to anoint a U.S. Senate
candidate whom Wilder considered too conservative. He killed the
idea by threatening to drain off black votes by running as an
independent. Four years ago, determined to run for Lieutenant
Governor, Wilder encountered opposition from Democrats who feared
that the presence of a black would bring down the statewide ticket.
Wilder stared down all opposition. His allies quietly spread the
word that if the party belatedly created a rival, it would be
vulnerable to a charge of racism. Says one of his top supporters:
"If you go eyeball to eyeball with Wilder, you are going to blink
first."

    In the general election, Wilder emphasized fiscal prudence,
anticrime measures and other issues calculated to appeal to white
moderates. He paid so little attention to his original constituency
that a group of black ministers declined to endorse him. "I didn't
concentrate on it," he says, because he had to spend so much time
courting skeptical whites. He got 97% of the black vote but failed
to stimulate a high turnout.

    This year Wilder again headed off opposition for the nomination
from Attorney General Mary Sue Terry, 41. Like any other Virginia
Democrat, she would need very strong black support to win in the
fall. Wilder denies that he threatened to play the racial card.
Instead, he stressed that a contest with Terry would have been
divisive. "Mary Sue is an attractive, bright candidate with a
brilliant future," says Wilder. Translation: Terry can wait until
1993 for the governorship. She is doing just that.

    This fall's contest promises to be more difficult than in 1985,
when the G.O.P. complacently assumed that race alone would defeat
Wilder. This time he must inspire a larger than usual black turnout
while persuading whites to put aside historic prejudices. To fend
off criticism from conservatives, he has distanced himself from
Jackson. Some militant black leaders in Richmond resent Wilder's
retreat from his roots. But if he becomes Governor, he will have
done what Jackson and other protest leaders have been unable to do:
build a coalition that can put a black in a Governor's mansion.