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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 25, 1990                   TAG: 9007250399
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A/9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SHELLEY ROLFE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IN HIS FOES, WILDER GOT LUCKY

Edds, who reports on Virginia politics from the (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot's Richmond bureau, decided some progress had been made economically and socially.

There had been political progress, too, but Edds measured it in inches. Here and there, black candidates won elections. But mostly they lost when victory could be achieved only by commanding a significant bloc of white votes.

Oh, she was not without hope. A great deal of the hope was expressed in the last chapter of "Free at Last." It was titled "Doug Wilder" and told of his amazing - well, amazing at the time - election in 1985 as Virginia's lieutenant governor by winning 44 percent of the white vote. The chapter was subtitled, "The Future."

As we all know, the future in one sense arrived this past November. Wilder was - again, amazingly, to overuse that word - elected governor. This version of the future may have arrived with a bang but it did not arrive in a landslide. It took a recount to establish Wilder as a 6,741-vote victor over Marshall Coleman.

No matter the margin. Here was Wilder as a part of history. Here he was, the nation's first elected black governor - in a state that is only about 18 percent black and whose political leaders once, in another time, espoused segregation forever.

Here was Wilder, a figure of national and international interest. Of course, he would get invitations to speak from coast to coast. Here was Wilder speaking in New Hampshire and Iowa and California and stops in between, and espousing the New Mainstream that had been a basic message of his campaign.

Never mind that state Republicans grumbled that Wilder seemed to be running for national office. No law against that, is there?

Now Edds has written another book, "Claiming the Dream," which recounts how this version of the future came about. It tells of the 1989 campaign in chronological order and detail. Charge by charge, issue by issue, TV ad by TV ad, a good amount of them nasty.

Writing of an election less than a year after it has happened can be chancy business. Instant history is a very inexact science. And those attempting to practice it invariably get measured against the works of the late Theodore White, who invented instant political history, at the presidential level.

Edds, who has been writing of Virginia politics for almost two decades, tells her story well. Inexact science? In her hands it becomes very exact.

Reading the book, you may marvel against how - all things considered - Wilder did win. I believe Edds thinks it was made possible on July 3, 1989, when the U.S. Supreme Court said states could adopt restrictive abortion laws.

Suddenly, Wilder, who is pro-choice, had an isssue that was to win the urban votes that elected him. Suddenly, Coleman was locked in by a stern no-abortions-ever stance he had adopted to win hard-right votes in the Republican primary.

Abortion probably made it possible for Wilder to overcome attacks on his integrity, a campaign that sprung serious leaks in August, and the Labor Day Greekfest rioting in Virginia Beach that could have aroused latent anti-black feelings. (As it turned out, Wilder almost carried Virginia Beach.)

Edds suggests what I strongly believe. Wilder was lucky in running against John Chichester in 1985 and against Coleman last year. For the longest while, Chichester's handlers believed he could win by merely showing up. By 1989, Coleman had been all over the ideological spectrum and was looked on as a man who would do anything to win. This made people critical of his negative TV ads, and made it possible for Wilder to say he merely was fighting fire with fire when he aired negatives of his own.

In the end, both Chichester and Coleman attacked the press.

Chichester liked to show reporters newspaper clippings that he said clearly demonstrated coverage was skewed toward Wilder.

Late in the campaign, Coleman charged there was a double standard in campaign coverage. Edds asks: Was this a covert racist appeal? He also fired shots at The Washington Post, a tactic that once could be counted to rally a lot of Republicans. But apparently not this time. Because of abortion? An interesting book - for political junkie and non-junkie alike.