DATE: Tuesday, August 26, 1997              TAG: 9708260001

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B9   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: OPINION 

SOURCE: Perry Morgan

                                            LENGTH:   67 lines

WILDER'S ELECTIONEERING; IS IT ISSUES, OR JUST VANITY?

Former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder is not sure he wants to support fellow Democrat Donald Beyer for governor, and is exchanging warm glances with Republican Jim Gilmore.

Still another campaign starring Douglas Wilder has begun. The end will be a long time coming. How long? A long, long time. Not before a candidates' debate on Oct. 6, which, as one might surmise, Wilder himself will moderate. And probably not soon after that.

Such debates, one's to assume, yield matters of weight. Thus several additional weeks may be allotted for mastication, parsing and Solomonic musings.

During this interval, old scripts suggest, Wilder will blow more kisses to Gilmore and work out more of his sibling rivalry with Beyer. The Democrat already has been panned by Wilder for inconsistency and pandering, which (horrors!) is like blaming a zebra for having stripes.

There are all sorts of pandering, of course; some politicians indulge the perceived fancies of the public while others bow to their own lesser selves. Wilder somewhat resembles a figure of the old South where the swashbuckling ``hell of a fellow,'' in W.J. Cash's phrase, did not want for attention. And where opening stages of campaigns often were crowded by glimmering figures seeking leverage from those who would stay the course, or merely reveling in the bombast and the clamor - glory remembered and refreshed.

To be sure, Wilder's accomplishments and power are real. As Virginia's first African-American governor, he was able to save a U.S. Senate seat for Chuck Robb after doubling the jeopardy Robb had brought upon himself. Wilder's endorsement of Robb did not come until: 1) He'd bedeviled Robb with his own campaign as an ``Independent.'' 2) He'd been beseeched in the White House by Bill Clinton, who later helped Wilder raise money to pay campaign debts. 3) It was 18 days before Election Day - a proverbial last-moment intervention enabling Wilder to say that it was he who saved the seat for Robb and from GOP candidate Oliver North.

It appears that Beyer, like Robb, has adopted a strategy of smiling through Wilder's brickbats. He hasn't many options. Robb had a margin over North of only 3 percent after receiving about 95 percent of the black vote.

If Wilder hasn't really put his constituency up for grabs in the current race, he is giving a rattling good imitation of having done so. Gilmore naturally has gone a'courting, and Wilder is welcoming. Grin-and-bear-it Democrats express pride in Wilder and hope for Beyer. The latter said he ``takes nothing for granted.''

This perhaps would sound less forlorn if the Beyer campaign had been gaining altitude rather than, at best, drifting. Wilder is correct in saying Beyer hasn't made much of his experience as lieutenant governor and that Beyer ``has to show he can articulate something and put it into action.'' Translation: Beyer was on the ropes before Wilder barged in.

Is there something more than meets the eye in these campaign capers? A Republican governor elected with significant help from black citizens would be as historic as Wilder's own election, and might foretell national developments as the GOP teeters to and fro on the edge of becoming the nation's dominant party.

The question of immediate importance in Virginia is whether the initial bonding between Wilder and Gilmore says more about political issues or about Wilder's personal vanities.

Since Wilder will be judge as well as referee of the Oct. 6 debate, it would be of interest to know how he stands on tax cuts and local revenues. When political romance is in the air, issues are at their dullest. But issues decide where the state is going. MEMO: Mr. Morgan is a former publisher of The Virginian-Pilot.

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