Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 26, 1992 TAG: 9201260272
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARGARET EDDS Staff writer
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
117 DAYS WERE SPENT IN SEARCH OF PRIME TIME BUT...
Rarely, if ever, has an American governor become so instant a celebrity.In the months after his historic 1989 election, Douglas Wilder reveled in an intoxicating stint as a national political sensation. The telegenic son of a once-segregated South, now the nation's first elected black governor, he lectured at the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Government in Minnesota and spoke at Harvard University. He flew to Chicago and Los Angeles to accept awards, including the NAACP's highest. He frequented network talk shows and was feted at formal dinners in the homes of the nation's leading journalists.
Along the way, an idea germinated and grew:
Why shouldn't a man who had proved himself a giant-slayer among Southerners broaden his horizons? Might not Virginia's ultimate underdog superstar prove to be the nation's as well?
When one inner-circle skeptic voiced doubt, Paul Goldman - Wilder's brilliant and offbeat political theorist - reportedly snapped back in exasperation. Presidential campaigns, one Wilder intimate recalls him saying, largely could be won with "smoke and mirrors."
Goldman was wrong. For Douglas Wilder in 1992, sorcery was not enough.
On Jan. 8, Wilder's 117-day presidential quest ended as abruptly as it began, leaving pundits to ponder why and what, if anything, it had achieved. The answers, extensive interviews suggest, offer insights - some troubling, some fascinating - about American race relations, black politics and one of the most complex men to serve as Virginia's governor.
Certainly, the aborted campaign was not without profit for Wilder. Merely by running, he showed some of the right stuff - the sort of arrogance and go-for-broke daring that political consultants salivate over - for a future race.
Nor, despite a poor showing in some polls, was a strategy that envisioned him coming in second or third in delegates at the Democratic National Convention fully discredited. Those familiar with black voting patterns argue that Wilder almost certainly would have received a substantial majority of black votes, enough to put him second, and conceivably first, in several Southern states.
But when he abandoned it, Wilder's campaign was in peril for at least several reasons. First, whites were not buying it. Second, the Rev. Jesse Jackson was not buying it. And third, Wilder was proving atypically detached from any effort to change their minds.
In large part, his aloofness was tied to the dual commitment of running the state and running for president, a mismatch Wilder said accounted for his withdrawal. But even allies say some of the campaign's disarray was avoidable and that - except perhaps on its opening day - Wilder's heart never seemed to be with the presidential bid he so boldly launched.
The campaign, according to some of those who watched it most closely, was hatched in Paul Goldman's head. By the summer of 1990, they say, Goldman - who helped mastermind Wilder's successful bids for lieutenant governor in 1985 and for governor four years later - was reading books about the 1988 presidential race and concocting a rationale and a plan for a presidential bid. ("I read the book about Robert E. Lee's last year too," said Goldman, shrugging off the notion that he was consumed with political ambition.)
Among the arguments for a run were these:
Barred from succeeding himself as governor, Wilder was a lame duck the day he took office. In 1990, most Democrats were eyeing a race against President Bush with all the enthusiasm of roaches encountering bug spray, leaving a vacuum to be filled. And among blacks, Wilder had a base of ready support unrivaled by any potential foes.
Then too, there was the national spotlight haloing Wilder. And few of those close to him seemed willing to risk his ire by debunking the developing plan.
A few advisers, including Richmond stockbroker Buford Scott, flatly rejected the idea. A few others, among them Fairfax developer Bahman Batmanghelidj, the second largest contributor to Wilder's gubernatorial race, raised questions. But the prevailing sentiment - even after a disastrous 1991 summer in which Wilder feuded with U.S. Sen. Charles Robb and was publicly criticized by a former press secretary for short changing Virginia - seems to have been: Why not?
"The forces that won out," said one of those who watched the process closely, "were those saying, `Do it.' There's nothing to lose."
Still, even those closest to Wilder were uncertain what the verdict would be when he scheduled a mid-September, Friday-the-13th news conference to announce his decision.
That day, before a hastily-assembled noontime crowd, Wilder spoke in soaring tones of the need to confront racial and economic strife. "If we fail to heal this nation in 1992, it may not be healed in my lifetime," he said.
But privately, Wilder's commitment was not unequivocal. "He was concerned about what it would do to him, physically, emotionally, socially," said Glenn Davidson, his press secretary.
The strategy for Wilder's campaign was simple: look at where Jackson did well in 1988 and plan accordingly. Wilder hoped to place third or fourth among six major Democratic candidates in New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary on Feb. 18. If he could best even one "first-tier" candidate, the belief was, the showing would count as a win in a state where less than 1 percent of the electorate is black.
From there, Wilder would move to Maryland (March 3), Georgia (probably March 3), and South Carolina (March 7). The expectation was that he could carry one or two of those states because of their large black populations, and would place no worse than second in each.
The wisdom of that calculation is supported by Brad Coker, president of Mason-Dixon Opinion Research, a firm that does newspaper polls in all three states. In South Carolina, for instance, if Wilder carried just 2 percent of the white vote and 90 percent of the black vote, he would win about 45 percent of the ballots in the Democratic primary, Coker said.
The Maryland-South Carolina-Georgia boost, Wilder strategists thought, would thrust him into a second or third place finish on Super Tuesday, March 10. And, with luck, that momentum might have put him in line to begin winning more white voters in subsequent states.
At worst, advisers thought, Wilder would have been in position to play a major role at the national convention.
"I always thought it was a pretty realistic scenario," said a prominent Washington consultant, who declined to be named because he is advising one of Wilder's rivals in the presidential race. "That's why I was surprised when he got out."
Wilder's dramatic withdrawal, announced unexpectedly as he addressed the opening session of the state legislature, came as reality was drilling holes in the campaign game plan. Fund raising was lagging; the organization was slow in cementing, and Wilder's frequent absences from the campaign trail were increasingly telling.
Still, the potential for substantial black support of Wilder meant that his hopes were not out of reach.
The campaign that Wilder abandoned was not without memorable moments. Among them:
Back-to-back November fund-raisers in New York City. The first event was at the art-filled Upper East Side home of Katherine Johnson, whose family owns the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, and was hosted by Johnson and Patricia Kluge, a wealthy Charlottesville socialite and philanthropist who has been linked romantically to Wilder. The next morning, Laurence Tisch, chairman, president and chief operating office of CBS Inc., sponsored a Wilder breakfast at a private club.
It is unclear how much money was raised at the two events, but supporters saw them as evidence of Wilder's ability to move in wealthy, influential circles.
A Dec. 19 health care forum in Nashua, N.H., in which supporters said Wilder held his own on a complex issue and earned points for graciously alloting some of his time to two minor candidates.
A visit to Selma, Ala., in which Wilder was praised as the most luminous product of the voting rights movement born in that city in 1965. The trip highlighted Wilder's symbolic appeal to black voters, an appeal he was bolstering by highlighting civil rights themes in other settings as well.
Ironically, some former staffers say the campaign's highlights were Wilder's announcement and withdrawal speeches. Both, they say, appeared heartfelt, in contrast to the ambivalence that seemed to weigh on Wilder in the intervening months.
If there were campaign successes, however, there also were deep concerns.
Whites, a surprisingly robust 44 percent of whom backed Wilder for governor, were far cooler to the presidential effort. Only 1 percent backed him in a New Hampshire poll just before the withdrawal. The lack of support is linked by Wilder's former campaign staff and independent analysts to persistent racial prejudices and a perception that the governor was not ready for prime time.
Several key staffers report that in each of four focus groups conducted by the Wilder campaign in New Hampshire, only one voter was willing to back the governor, an unusually dismal showing. (Focus groups are a popular campaign tool in which consultants unveil a candidate's message to a selected group of voters, and gauge the reaction.) The reason most often cited for the slim backing, they said, was that Wilder could not be elected president because he is black.
In one instance, reports of which reverberated ominously through the campaign, a woman who had indicated strong support for Wilder's policies, jumped up in distress when a picture of him appeared on the screen. "My God," three campaign staffers report the woman said, "please don't tell me he's black."
But the lack of enthusiasm among whites also is linked to the fact that Wilder was often unspecific about his plans for the nation. Spokesmen say he would have become more focused as the campaign evolved, but the failure to act sooner may have been a critical mistake.
"There were too many places where Doug was simply winging it," said Ronald Walters, a Howard University political scientist and unofficial adviser to Wilder throughout the campaign.
The personal and political distance between Jackson and Wilder also was a problem - though perhaps less because of the likelihood that Jackson would not have endorsed Wilder than because the civil rights leader's skepticism was shared by other black activists.
Wilder's staff insists that the absence of Jackson could have been overcome with black voters, and would have worked to advantage among whites. In fact, Wilder was strongly considering boycotting a political forum sponsored by Jackson's Rainbow Coalition on Jan. 25 in Washington.
A final decision had not been made, but according to Jackson's staff, Wilder was the only candidate who had not responded to a Dec. 19 invitation. "My guess is we would not have gone," said a member of Wilder's inner circle.
The Wilder strategy, which banked on the belief that racial pride ultimately would sway black voters, was not foolproof, however. Wilder's emphasis on civil rights themes throughout his campaign underscored the fact that he did not have a lock on black votes.
J.L. Chestnut, a war horse of the Alabama civil rights movement, argued that Wilder would ultimately have carried that state. But he was concerned, Chestnut admitted, about black voters in states where the black political network is less tightly structured.
"Governor Wilder comes off far more white than black to many black voters," said Chestnut, who attended Howard University Law School with Wilder in the 1950s.
Chestnut said he telephoned Jackson before Wilder's appearance in Selma and urged him to stop telling blacks to "keep their options open" in the presidential race. "I was trying to neutralize him, but I didn't succeed," he said. Jackson's position, he added, "was doing us a lot of harm."
Even more damaging, some Wilder strategists said, was the candidate's own distance from the campaign. Nowhere was that felt more acutely than in fund raising, where shortcomings had a snowball effect on the entire organization.
At the campaign's end, Wilder had two paid staffers raising money, about one-tenth of the personnel commitment of Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. Wilder also had dropped his unofficial finance chairman, Northern Virginia developer Albert Dwoskin, for Atlanta investor Edward Elson, whose failure to turn up donors was the subject of staff jokes. (Dwoskin learned of Elson's installation through a newspaper story.)
Despite the short-staffing and internal turmoil, several of those aware of the fund-raising operation said Wilder was remarkably uninvolved in it. "He didn't make the calls," said one close adviser in a message echoed by others. Whether that was a function of time or disinterest is a matter of opinion.
Criticized in-state for traveling too much, Wilder was under increasing pressure from his campaign staff to be away more. In New Hampshire, for instance, several key staffers - including state director Mame Reiley - acknowledge that Wilder risked embarrassment if he did not dramatically increase his appearances there.
"We could have gotten 10 to 15 percent of the vote there," said one strategist. "But it would have taken a full-fledged effort," including sending up busloads of volunteers, spending a few hundred thousand dollars on television, and installing Wilder in the state.
None of those developments was likely, the adviser acknowledged.
Ultimately, individuals who worked on Wilder's campaign say, the task of running for president may have proved more difficult and less enjoyable than Wilder envisioned. But citing the enormous odds Wilder has faced in past contests, they almost uniformly reject the notion that hardship alone would dissuade him.
Explaining recently his decision to run, Wilder offered insight about that fighting instinct. "One of the most positive influences in my decision to run were those people who said I shouldn't. I suspected their motives," he said.
Wilder shrugged away further explanation. "It was just a thing that had to be done," he said. "I can't explain all the reasons why."
As for his departure, Wilder said the large number of Virginians who were telling him - not through polls, but by letter and in person - that he was needed at home were persuasive.
Perhaps most telling was an inner reluctance absent from Wilder's bids for high office in Virginia. A man who has spent his life seizing opportunity may, for once, have seen opportunity knock before he was ready.
"My heart was in it, but the question was whether all of my heart was in it. And that may not have been," he said.
Keywords:
PROFILE POLITICS