Virginia Democrats Win Governorship, 2 Other Top Posts; Kean Reelected in N.J.

A Democratic ticket that included a black and a woman swept Virginia’s top three state offices Tuesday, while in New Jersey, Republican Gov. Thomas H. Kean easily won reelection to a second term.

In Virginia, with 97% of the precincts counted, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gerald L. Baliles, the present attorney general, led Republican Wyatt B. Durrette with 723,329 votes, or 55%, to 583,457 votes, or 45%.

In the contest for lieutenant governor, Democratic state Sen. L. Douglas Wilder, the grandson of a slave, had 667,195 votes, or 52%, to 619,242, or 48%, for Republican state Sen. John Chichester. Wilder was seeking to become the first black to win election to statewide executive office in any of the states of the Old Confederacy since the post-Civil War Reconstruction era.

Woman Wins by Wide Margin

For attorney general, Democrat Mary Sue Terry, a member of the House of Delegates, had 793,578 votes, or 61%, to 498,219, or 39%, for Republican Delegate W. R. (Buster) O’Brien.

In New Jersey, where Kean crushed his Democratic opponent, Peter Shapiro, the Republican’s victory had been a foregone conclusion for weeks. With 84% of the precincts tallied, Kean had 1,128,777 votes, or 70%, to 480,552, or 30%, for Shapiro.

It appeared that Kean’s coattails were long enough to give the Republicans a majority in the state Assembly, the lower house of the Legislature, where Democrats now have a 44-36 majority. Assembly Speaker Alan Karcher, a Democrat, said: “We have lost between eight and 14 seats.”

Long-Range GOP Goal

Capturing the New Jersey Assembly had been considered an important step toward the long-range GOP goal of gaining control of most of the nation’s state Legislatures so Republicans could dominate the reapportionment process after the 1990 census.

The Virginia gubernatorial campaign, in part, represented a contest between two politicians not on the ballot. One is the incumbent Democratic governor, Charles S. Robb, whose popularity likely would have assured him a second term had he not been ineligible to succeed himself; the other is President Reagan, a Republican who carried the state only a year ago in the presidential election with 62% of the vote.

But in this competition, Robb had considerable advantages: He was always on hand to campaign for his party’s ticket, while Reagan made only one trip to the state on behalf of the GOP slate. When Reagan refused to return, GOP gubernatorial candidate Durrette journeyed to the White House on the eve of the election for a highly publicized meeting with the President.

Hard to Dispute

Republicans found it hard to dispute the Democratic assertion that the moderate tone set by Robb since 1981 made it easier for Baliles, Wilder and Terry in 1985. But GOP sources argued that the fiscal prudence emphasized by Robb was a far cry from the traditional doctrines of the national Democratic Party--a point that they contended diminished the national significance of the Democrats’ success in Virginia.

For their part, Democrats contended that these results demonstrated that their party--despite its inability to capture the White House--still could find candidates at the state level who could adjust their policies to local needs and concerns.

Indeed, in New Jersey the gubernatorial campaign suggested that to achieve success in state government, Republicans and Democrats alike would benefit from offering up candidates who were prepared to distance themselves from the policies of their national leadership.

Kean Shows Independence

Thus, Kean, a Republican moderate, has supported some of Reagan’s economic policies but differed with him on issues including school prayer and abortion. Moreover, Kean has won wide support among such traditional Democratic blocs as blacks, Jews and labor by fighting pollution and pushing for aid for urban renewal and education.

Most of the big city mayors seeking reelection won easily or held big leads. The single exception appeared to be in Miami, where Mayor Maurice Ferre slipped to third place late Tuesday night in his bid for a seventh two-year term. With 75 of the city’s 85 precincts reporting, banker Raul Masvidal led, with Xavier Suarez, a lawyer, second, followed by Ferre and Marvin Dunn, a black educator.

In New York, Democratic Mayor Edward I. Koch easily was reelected to a third term over Diane McGrath, the candidate of both the Republican and Conservative parties, and Carol Bellamy, Liberal Party candidate.

In Detroit, Mayor Coleman Young, a veteran of 12 years in City Hall, won his bid for a fourth term.

Houston Mayor Reelected

In one of the rare mayoral contests that raised issues potentially reaching beyond the municipal borders, incumbent Houston Mayor Kathy Whitmire, elected in 1981 with strong support from the city’s gay community, defeated former Mayor Louie Welch, who sought to focus his campaign on the link between concern over the deadly disease AIDS and resentment of homosexuals.

With 75% of precincts reporting, Whitmire had 130,267 votes, or 56%, to Welch’s 101,635, or 44%.

Other incumbent mayors who were reelected were George Voinovich of Cleveland, Harvey Gantt of Charlotte, N.C., Don Fraser of Minneapolis, George Latimer of St. Paul, Richard Caliguiri of Pittsburgh and Terry Goddard of Phoenix.

In Oak Park, Ill., voters rejected an attempt to repeal the Chicago suburb’s 13-month-old ban on handguns. With nearly all the votes counted, there were 7,754 votes to retain the ban and 6,115 to repeal it.

Jim Zangrilli, treasurer of the committee seeking repeal of the measure, said that his group would urge the state Legislature to pass a law wiping out all local handgun-control ordinances and give the state control of the issue.

In a non-binding referendum in Bristol, Conn., voters recommended that the U.S. Supreme Court not rescind its 12-year-old ruling legalizing abortion. Unofficial figures showed 8,555 voted to retain the ruling and 6,737 voted in favor of rescinding it.