Word: republican
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...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: former Republican Senator Edward Brooke of Massachusetts. Only two black Congressmen and a handful of the nation's other 7,000 black elected officials serve constituencies in which blacks are not a majority. Even David Dinkins' triumph in New York City was a reminder of the constraints on black political power; most...
Find a silver-bullet issue even more powerful than race. The Wilder camp braced for a close contest, even after Coleman, perhaps their weakest Republican challenger, won a bruising three-way G.O.P. primary. Coleman immediately launched a fusillade of negative spots, dredging up the personal charges against Wilder from the 1985 campaign. Without a cutting issue to transform the debate, the internal calculus in the Wilder campaign was that its candidate was mired at around 45% support, partly because of Democratic defections stemming from a rancorous coal miners' strike in southwestern Virginia and a Labor Day riot among black college...
Enter Doug Wilder, divorced, father of three and abortion-rights crusader. Coleman was a tempting target, since he had placated the Republican right by opposing all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest. Wilder media consultant Frank Greer prepared an abortion ad, almost certain to be emulated by other pro-choice Democrats in 1990. Framing the issue in age-old conservative rhetoric, the spot featured images of Thomas Jefferson as an announcer intoned, "Doug Wilder believes the government shouldn't interfere in your right to choose. He wants to keep politicians out of your personal life...
...state's economic prosperity. It is oversimplistic to attribute too much influence to a single TV ad in a media-glutted statewide campaign. But the abortion issue was framed in a way that allowed Wilder to make inroads among racially tolerant, upscale voters who might be tempted to vote Republican on economic grounds. In affluent northern Virginia, Wilder ran a crucial two percentage points ahead of his 1985 showing. "Abortion is the symbolic issue for a tremendous life-style change," says Goldman. "And so is voting for Doug Wilder...
Before last week's unexpectedly close Virginia contest, Pollster Harrison Hickman got revealing results by making an offbeat correlation. When white voters were questioned by white pollsters, Hickman found, they favored Republican Marshall Coleman by 16 points. But when whites were telephoned by interviewers with recognizably black intonation, they leaned to Douglas Wilder by 10 points...