By GEORGE BOWLES

By GEORGE BOWLES

Amid the political shot and shell of the 1985 statewide campaigns, it might be appropriate to pause for a moment and reflect on the historical significance of the election year.

For it was exactly a century ago that the first governor of Virginia was elected running under the banner of the state’s reborn Democratic party. This election ushered in an uninterrupted 85 year era of Democratic dominance in the Old Dominion. Indeed, the election of that year was the first in which the candidates of both parties ran under the modem Democratic and Republican labels.

There had been a Democratic party in Virginia before the War Between the States, but it had been swallowed up in the chaotic maelstrom of the secessionist politics. After the war, the principal political split in Virginia was between the Funders and the Readjusters. The Funders insisted that the state honor in full its pre-war and wartime bonded indebtedness. Thfe Readjusters, on the other hand, favored scaling down, or “readjusting” these debts in order for the Commonwealth to be able to afford public schools, roads and other public services.

In the early 1880’s the Funders renamed themselves the Conservative party. At their convention in Lynchburg in July, 1883, they again changed their name, this time to the Democratic Party of Virginia.

The following year, at their April convention in Richmond, the Readjusters formally became the Republican party. Thus the lines proportions between Barbour, the Democratic organization’s chieftain, and Daniel, “the lame lion,” to fill the vacancy. Needless to say, Barbour was the odds-on favorite to win.

But Daniel acquired Thomas S. Martin of Scottsville, a brilliant young railroad lawyer, as his campaign manager. Martin engineered an upset which installed Daniel in the Senate seat brought Martin to the statewide attention of the Democratic party elders.

Over the next eight years Martin continued a climb which culminated in his own election to the Senate in 1893 by defeating former Gov. Fitzhugh Lee in an even more stunning upset. In one of history’s little ironies, that contest was for the seat held by the late Sen. John Barbour who had eventually been elected to the Senate but who had died in office in 1892.

Martin immediately succeeded Barbour as head of the Democratic organization, a position he held until his own death in 1919. After a brief interregnum, the mantel of leadership was passed to Sen. Harry F. Byrd, Sr., who, wherever he may be, still seems to wear it.

Thus the events of 1885 echo down to the present day.

Such was the Democratic party’s first gubernatorial triumph a hundred years ago. It’s arguable that it cast the longest shadow' of any single election for governor in the history of the country, and as such it’s a centenary worth noting by Virginia Democrats and Republicans alike. were drawn for the first gubernatorial shoot-out between the two parties in 1885.