Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, September 12, 1994 TAG: 9409130024
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MARGARET EDDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
``Another Deserts Wilder'' read the headline, which Wilder recalled as he paused for an interview Sunday after a campaign appearance at the 1,500-member Fifth Baptist Church.
Not until the article's last sentence did it note that 64 ministers, including Richmond's mayor, had endorsed him, Wilder said, his voice rising in irritation. ``It reminds me,'' he said, ``of the story Jesse Jackson told, of how if everybody went across the water in boats and he walked across the water, the headline would read, `Jesse Can't Swim.'''
It had been, as the vignette told by the nation's first elected black governor suggests, the best and worst of weeks in his independent campaign for the U.S. Senate. Wilder emerged in the eyes of many, including newspaper editorial writers in Richmond and Norfolk, as the winner of Tuesday night's nationally televised debate among the four Senate candidates. The result, aides say, is an unprecedented flurry of contributions and pledges of support.
With three polling organizations scheduled to unveil survey results this week, Wilder predicts that Robb will have slipped, he will have gained, and voters generally will have begun to recognize that he is the best hope to keep Republican Oliver North out of Congress.
``The phone is literally ringing off the hook,'' said an obviously energized Wilder. ``Me, with no party backing, no commercial advertising at this point. It's amazing ... it's truly amazing,'' he said.
But it was also a week that began with the endorsement of Robb by the state's highest-ranking black elected official, Rep. Robert Scott, D-Newport News. Later came the defection of Hill, who is the dean of civil rights lawyers in the state and - coincidentally - Wilder's sometime bridge partner. The elderly Hill's endorsement letter was particularly cutting, alleging that Wilder has ``abandoned the Democratic Party of Virginia and the members of the Black Caucus and placed in jeopardy the best interests of the Black Caucus, the Virginia Democratic Party and the people of Virginia.''
Interviews suggest that black voter groups in Richmond and across Southside Virginia are poised to endorse Robb. As Wilder's campaign also appears to be picking up steam, the growing fear of many Democrats is that Wilder and Robb will so split the traditional Democratic base that North will be elected. ``It looks like that's what's going to happen,'' lamented David Hall, an admissions counselor at Richmond's Virginia Union University.
About 19 percent of the state's population is black, and those voters historically have been the Democratic Party's most dependable constituency. Political scientists estimate that Wilder got 96 percent of the black vote and 41 percent of the white vote in his 1989 election for governor.
While not quite reaching Wilder's level of support, Robb also has been a consistently strong vote-getter among black voters.
The fourth candidate in the Senate race, former Attorney General Marshall Coleman, argues that he will be the beneficiary of dissension on the Democratic side. Wilder, a Richmond lawyer who has exhibited a gambler's instincts during a 25-year political career, downplayed the endorsements of Robb by prominent blacks. In addition to Scott and Hill, Bishops L.E. Willis Sr. and Samuel Green, who represent about 150 churches across southern Virginia, and state Sen. Henry Marsh of Richmond have backed Robb. Marsh and Wilder were roommates at Howard University law school in the 1950s.
The former governor suggested that Democratic officeholders have little choice but to back the party's nominee and that his endorsements by several hundred black ministers, some of which are still to be announced, far outweigh those for Robb.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB