Democratic elder statesman Doug Wilder slams his own party and its nominee for taking black voters for granted.
Democratic elder statesman Doug Wilder slams his own party and its nominee for taking black voters for granted.
T he Virginia governor’s race has tightened. Democrat Terry McAuliffe, seeking a return to the office he held from 2013 to 2017, has only a 1.8 percentage-point lead in the RealClearPolitics average of all polls. As a quasi-incumbent, the fact that he hasn’t finished above 50 percent in any poll so far gives Republican Glenn Youngkin real hope that most voters don’t want the slick, former Clinton fundraiser back for an encore.
McAuliffe has critics within his own Democratic Party. The most notable is Doug Wilder, who became the nation’s first elected black governor in 1989. At age 90, he still commands attention and wields influence.
“No Democrat, in recent times, has won an election in Virginia without strong minority votes,” Wilder wrote earlier this year. “Why should he expect that vote to be there for him in 2021 having shown such little appreciation for it?” Wilder accused his fellow Democrats of taking the minority vote for granted.
One of his grievances is that Democrats haven’t adequately funded the state’s five historically black colleges and universities (HBCU).
“And yet without historical black colleges and universities, many of us would never have had an education, and you’re talking to one of them now,” he told the Washington Examiner. Wilder noted approvingly that Youngkin has pledged more direct funding of HBCUs: “When Glenn Youngkin says that it’s a high priority, there are people who won’t forget it.”
In a recent debate with Youngkin, McAuliffe stated, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
Wilder noted that this could hurt McAuliffe with black voters and help Youngkin. “When the prospective next governor of Virginia says, ‘I am not going to allow parents to tell schools what to teach,’ You say, ‘My God.’”
Wilder is not issuing any endorsement for governor, but almost all of his observations point toward a clear preference. Virginians “are independent-thinking people,” he said. “And you see what the polls are showing as it relates to independents: Youngkin is leading with independents as they cross over.”
Wilder has been needling McAuliffe for months. In February, Wilder joked in a radio interview: “When I hear from the former governor, saying he’s going to come back with ‘bold leadership’ — well, when did he discover it? He needs to tell his party the elixir he found to be able to pour into their drink so they might be infused with this spirit of boldness.”
Wilder has been critical of the entire Democratic campaign effort in the state. He blasted a video endorsement that Vice President Kamala Harris made for McAuliffe, which hundreds of black churches are showing before the election. Wilder says that he, along with legal experts, believes that the ad is a clear violation of IRS rules. “Well, it’s very good for her to do that, causing these churches to lose their tax-exempt status,” he quipped, referring to the Johnson Amendment, a rule that prohibits charities and churches from engaging in any political campaign activity.
Democrats dismiss Wilder as a relic of the past and point to enthusiastic crowds that Barack Obama, Stacey Abrams, and others have drawn when campaigning for McAuliffe.
“Surrogates are not going to determine the outcome of this election. People will,” Wilder says. “Knock on somebody’s door and tell them Stacey Abrams said they should vote, or the former mayor of Atlanta — Keisha Lance Bottoms. They’re going to say, ‘Who?’ Do they know Virginia? Do they know the status of our schools?”
Wilder’s service as governor was over a generation ago, but voters in Richmond, the state’s largely minority capital, remember his more recent service as mayor, from 2005 to 2009. Wilder has a reservoir of goodwill among many blacks and moderate Democrats. He is old enough to have attended segregated schools, graduated from college when Harry Truman was in the White House, and fought in the Korean War.
Should Glenn Youngkin win on November 2 and return Virginia to GOP control, I’ll bet that a close examination of the votes by precinct will show that Wilder-style moderate Democrats played a key role in McAuliffe’s defeat.