Tuning In to Political Moods

There still are people in the Commonwealth of Virginia who refer to the Civil War not as the Civil War, or not even as the War Between the States, but as the War of Northern Aggression. But Virginia has changed, and that change was reflected in Tuesday’s sweep of the top three state offices by a team of Democrats who include a black lieutenant governor and a female attorney general.

The Democratic victory of the ticket led by Gov.-elect Gerald L. Baliles is in part a tribute to the political skills and popularity of the outgoing governor, Democrat Charles S. Robb, who could not succeed himself. Robb’s victory in 1981 reestablished the two-party system in Virginia through liberal social policies that united black voters and through fiscal conservatism that appealed to old-line Virginians.

The lieutenant governor-elect, state Sen. L. Douglas Wilder, is the first black elected to major state office in the Confederate South since Reconstruction. His election should signal a proud new age in Virginia and the South.

Also notable is the fact that the ticket was led in vote-getting by Mary Sue Terry of rural Patrick County. Virginia politics traditionally has been the nearly exclusive province of men.

In the other gubernatorial contest Tuesday, Republican Gov. Thomas H. Kean of New Jersey won reelection by a landslide, as expected. And his coattails apparently helped the GOP win control of the state Assembly. Kean first won four years ago over popular Democratic Rep. James J. Florio. Many of his moderate-to-liberal policies have appealed to New Jersey’s majority Democrats.

Republican and Democratic leaders already are reading the results for potential national political trends in 1986 and 1988. That is risky business. The Virginia and New Jersey elections mostly show that personally popular politicians who attune their policies to the moods of their states do well.