Virginia Negroes used the same kind of political muscle last year in the conversion of Mills Godwin.
Sidney Kellam, the congenial, Maciavellian political leader of Virginia Beach, the state's fastest-growing city, had stored up credits among Negroes when he desegreated Virginia Beach's public accomodations, almost overnight, six months before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Last year he guided Godwin through a series of meetings with Negro leaders.
Godwin, who can count and sensing other stirrings of change, began demanding better education, mental health, roads, etc. for "all our people." An estimated 80,000 Negroes voted last fall, about three to one for Godwin, who defeated his Republican opponent by 55,000 votes.
The Organization had begun to bend--and crack. Thousands of conservatives who had clung to Harry Byrd's Democratic party found no home in the party of Godwin and Kellam. Last July, thy created the Virginia Conservative Party and attracted more than 70,000 votes for their candidate, William Story, an assistant school superintendent (since retired) and John Birch Society member. Last week they announced their own ticket for the Senate and urged their supporters to stay out of the Democratic primary.
Virginia's political picture this year is far more uncertain than it was last fall. Kellam and other leaders of the Organization tried to persuade Robertson, 79 years old today, to withdraw in favor of a younger Organization candidate. Kellam failed, and has endorsed Robertson and Byrd Jr.
Whether he can throw many Negro votes their way is questionable. Boothe, in virtually every speech this month, has reminded his audience that he voted in 1959, as a state senator, for the plan which reopened public schools closed during a desegregation crisis, while Byrd Jr. voted against the proposals. (The plan passed the State Senate by one vote.) Robertson has consistently opposed civil rights legislation during his '33 years in Congress.
Negro politicians also are beginning to wonder about Godwin. His first legislative session produced record spending for education, highways, and mental health, but he has not yet named a Negro to a major state job.
The first weeks of the campaign have produced no solid disputes over issues. All four candidates, for the present at least, support President Johnson's Vietnam policy. All have declared their support for the right-to-work law, perhaps because Virginia is still industry-hunting and because organized labor has yet to show any real political pull in the state.
Rather, it has been youth vs. age (Spong is 45) and a sort of mixed liberalism against a newly-defined conservatism. "On fiscal matters I'm as conservative as he (Byrd Jr.) is," Boothe has declared. "But where funds were available (in the state senate) and needed--truly needed--I was willing to appropriate them." Byrd Jr., who likes to talk about what he's doing in the U.S. Senate rather than what he did in the Virginia senate, calls himself a "forward-looking conservative."
There are also differences in style, as perhaps brief sketches of the candidates will show:
Robertson seems stung by charges that he's too old to be in the Senate. He stumps the state, telling of his hunting and fishing abilities, swinging bats as well as throwing out first balls at Little League openings, and reminding the people how valuable congressional seniority can be. A senator since 1946--and facing his first real opposition this year--he is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. If he is beaten, that post would go to Sen. Paul Douglas of Illinois--provided Douglas, 74, beats another young contender, Charles Percy, 46, in his state.
SPONG is a pragmatist who is projecting a kind of semi-Kennedy im-