Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 11, 1990 TAG: 9006120046
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-3 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: ROB EURE POLITICAL WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"If the Virginia election was any measure, `the rowdier the better' may well be the rule in American politics," writes Margaret Edds in "Claiming the Dream: The Victorious Campaign of Douglas Wilder of Virginia."
Edds says Wilder's "principal regret is that he did not hit harder at his opponent in the last week of the contest" when the Democrat came under intense fire from Coleman.
Similarly, Coleman's top strategists now say "his key mistake may have been to devote two weeks in late September and early October to praising himself rather than attacking Wilder," a decision that accompanied a fall of 12 points in Coleman's polling numbers, the book says.
Although most voters say they dislike negative campaigning, Virginia's record turnout belies the theory that it dampens voter participation.
But negative campaigns do have dangers, Edds says. Wilder, she writes, successfully fingered Coleman for starting the mudslinging.
Although both sides used their share of attack advertisements, Edds said Coleman's brutal attacks on former Sen. Paul Trible during the Republican primary laid the groundwork for Wilder's success in tagging him as a vicious campaigner, she writes.
Edds' book says Wilder's elevation to become the first elected black governor is historic evidence "that color alone was no longer an absolute bar to election, no matter what the makeup of the citizenry or the prestige of the office."
"Those African-Americans who primarily made mainstream, non-racial appeals to the electorate could win even when the overwhelming majority of the voters was white."
Edds says the two key elements in deciding the 1989 Virginia campaign were race and abortion.
The contest was the first test of a campaign dominated by the abortion issue and will be analyzed across the nation for its lessons to Republicans and Democrats and moderates and extremists on the abortion question, she says.
Coleman's stand against all abortions except when the life of the mother is in question placed him in a defensive position, Edds wrote. She credited Wilder for cleverly framing his position not as one favorable toward abortion, but in libertarian terms of favoring a woman's right to decide the question without governmental interference.
But, she says the message on abortion "paled in importance beside those relative to race."
Racial attitudes were never blatantly injected into the contest by either side, but the attitudes were subtly present. Wilder's familiar urging that "We've come too far to turn back now" and the Democrat's exhortation to "make history" carried undertones of race, she said.
Although Coleman avoided overt racial appeals, Edds writes that his assault on the news media for applying a double standard to Wilder "ensured that the larger, unspoken message would be this: ` Do remember that my opponent is black.' "
Edds, a Richmond reporter for The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star in Norfolk, also is the author og "Free at Last," a book examining the effect of the advance of civil rights in Southern politics.
"Claiming the Dream," due to be published by Algonquin Books this summer, is the third book about Wilder. In 1988, Roanoke Times and World News reporter Dwayne Yancey published "When Hell Froze Over" about Wilder's long-shot bid to become Virginia's lieutenant governor in 1985. Yancey has updated the book this year to cover the 1989 race. Washington Post reporter Don Baker's biography of Wilder, "Hold Fast to Dreams" was published late last year.
by CNB