Fall colors, part 2: Holton got pushback in 1969 for using green

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Linwood Holton was a trailblazer in many ways.

In 1969, he became the first Republican elected governor in Virginia since the Reconstruction era.

In office, he became the state’s first civil rights governor, proudly declaring “the era of defiance is behind us” and famously escorting his daughter to an integrated school.

He also did something else that’s not as well recognized: He was one of the first politicians to use a color scheme other than red, white and blue for his campaign signs.

I recently wrote a column about the rainbow of colors we’re seeing on campaign signs this fall — greens, yellows, oranges, purples, blacks, at least one pink — and the candidates’ rationale behind those. I pointed out that one of the first candidates nationally to use a color scheme other than red, white and blue was Jimmy Carter, who used green in his presidential campaigns as well as his 1970 campaign for governor of Georgia.

That prompted some with memories longer than mine to note that Holton used a different color scheme before then — he used blue, green and white in his 1969 campaign for governor.

“I do recall he got some pushback since it was not the traditional red white and blue,” says his daughter, Anne Holton. “But he wanted to be new and different and was proud of his colors.”

“The question I wish Dad and Mom were still around to answer is whether the association with the nascent eco-movement, which used the same 3 colors, was deliberate or coincidental,” says his son, Woody Holton.

If so, that wouldn’t be a surprise: Holton was an environmentally conscious governor whose administration was responsible for cleaning up the state’s waterways. At the time, Roanoke was dumping raw sewage into the Roanoke River, turning the new Smith Mountain Lake into a stinking lagoon. Holton installed a new majority on the State Water Control Board: three of his four appointees were identified with the environmental movement. The board imposed a moratorium on sewer hookups in the Roanoke Valley. That forced the region to upgrade its sewage treatment facilities. Today, the lake water is clean enough that it’s used for drinking water (after the usual treatment, of course).

But back to campaign colors: J. Scott Leake, former executive director of the Joint Republican Caucus in the General Assembly, says that former Del. Andy Guest used green in his campaign signs. The 1977 Republican ticket of John Dalton for governor, Joe Canada for lieutenant governor and Marshall Coleman for attorney general, used red, white and yellow. “I’m confident that was a first for a statewide campaign,” Leake says. “In French Slaughter’s first campaign for Congress [in 1984], I convinced French and [campaign manager] Dennis Peterson to go with burgundy and silver. Why those particular two, I don’t know. But we were trying to put some pizazz into a campaign and candidate with a very conservative (i.e., stodgy) image.” That worked because Slaughter won with 56.5% of the vote in the 7th District and rarely faced opposition after that. 

The cultural website The Pudding published a study of campaign colors four years ago. It covered campaigns from 1968 to 2020. It found that in 1968 and 1972, more than a third of presidential candidates used something other than red, white and blue, with the non-red, white blue scheme peaking at 41.7% in 1984. It then crashed into the teens after that, bottoming out at just 5.9% in 2012. Now it’s coming back up again, with women and minorities being the candidates most likely to use a different color scheme. 

For something even more different, reader Carolyn Caywood in Virginia Beach (yes, we have readers all over Virginia!) shares this photo. Here’s the campaign sign for Cody Conner, an independent candidate for city council in that seaside city: