TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/041789/04178900.043

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                                                                                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.