Battling An Old Bugaboo

By Laurence I. Barrett

Chicago, April 4 -- On the 21st anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Richard M. Daley was elected mayor after a campaign that sundered the city along racial lines.

Richmond, April 10 -- Final Democratic Party caucuses gave Lieutenant Governor L. Douglas Wilder the delegates necessary to guarantee him the party's gubernatorial nomination. Grandson of slaves, Wilder would be the first black to be elected a Governor in U.S. history.

Bulletins from the battlegrounds where race and politics collide more often resemble the one from Chicago than the one coming from Virginia. As the racially divided voting in the Windy City demonstrated, American elections all too often remain a matter of black and white. Virginia, once a bastion of segregation, seems an unlikely setting for a brand of biracial coalition that could break the depressing pattern of color-bound voting. Yet if Doug Wilder wins the governorship, the old bugaboo of racial politics will have been dealt a severe blow.

The very fact that Wilder, 58, will head his party's statewide ticket in a former stronghold of the Confederacy is an indication of progress. Since 1964 the number of black elected officials has grown from 103 to more than 6,000. But the numbers conceal a disturbing reality: in many places racial antagonism is sharpening rather than abating -- a process that politicians, both white and black, have at times exacerbated. Republican TV spots on the Willie Horton case in last year's presidential campaign tapped white fears. The upsurge of drug-related urban violence, says Democratic pollster Harrison Hickman, "has rekindled in people's minds the connection between blacks and violent crime." - Affirmative action has provoked a second-generation backlash, particularly among working-class whites. In combining the roles of protest leader and political candidate, Jesse Jackson stokes this fear with his demands for "economic justice."

As in many Northern cities, the Chicago election was an ethnic power struggle. Six years ago, the charismatic Harold Washington became the city's first black mayor with a crusading campaign among blacks that also won the support of some white liberals. That coalition won him re-election in 1987. But his inarticulate successor, Acting Mayor Eugene Sawyer, who took over after Washington's death 16 months ago, was unable to hold the alliance together. His cause was doomed when Alderman Timothy Evans, a Washington disciple, rebuffed Jackson's appeal for black unity. With the black electorate split and black turnout low, Sawyer was easy prey in February's Democratic primary. He was humiliated by Daley, son of the city's late political patriarch, Richard J. Daley.

Those same fractures undermined Evans' slender hopes in last week's general election. Mimicking white Democrats' attempts to override the 1983 primary by mounting an independent challenge to Washington, Evans ran under the banner of the Harold Washington Party. Jackson refused to endorse Daley, who had not actively supported Washington's earlier bids. Instead, Jackson backed Evans -- thereby opening himself to charges of putting race ahead of party loyalty. But turnout in black wards went down. To win, Evans needed at least 15% of the white vote; he got 7%. Daley attracted 8% of black voters, but his richly financed campaign produced a large turnout among whites. Result: Daley, by 55% to 41%.

Wilder faces a dramatically different challenge as he seeks to become the first black Governor since P.B.S. Pinchback served briefly as Louisiana's chief executive during Reconstruction after his predecessor was impeached and removed. Wilder lacks a large racial base; blacks make up just 18% of the state's population. But given his ability to appeal to whites while retaining his black constituency, the wily Wilder stands a chance of winning. Four years ago, he became the black elected official with the largest constituency in the U.S. by taking 44% of the white vote. Asked to explain his success in conservative Virginia, Wilder responds simply, "First I had to get past looking at myself as a black politician."

One of eight children of a ghetto insurance salesman, Wilder worked his way through a local black college by clearing tables in spiffy, segregated hotels. After Army service in Korea, he got a law degree from Howard University. When Wilder won a three-way contest in 1969 and became the only black in the 40- member state senate, he was typecast as a liberal. By Virginia standards, he was. He cast a lonely vote against capital punishment and led a long battle to make Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a state holiday. But on most other issues he allied himself with the party's centrist establishment.

Having trudged up the seniority slope to committee chairmanships, Wilder by the early '80s was the most influential black politician in Richmond. The white hierarchy liked what it saw: a charming Horatio Alger type with a bootstrapping message for blacks. "To look anywhere but to yourselves ((for improvement))," he liked to say, "is a mistake."

Yet as a consummate insider, Wilder subtly practiced racial politics. In 1982 party elders wanted to anoint a U.S. Senate candidate whom Wilder considered too conservative. He killed the idea by threatening to drain off black votes by running as an independent. Four years ago, determined to run for Lieutenant Governor, Wilder encountered opposition from Democrats who feared that the presence of a black would bring down the statewide ticket. Wilder stared down all opposition. His allies quietly spread the word that if the party belatedly created a rival, it would be vulnerable to a charge of racism. Says one of his top supporters: "If you go eyeball to eyeball with Wilder, you are going to blink first."

In the general election, Wilder emphasized fiscal prudence, anticrime measures and other issues calculated to appeal to white moderates. He paid so little attention to his original constituency that a group of black ministers declined to endorse him. "I didn't concentrate on it," he says, because he had to spend so much time courting skeptical whites. He got 97% of the black vote but failed to stimulate a high turnout.

This year Wilder again headed off opposition for the nomination from Attorney General Mary Sue Terry, 41. Like any other Virginia Democrat, she would need very strong black support to win in the fall. Wilder denies that he threatened to play the racial card. Instead, he stressed that a contest with Terry would have been divisive. "Mary Sue is an attractive, bright candidate with a brilliant future," says Wilder. Translation: Terry can wait until 1993 for the governorship. She is doing just that. |

This fall's contest promises to be more difficult than in 1985, when the G.O.P. complacently assumed that race alone would defeat Wilder. This time he must inspire a larger than usual black turnout while persuading whites to put aside historic prejudices. To fend off criticism from conservatives, he has distanced himself from Jackson. Some militant black leaders in Richmond resent Wilder's retreat from his roots. But if he becomes Governor, he will have done what Jackson and other protest leaders have been unable to do: build a coalition that can put a black in a Governor's mansion.

With reporting by Gavin Scott/Chicago