Virginia Moves Back to the Right Republicans are competitive here again after a string of losses. Is Obama the reason?
SEPTEMBER 19, 2009.
FRED BARNES
Alexandria, Va.
Virginia has been kind to Democrats as of late. Eight years ago, Democrat Mark Warner captured the governor’s mansion. Four years later, his lieutenant governor, Tim Kaine, succeeded him. In 2006, Jim Webb took one of the state’s U.S. Senate seats away from the GOP. Last year, Mr. Warner took the other as Barack Obama became the first presidential candidate of his party to carry the state in 44 years.
But now the Democratic tide is ebbing in Virginia. In January Mr. Obama's approval rating was 62%, according to a Survey USA. By August it had fallen to 42%. This has important political implications both in Virginia and nationally.
In six weeks, Virginia will elect a governor, and Republican Bob McDonnell, a former state attorney general, leads Democrat R. Creigh Deeds, a state senator with a moderate-to-liberal record, in every poll by a small margin. A recent poll by the nonpartisan Clarus Research Group gives him a five-point lead.
A Republican victory here would signal that Mr. Obama may now be a liability for other Democrats running for office—or at least a neutral force incapable of transferring his support. For example, a Survey USA poll from earlier this month found that 13% of Obama voters from last year plan to vote for Mr. McDonnell this year.
Only one other state, New Jersey, has a governor's race this year. A Republican, Chris Christie, is leading there too. But he is running against incumbent Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine, whose tenure and the state's record of corruption are the overriding issues.
Virginia has no incumbent and a more wide-open race. National issues are playing a bigger role here in part because the state borders Washington, D.C. Mr. McDonnell has pressed Mr. Deeds on card check legislation in Congress (which would allow unions to organize a company without holding a secret ballot election), the cap-and-trade energy tax that has passed the House, and other White House priorities. Mr. Deeds has hit back by saying that Mr. McDonnell echoes the economic ideas of George W. Bush.
A recent editorial in the Culpeper, Va., Star-Exponent captured the effect Mr. Obama could have on the race: "If this election were held a year ago, McDonnell wouldn't stand a chance. By party affiliation alone, Deeds would have surfed the 'change' tsunami straight into the governor's mansion. Funny how McDonnell could very well do the same now that public opinion has cooled toward Obama."
Republicans also hope that a win in Virginia's governor's race will help candidate recruitment for congressional races next year. The GOP lost 50 House seats in 2006 and 2008 and needs strong candidates to win some of them back. Nick Ayres, executive director of the Republican Governors Association, points out that 51 of the 74 Republican freshmen who won House seats in 1994, when the GOP won control of Congress, signed on as candidates in the two weeks following the election of Republican governors in Virginia and New Jersey in 1993.
In Virginia, Mr. McDonnell should benefit from a more conservative electorate. In 2008, Mr. Obama's relentless campaigning attracted a surge of young and African-American voters. The bloc of voters age 18 to 29 grew to 21% of the electorate, up from 17% in 2004. African-American turnout jumped to 68% of eligible voters from 52%.
Young and black voters are likely to vote in smaller numbers this year. But University of Virginia professor and political guru Larry Sabato calculates that the GOP will see a boost of at least a few percentage points in turnout this year. "They're fired up," he told me. In 2008, "Republicans were disillusioned and didn't turn out. I saw it in a lot of places, even in the heavily Republican [Shenandoah] Valley."
What's more, after a stunning primary victory over two better known liberal candidates earlier this year, Mr. Deeds failed to emerge as an effective opponent. He hasn't built the powerful campaign many Democrats hoped he would. And he hasn't caught fire in Northern Virginia, where one-third of the state's voters live, in part because he's from rural Bath County in southwest Virginia. His Appalachian twang doesn't play well in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.
However, Mr. McDonnell made a critical mistake over the summer. In an interview with the Washington Post, he mentioned the thesis he wrote in 1989 for a master's degree from Regent University. The paper's reporting on the thesis has been explosive.
Titled the "Republican Party's Vision for the Family," the thesis was sharply critical of feminism, abortion and gay rights, and argued for a government policy to strengthen the "traditional family." It also suggested that working women are "detrimental" to strong families.
Mr. Deeds jumped on the story by releasing TV ads dubbing Mr. McDonnell "Backwards Bob" and accusing him of being a right-wing zealot pretending to be a moderate. More harmful to Mr. McDonnell has been the Post's obsession with the thesis. By one count, the Post published 40 stories, blog postings or cartoons on it in just 13 days.
It's somewhat reminiscent of 2006, when Republican Sen. George Allen called a young man taping one of his speeches "macacca." The Post ran a string of stories on the comment. But that year, Mr. Allen was slow to react and only apologized after it was too late. Mr. Webb ended up beating him by a few thousand votes.
Mr. McDonnell hasn't made the mistake of dawdling. The day after the story appeared, he spent 90 minutes answering reporters' questions. He said his views had changed and that for Mr. Deeds "to suggest that I somehow don't support women in the workplace is insulting." He also noted that one of his daughters was a combat pilot in Iraq.
Republicans hope the thesis furor will blow over. "It didn't change the fundamentals," Ed Gillespie, a former Republican Party national chairman, told me. But it has energized Democrats who had thought the race was unwinnable. Organized labor is now pouring money into the race as one Democratic operative has noted that, "Right now, this is a race between Barack Obama's spending and Bob McDonnell's thesis."
We've come a long way from the aftermath of Mr. Obama's victory in the state last year, when Mr. Kaine declared that election was proof that "old Virginny is dead." What we are seeing now is that the state's conservative roots aren't entirely dead yet.
Every campaign stumbles at some point. But if Mr. McDonnell pulls off a victory, he will demonstrate that 2008 may have been an aberration—an artifact of the historic nature of Mr. Obama's candidacy and his well-run campaign. A McDonnell win would also likely be a signal that voters got a close look at Mr. Obama's ideas and took out their frustration with the president on the nearest Democrat—Mr. Deeds. There's a sense of normalcy returning to Virginia, and it portends well for Republicans.
Mr. Barnes is executive editor of the Weekly Standard and a commentator on Fox News Channel.
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