The new dominion - gubernatorial campaign in Virginia

National Review, Sept 29, 1989 by Robert G. Holland

RICHMOND-Virginians will be electing

either a black Democrat or Ra fairly conservative Republican their governor this November. Viewed against the backdrop of an unlamented Southern past-in which the winner of the (all-white) Democratic primary was automatically the winner of the election-either result will stand out in sharp New South relief. Republican strivings, however, have fallen outside the national media spotlight that has been trained on the prospect of Virginia's having the nation's first Mr. Holland works on the editorial page of the Richmond News-Dispatch.

elected black governor.

The wearer of that mantle is the 58-year-old lieutenant governor, Lawrence Douglas Wilder. Wilder is a grandson of slaves; forty years ago, he waited on tables at all-white watering holes here in Richmond. He recalls without apparent bitterness that white men told "Negro jokes" as if he were invisible. Twenty years ago he became the first black since Reconstruc-

tion to be elected to the Virginia Senate; during his tenure there, he became a respected denizen of that establishment bastion.

The Republicans' champion, meanwhile, bears no resemblance to the sacrificial lambs of the GOP's Old South days. Indeed, John Marshall Coleman, 47, has an excellent chance to achieve both a personal and a party comeback by defeating Wilder on November 7. Elected the state's first (and to date only) Republican attorney general in 1977, Coleman lost the gubernatorial race to Chuck Robb in 1981, a defeat that ended a 12-year GOP hold on the governor's

office that had begun after the crackup of Harry F. Byrd's conservative Democratic organization.

The comeback began slowly: as of this January, Coleman trailed former U.S. Senator Paul Trible by 31 points in the three-way GOP primary. But Coleman's

fortunes brightened as he succeeded in establishing his conservative credentials.

He has not really changed since his first entry into politics, but the Virginia scene has changed a great deal around him. With his roots in the mountain-valley tradition of moderate Republicanism, Coleman garnered one third of the black vote in his 1977 election as attorney general. That did not endear him to the Old Guard. He further tarnished himself in their eyes by blasting his well-respected Democratic foe, a conservative, for supporting the state's policy of "massive resistance" to integration in the 1950s (a policy which, in those sad times, few politicians dared oppose).

Although a few detractors still harbor suspicions that Coleman is a crypto-liberal, his conservatism palpably jelled during the 1980s. In his 1981 gubernatorial campaign he aligned himself strongly as a Reagan Republican, and, what's more, he remained a faithful Reaganite during the lean years that followed his loss to Robb. In his upset victory over Trible in this year's primary, Coleman received the avid support of such Reaganites as William Bradford Reynolds and Charles Cooper, late of the Justice Department, and of Richard V. Allen, former national security advisor. Reagan himself will stump for Coleman this fall, beginning with a fundraiser later this month.

During this campaign, Coleman has sharpened his conservative stances in ways that, polls suggest, are striking responsive chords in the Old Dominion. For example, Coleman has championed tuition tax credits and vouchers in education, and he has opposed compulsory statewide sex education. He has taken the read-my-lips, no-newtaxes pledge (George Bush will also campaign for him this fall), and has hammered hard on drugs and crime, advocating the death penalty for drug kingpins and boot camp for youthful offenders.

Wilder, too, has tried to move to the right, but, although he was never a Jesse Jackson clone, his ideological

journey began late and has had to stretch so far as to strain credibility. Coleman, in fact, has challenged him to name one significant issue on which he has not done a complete about-face since 1985, when he was a state senator representing an innercity district. Wilder has flip-flopped on the death penalty, life sentences without parole, parental consent for a minor's abortion, and stiffer sentences for gun-wielding felons, all of which he once opposed but now professes to favor.

"The rhetoric is conservative, but the record is wilder," puns Coleman.

"I've changed; the state has changed," retorts Wilder.

Like Representative Jim Courter in New Jersey, Coleman has taken some hits for his right-to-life position. But right-to-work may be a more dangerous minefield for Wilder than right-tolife is for Coleman. Right-to-work has long been an article of faith for Democrats and Republicans alike in Virginia. Wilder, touring the traditionally Democratic coal fields of southwest Virginia, departed from this tradition by signaling his solidarity with United Mine Workers strikers who are furious at Governor Gerald Baliles for sending state police to intervene in their dispute with Pittston Coal. But after Coleman strongly endorsed the Democratic governor's action, Wilder backtracked