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Wilder for governor
After two terms of leadership from the Robb and Baliles administrations, Virginia’s position in the region, country and world is stronger by far than it was eight years ago. The Democratic Party has proved it can lead the General Assembly and the Commonwealth in the right direction. This fact, if for no other, is reason enough that Lt. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder should be our next governor.
But the NoV. 7 general election is not a referendum on governors Baliles or Robb; it’s a choice between Lt. Gov. Wilder and former Attorney General J. Marshall Coleman. For several reasons, Mr. Wilder is the right choice.
In our region, the twro issues that are of greatest importance are encroaching development and the proposed Western Bypass.
In Mr. Coleman, developers have found an attentive listener. His well-documented ties to the biggest developers in the state are not as easily dismissed as the candidate might wish. What wrould Mr. Coleman do if faced with a choice between preserving Rappahannock’s rural way of life or expanding the Prince William-Fairfax sprawl westward?
We know exactly what he’d do, and as a region we should vote against it. Dwight Schar and Mr. Coleman’s other major contributors may think they can buy their way into the governor’s mansion, but that’s a concept that seems antithetical to traditionally-Democratic concepts of populist rule. The fabulously rich Northern Virginia developers are the new aristocracy, but this Commonwealth is still a democracy, and we hope money politics doesn’t lead to the rape of Rappahannock and its neighboring counties in Virginia’s northern Piedmont.
Much has been written about the Western Bypass, and the battle rages on. Both candidates deserve our ire for sidestepping the issue. Put simply, don’t think the Western Bypass is “inevitable,” in Mr. Coleman’s words. What is inevitable is that the next administration must pour hundreds of millions of dollars into Northern Virginia’s transportation network.
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