Bầu cử
election for the governorship of the U.S. state of Virginia
In the 1949 Virginia gubernatorial election, incumbent Governor William M. Tuck, a Democrat, was unable to seek re-election due to term limits. State Senator John S. Battle was nominated by the Democratic Party to run against Republican Walter Johnson.
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Nội dung từ bài Wikipedia “Bầu cử thống đốc Virginia năm 1949”, theo giấy phép CC BY-SA 4.0.
In the 1949 Virginia gubernatorial election, incumbent Governor William M. Tuck, a Democrat, was unable to seek re-election due to term limits. State Senator John S. Battle was nominated by the Democratic Party to run against Republican Walter Johnson.
For the previous five decades Virginia had almost completely disenfranchised its black and poor white populations through the use of a cumulative poll tax and literacy tests. So restricted was suffrage in this period that it has been calculated that a third of Virginia's electorate during the first half of the twentieth century comprised state employees and officeholders. This limited electorate allowed Virginian politics to be controlled for four decades by the Byrd Organization, as progressive "antiorganization" factions were rendered impotent by the inability of almost all their potential electorate to vote.
Historical fusion with the “Readjuster” Democrats, defection of substantial proportions of the Northeast-aligned white electorate of the Shenandoah Valley and Southwest Virginia over free silver, and an early move towards a "lily white" Jim Crow party meant Republicans retained a small but permanent number of legislative seats and local offices in the western part of the state. Nevertheless, in gubernatorial elections during this period the Republican vote was mostly in the nature of a protest, and in most elections between 1925 and 1949 turnout was higher in the Democratic primary than the general election.
For the only time in its forty-year reign, the Byrd machine would suffer a significant division over whom to nominate. After Tuck was established in the governor's mansion, it was expected that Richmond mayor Horace Hall Edwards would be next in line, but as early as 1947, organization leaders had begun to feel that Edwards was too unreliable. By 1948, Byrd was urging Edwards to wait until the next gubernatorial election, but Edwards refused to withdraw. The organization urged Edwards to wait given its respect for elders, and ultimately chose as its nominee John S. Battle, a long-serving state senator.
The primary was further complicated by the entry of wealthy Petersburg pen manufacturer Remmie Arnold, who had risen from a poor background to running the second-largest pen company in the world. Unlike Byrd, Arnold explicitly endorsed Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond for president the previous year, and he consequently drew support from disenchanted Dixiecrats, arguing that
the power to tax is the power to destroy
During the campaign Arnold would claim that the Byrd Organization attempted to "bury" him by a nomination as Lieutenant Governor or Senator. It was rumoured at one point that Arnold could withdraw, but he never intended to and maintained his campaign even without any expectation of winning.
The split in the Byrd Organization meant that antiorganization candidates, normally weak and lacking leaders, gained a rare opportunity. Francis Pickens Miller, a former legislator from Fairfax County, had long been critical of how 1937 Democratic nominee James Price had his program undermined by Byrd's allies. Miller had been highly aggressive in urging Democrats to support Harry S. Truman the previous year and already announced he would run at the time of the presidential election. He soon argued that the party "high command" had completely lost touch with rank and file Democrats.
Although no polls were taken, the campaign in the primary maintained a high pace right up until polling day on August 2.
Miller campaigned extremely vigorously against the Byrd machine, with his speeches being frequently described as "evangelical".
Early in the primary campaign the focus was generally on the issue of improving funding for Virginia's uniformly poor public schools. At this time, Edwards was the frontrunner, but his advocacy of a two percent sales tax completely opposed the political norms of Virginia in this era. In the last month of the campaign, however, Byrd and his candidate Battle would step up their campaigning with what one historian has called a "blitzkrieg". Byrd would throw the weight of organization resources behind Battle during the summer, with his focus turning to Miller's support for labor unions, which Virginia's almost entirely upper class electorate viewed with extreme suspicion after the postwar strike wave across the country.
Counties and independent cities that flipped from Democratic to Republican
Counties and independent cities that flipped from Republican to Democratic
Nội dung từ bài Wikipedia “1949 Virginia gubernatorial election”, theo giấy phép CC BY-SA 4.0.