Word: governor
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...York Governor Mario Cuomo observes that what Dinkins does with his victory is "more relevant" than the number of votes that carried him into office. If the new mayor is to justify the hopes invested in him, he will have to display something more than the clubby conciliation that marked his previous career. The problems of crime, drugs, homelessness and substandard education cry out for solution or at least amelioration. The infrastructure is literally blowing up, with a seemingly endless series of water-main explosions. Especially worrying are Dinkins' close ties to powerful labor unions, some of which may clamor...
...Wilder. Back in 1975, when Wilder was the only black in the state senate (and the first since 1890), he gave voice to his overarching aspirations, a notion of empowerment far beyond what seemed plausible amid the genteel conservatism of the Old Dominion. "If people will elect you Lieutenant Governor," Wilder predicted with startling prescience, "they'll elect you Governor. I would think it would be an interesting test somewhere along the line for a black to run for one of those positions so as to put prejudice right on the line...
...later, election night 1989, Wilder himself provided Virginia voters -- and, by implication, the nation as a whole -- with the most ambitious referendum on black political progress since Jesse Jackson first dabbled in presidential primaries. With Wilder, the grandson of slaves, battling to become the nation's first elected black Governor, it seemed almost commonplace that black mayoral candidates from Seattle to New York City were winning their own landmark races...
Faithful to his prediction, Wilder had clambered onto the statewide leadership ladder with his election as Lieutenant Governor in 1985. In 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...
...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 to declare proudly, "As a boy, when I would read about an Abe Lincoln or a Thomas Jefferson . . . when I would read that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights . . . I knew it meant...