The Byrd Machine ran Virginia politics for more than half a century. This political organization rose to power during the era of Jim Crow, wielding power and influence over everything from who got the nod to be governor to how the state maintained racial segregation. Inheriting its tactics from two previous political machines, the Byrd organization operated with a pathological hatred of debt spending, crushing the power of labor unions and forcing...

""The New Dominion" analyzes the key Virginia elections that shaped the political Virginia of today. Whereas many observers tend to see the rising Blue Virginia to be the result of very recent and rapid demographic changes, the editors and contributors argue that the process of the political transformation of the Commonwealth has its roots in the twentieth centuries' critical elections. As each contributor analyzes significant twentieth-century political...