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said he would enjoy doing. At the hame time it would permit Baglev to travel the state and do his organizational work without being encumbered by the nuts-andbolts duties which come with being chairman of the central committee.
In the short term, the Davis chairmanship will clearly have a healing effect on this year’s gubernatorial race. As party head, he will be the point man in the Baliles gubernatorial campaign, and he will be in a position to rally the support of his constituent groups to the Democratic effort.
As for Bagley, he recognizes that his own base requires widening. That base, like Baliles’, is anchored to the party’s center and right. By working with Davis he will be in a position to reach the broader constituencies which consider Davis their leader. These include labor, many blacks, party liberals, teachers and others.
Indeed, a major loser in the , negotiations process may have been Diamonstein. Had Bagley been elected chairman, Diamonstein was reportedly slated to have become a vice chairman with top liaison responsibilities for dealing with party matters at the national level. That duty will now be assumed by Davis.
But are there other considerations involved in the Davis compromise? There could be, although here we get into some vastly sticky areas of conjecture and speculation.
Davis, as we said, is very interested in having a role in national Democratic Party affairs. He feels a keen responsibility to see that the basic tenets of the party are adhered to and that its concern for its constituency groups remains undiluted. While he, too, is a political realist, he is concerned that efforts at pragmatism, both in Virginia and nationally, may move the party too far to the right in search of votes.
88.2%