Beep If You Want Him as Veep

By PAUL GRAY/

Although he wasn't running for anything, Virginia Governor Douglas Wilder sees himself as one of the big winners of the November elections. Exit polls showed that 22% of black voters supported Republican candidates for the House, up from 14% in 1986 and 11% in 1982. Wilder calls these figures "alarming" and speculates that some blacks shared antitax sentiments with many middle-class whites. As both a black Democrat and a fiscal conservative, Wilder believes he is well positioned to lure the defecting voters back. That may explain why his political adviser, Paul Goldman, has registered a new PAC with the Federal Election Commission that can easily evolve into a fund-raising vehicle for a ^ Wilder presidential campaign. While that nomination strikes political insiders as most unlikely, speculation about a Veep candidacy is turning serious.

With reporting by David E. Thigpen