United States gubernatorial elections in 1989
The 1989 gubernatorial election in the United States took place on November 7, 1989. The states of New Jersey and Virginia were elected . In both cases, the office of governor had to be filled due to the respective term limits.
In New Jersey, the Republican Governor Thomas Kean enjoyed great popularity, but could not run again after eight years. His party nominated Jim Courter , a member of the United States House of Representatives since 1979. His opponent was James Florio , who had lost very narrowly to Kean eight years earlier . This time the Democrat achieved a very clear victory with 61.2 percent of the vote; Courter only got 37.2 percent. Among the four other applicants from smaller parties, Dan Karlan from the Libertarian Party achieved the best result with 0.53 percent.
In Virginia, which has a four-year term limit for governors , the Democratic incumbent Gerald L. Baliles could not run again as a result. The Democrats now appointed the previous Lieutenant Governor Douglas Wilder , the first African American in Virginia's history to be elected to a state-wide office. He met Republican Marshall Coleman , Attorney General of Virginia from 1978 to 1982 and defeated Chuck Robb as a candidate for gubernatorial in 1981 . Wilder won the election with 50.19 percent and thus a very narrow lead over Marshall, who reached 49.81 percent. The Republican requested a recount, but this did not change the result, making Douglas Wilder the first elected African-American governor of a US state. The first ever African-American governor, PBS Pinchback from Louisiana , was automatically promoted to office as President of the State Senate after the death of his predecessor.
