
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 15, 1994                   TAG: 9406160007
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DEMOCRAT? ... AND DOUGLAS WILDER

ROUNDING OUT this extraordinary Senate race - or more accurately, squaring it off - is former Gov. Douglas Wilder. Wilder's candidacy makes it a four-way match among Virginia political titans, titan has-beens and titan wannabes. Just who is which? At this point, who knows?

Wilder's entry as an independent trying to deny Charles Robb re-election is not the noblest route he could have taken. Robb and the state Democratic Party acquiesced to Wilder's insistence on a primary after Wilder threatened to launch an independent Senate campaign. They acquiesced - but Wilder chose to forgo the primary anyway, and filed Tuesday as as an independent.

Wilder's passion to beat Robb is a grudge match, not without some cause - and not without an apparently sincere belief that the incumbent has misused the office.

But if Wilder believes Robb is too tainted to sit in the U.S. Senate, party loyalty demanded that he run in the primary. One Democrat, whoever it would have been, would have better odds of winning a three-way race against Oliver North and newly independent/Republican Marshall Coleman than the four-candidate race that's developed.

Wilder, though, has always been more the close-to-the-vest gambler than the faithful party soldier. If he weren't a maverick, he'd still be waiting for the keepers of the conventional wisdom to deem the time "right" for a black man to win the governorship of Virginia.

The man is an audacious, smart, gifted politician. As governor, he responded well, if not perfectly, to a difficult fiscal time and kept the state on a sound footing during a trying recession. He probably would be a competent senator. As a statesman and party elder, well ...

As Wilder's star has risen, it has illuminated a personal style of ego-driven feuding and bridge-burning that mars his accomplishments. North supporters think their man would cause fireworks in Washington. Imagine the rockets that would be ignited gleefully by a Sen. Wilder.

by CNB