Mills Godwin's Downsian Switch

Mills Godwin Jr. served as Virginia's governor twice, from 1966 to 1970 and from 1974 to1978. He is remembered as a the father of Virginia's Community College system, the architect of the 1971 Virginia State Constitution and the institutor of Virginia's sales tax. What people often forget, is the massive political transformation he underwent between the two terms.

From World War II until the early 1970's, the Byrd Organization and the Democratic Party dominated state politics in Virginia. The Byrd Organization was a political machine that effectively controlled the election of state officials ranging from localities to the state level. Godwin's career blossomed under the Byrd Organization's support in the early 1950's, and he remained a prominent member of the organization until he became governor in 1966.

Following the supreme court decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), numerous conservative state legislators balked at the idea of integrating and instead began a movement know as "massive resistance". The Byrd Organization fully supported massive resistance and Godwin followed suit. Despite massive resistance's early success, with the signing of the Civil Rights Act 1964 by President Johnson and the efforts by civil right activists, by the late 1960's and early 1970's school integration was inevitable. Massive resistance and the Byrd Organization were ousted in 1970 when Virginia elected its first Republican, non-Byrd, pro-integration candidate since the Civil War - Linwood Holton. Holton won the election by garnering African American support and exposing the corruption of the Byrd Organization.

The following election, in 1974, Godwin ran again and won. This time as a Republican, a non-Byrd candidate and an advocate of integration.

This massive political realignment can only be explained by the economist, Anthony Downs. As Downs says "parties (and candidates) formulate policies in order to win elections, rather than win elections in order to formulate policies." In this case we can clearly see Godwin's political platform reflecting the Downsian hypothesis. Linwood Holton's success ushered in a new era of politics. With the growing number of African American voters starting in the 1960's, candidates could no longer stand by segregationist policies without jeopardizing their chances of winning. As Downs proposes in his essay - assuming candidates are vote maximizers, they have the tendency to adjust their policies towards the median voter. In this case, we see that the distribution of voters and the median voter are evolving. Therefore, we see candidates, like Godwin, altering their platform to maximize votes.