John Adams Addresses Supreme Court

Can Virginia, after 44 years in the GOP column, go Dem?

To probe this topic, E.J. Dionne Jr. column not only turns in a tremendous RUTHER GLEN dateline but also sounds out two Virginia politicos who know their way around Richmond's Capitol Square (to say nothing of Big Stone Gap, Farmville and Tappahannock):

[Virginia Gov. Tim] Kaine is broadly progressive in his views. But like Obama, whom he supported in the primaries, Kaine has been a vocal critic of partisanship. Indeed, Virginia Democrats have been gaining ground since 2001 partly by casting theirs as the party of nonpartisanship and Republicans as ideologues.

"We've been doing that here in Virginia for a while," said Mo Elleithee, a top Kaine consultant who worked for Hillary Clinton this year. "We did that with Warner in '01, Kaine in '05 and Democratic legislative candidates in '07."

Elleithee sees the path for Obama in Virginia as similar to Kaine's: Win just enough in the state's rural areas and overwhelm McCain in the Washington suburbs and among African Americans, notably in Hampton Roads.

Yet Elleithee also says McCain makes the state "very challenging" for Democrats, particularly because his war-hero status appeals to its large population of active and retired military voters

But the issue in Virginia may well be whether history is just history this year. Christopher Peace, a 31-year-old Republican who represents this area just north of Richmond in the state House of Delegates, argues that the election will be decided by "people in their mid-30s, married with two children and two dogs, professional families."

"A lot of that rhetoric about 'working families' is about them," Peace said. "They are not duty-bound to their party anymore. They are duty-bound to their pocketbooks." Such voters made Kaine governor, and they're the ones Obama needs to win.
Photo Courtesy Ranhar2