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wrecked the party’s JeffersonJackson Day “Unity” Dinner. It took the intervention of state party Chairman Alan Diamonstein to cool down the two candidates and quiet the ruckus.
At the State Central Committee meeting, the well-organized Davis forces devastated the fragmented Baliles partisans with a succession of victories on procedural questions concerning the nomination procedure. And then they went further and dictated the at-large membership of the convention committees. Infuriated Baliles supporters temporarily walked out of the meeting in an effort to stop the rout by destroying the meeting’s quorum. They failed, and the whole affair was a clear Davis triumph.
It is doubtful, however, that it was a Democratic party triumph. It was a case where a little magnanimity on the part of the Davis troops on a few issues might have served to lessen the pain of some people who, if Davis wins the nomination, will be desperately needed in the big push against his Republican opponent next fall.
In yet another parallel to the national campaign, Davis, regarded by some as the front runner at this point, is obviously relying heavily on the party’s organized constituency groups to get his people out to the caucuses in order to vote for and elect his delegates. For that limited purpose, it is a sound strategy.
But in pursuing it, Davis risks suffering Walter Mondale’s handicap of being tagged as the candidate of special interests by both his Democratic opponent for the nomination, and most assuredly by his GOP opponent in November should he be the nominee.
As the Democrats found to their regret last year, many of these groups, such as organized labor, can be invaluable assets in securing the nomination, yet become millstones round the nominee’s neck once the general election campaign gets under way.
It must also be said that on the Republican side of the hill, an equally or perhaps even more ferocious battle is taking place for the GOP gubernatorial nod. We will have more on that interesting situation later.
But for the Democrats, such are the lessons and admonitions of the party’s recent past.
It is, of course, not too late for the party’s strategists to learn from them and get their act together. But in order to do so, the hot-eyed loyalists in the candidates’ camps and party factions will have to realize that there is life beyond the state convention.
Somehow, if the party is to be successful in holding the governor’s mansion, the strategists in the various campaigns must find ways to build, not burn, bridges between the party’s diverse factions and fiefdoms. At the same time they must find ways to build, not bum, bridges to the state’s vast pool of independent voters who hold the key to victory in any general election.
If they fail on either count, as they did so miserably on both last year, as Santayana warned, November 1985 may be as bleak for Virginia Democrats as November 1984 was for Democrats across the land.
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