Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 4, 1992 TAG: 9201060188
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
POLLS, THE PARTY AND GOV. WILDER
A RECENT survey by the Virginia News Network found scant support for Gov. Wilder's presidential bid among local Democratic leaders in the state. That is not - as Glenn Davidson, the governor's press secretary, would have it - "irresponsible journalism." Rather, it's an illuminating clue as to why Wilder's political career is faltering.Of Virginia's 139 city and county Democratic chairmen sent the questionnaire from the radio news network, 88 responded. Among the 88, 46 percent preferred Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton over Wilder. Another 18 percent favored either Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin or Nebraska Gov. Bob Kerrey. Only 23 percent backed native-son Wilder.
Davidson complained that the poll was skewed because it included the response of only one local chairman in the Richmond-Tidewater area, and the responses of only three chairmen in Northern Virginia - areas where Wilder feels his state support is strongest. "This poll doesn't tell you anything," Davidson groused.
Au contraire. At this point in Wilder's bid, it may tell more than the more "scientific" public-opinion polls - which, incidentally, the VNN has never claimed its surveys of party officials to be.
No matter how carefully constructed and conducted, a standard public-opinion poll is still a measure only of oft-fickle public opinion at a specific moment in time. The VNN questionnaire is not scientific in the sense of using random-sample techniques; it did not have to be, because the group whose opinions were sought - the 139 local Democratic leaders in Virginia - is small enough for all members to be surveyed. Those leaders presumably have given the matter more thought than the average voter, and presumably have a bigger voice than average in party nominations.
Not that the VNN findings are at any great variance with the results of polls measuring opinion among the broader public. The latest Roanoke Valley poll, released the other day, found 64 percent of this area's residents disapprove of the way the governor's handling his job. A recent poll by Virginia Commonwealth University found Wilder's statewide approval rating at a record low of 23 percent.
It may be telling that party leaders in areas Wilder thinks are his base chose not to respond to the VNN questionnaire. More clearly instructive is that, however you cut the precise percentages, Wilder's presidential campaign does not have the backing of many people who by virtue of their party posts and home-state loyalty would ordinarily be expected aboard.
Even a local leader professing to support Wilder's presidential aspirations said, under the cloak of anonymity: "Why should Virginia keep all the misery to itself? Share, share!"
That's unnecessarily sarcastic, and unfair. Wilder has not been a a miserable governor. He's been a governor caught up in economic circumstances mostly not of his making; his budget policies in response inevitably have been difficult and imperfect, but far from irresponsible.
Yet the comment is also revealing, as a sign that the governor's fast popularity fall cannot be ascribed solely to the tyranny of economic circumstance. Hard times no doubt have contributed, as they have to the declining popularities of governors in other states. But Wilder's fall could have been softened by stronger bonds between him and the people who are the backbone of his own party in his own state. Forging such bonds, however, is a chore in which the governor seems to have little interest.
Rather than shooting at messengers, and missing, the governor's people might do better to pay heed to the messages.