Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 4, 1990 TAG: 9005040769
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Howard Musser, James Harvey and William White also shared a campaign strategy, a common treasury and a firm insistence that each was running with the others as part of a team.
Moreover, they formed their ticket even before the Democrats' nominating meeting, a move that in the end forced one Democratic incumbent to run - and lose - as an independent.
The idea of a merged campaign was long in coming to Roanoke politics, perhaps because of the arithmetic of at-large elections for council seats.
The impact on how the city will be run is a matter of speculation; the winners themselves say they won't agree on everything.
This much, however, already is evident: The "ticket" approach brought Roanoke's black community into fuller participation in city politics.
That may seem an odd thing to say in a community that has had an elected black mayor since 1976.
But for the first time in Roanoke politics, a black newcomer (White) was elected to council without significant "single-shotting" - voting for only one candidate in a contest where you can vote for more than one - in the city's predominantly black precincts.
Noel Taylor became mayor only by virtue of single-shot voting in the city's predominantly black precincts. Were it not for single-shot voting in black precincts in 1970, he would not have led the field. Were it not for double-shot voting in black precincts in 1974 (the other recipient was Robert Garland, who's stepping down from council this year), Taylor would not have led the field once again.
And had Taylor not led the field, he would not have been vice mayor when Mayor Roy Webber died. That made Taylor mayor. His popularity throughout the city - a popularity that deters serious challengers at election time - came only after he was several years in the office.
In the 1980 election, Taylor was unopposed - but it took strong support in the city's black precincts for Wendell Butler, who is black, to win a council seat. Butler, like Taylor before him, led the field. Judging from the precinct-by-precinct returns of that year, however, he might well have finished fourth for three seats without heavy support from the black community.
Butler chose not to run for re-election in 1984, so let's segue to 1990 and the Musser-Harvey-White ticket.
Though White finished behind Musser and Harvey, he finished far ahead of the rest of the pack.
White would have won election even if there were no black voters. And Musser and Harvey finished so high because they garnered almost as many votes in predominantly black precincts as did White.
The overall merits of merged campaigns are far from proved. There's a possibility, for example, that they could camouflage the presence on the ticket of a truly weak candidate who has no business getting elected. They also could obscure differences among the candidates on important issues.
But on the specific issue of black participation in city politics, the merged campaign of 1990 had a happy result.
It's good that a solid non-incumbent candidate who happens to be black can carry white as well as black neighborhoods.
And it's good that a such a candidate can get elected to council without black Roanokers having to forgo using all their votes.
by CNB