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FYI: Doug Wilder
13 Januray 1990 - L. Douglas Wilder becomes the first elected African American governor as he takes office in Richmond, Virginia.
Lawrence Douglas Wilder (born January 17, 1931) is an American politician and was the first African American to be elected as governor of a U.S. state, and the second to serve as governor. The first African American governor in the U.S. state was P. B. S. Pinchback, who was not elected, but became Governor of Louisiana on December 9, 1872 upon the removal of his predecessor from office. Deval Patrick, the Governor of Massachusetts, is the second African American to be elected governor, and became the third African American governor overall. Ascending from the office of Lieutenant Governor, Wilder was elected to succeed Baliles on November 8, 1989, defeating Republican Marshall Coleman by a spread of less than half a percent. Wilder served as Governor of Virginia from 1990 to 1994. His most recent office was Mayor of Richmond, Virginia, which he held from 2005 to 2009.
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worth pointing out that he gave a man life in prison instead of execution when he found out he was innocent:
http://davidswanson.org/node/56/
I was living in Virginia then; and was even a poll official for that election. As I remember it, Wilder led in all the polls by very comfortable margins. All the pundits assured us that the election had nothing to do with race. I was also taking a poli-sci class at the time and the election was discussed regularly. I was the only person to forecast a close race, possibly a loss for Wilder. I can't remember now how many recounts occurred.
Later, as Governor, Wilder got the shaft from both Republicans and his own Democrats. When he cancelled hunting season opening because of the danger of fire, everybody unloaded on him. But, in the first wilting of the conservative economic theories; Wilder was a fiscal conservative that handled the state budget responsibly.
Wilder tried to run for president in 1992. It is instructive that the first candidate the conservatives went after was the fiscally conservative, socially liberal, black man. The whole "Monkey Business" Gary Hart thing came much later in the cycle. The Republicans knew who was the real threat and took care to sideline him early (with the help of many Democrats).
I must not have made the connection between then and now, that black politician and this one clear enough.
At any rate, we need to remember that we only ELECTED the first woman governor in 1975 (34 years ago) and the first ELECTED black governor in 1990 ( 19 years ago). We have a long way to go - the whole Obama thing doesn't look like it's shaping up in the People's favor - but, we have also come a long way - some of that way being very recently.