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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Busted on October 05, 2008, 03:16:26 PM
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Virginia Republicans are warning that John McCain's prospects for winning a state that has been in the GOP column in every presidential election since 1964 could be in jeopardy. With Barack Obama treating the Old Dominion like a battleground state and reliable polls showing a margin-of-error race there, some are cautioning that McCain is making a critical mistake by allowing the Democratic nominee to outpace him in terms of visits and resources committed.
The two best indicators of which states the campaigns are serious about – time and money – tell the story.
Since wrapping up the Democratic nomination in June, Obama, his wife, Michelle, and his running mate Joe Biden have visited the commonwealth a combined 12 times. The candidate himself was in the Tidewater city of Newport News Saturday.
Obama is also plowing millions into Virginia, blanketing the airwaves with TV and radio ads, filling up mailboxes with leaflets and, along with the state party, operating 49 campaign offices.
Together, McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, have held just one campaign event in Virginia. And the campaign has taken its ads off the pricey Washington, D.C. network affiliates that reach into the entire swath of the Northern Virginia, the commonwealth’s most populous region.
“I think [McCain] needs to get here,” said Rep. Tom Davis, a longtime member of Congress who represents a Northern Virginia district. “I think they’ve got to pay more attention.”
Davis predicted McCain would ultimately take Virginia because he has appeal to the center-right independents that usually swing statewide races and because Obama is less moderate than such successful Democratic figures as former Gov. Mark Warner and Sen. James Webb.
“Obama is not a Virginia Democrat,” Davis said.
But the former National Republican Congressional Committee chair, who is retiring this year, said because of the party’s troubled brand and Obama’s effort to increase African-American turnout, the Virginia race now stands even.
“The economy hurts us across the board and Obama is really running hard and putting more resources here than McCain – he’s got the money.”
Asked if he thought McCain was taking the state seriously enough, Davis paused before saying: “I think they’re going to.”
“It’s very, very tight,” agreed former governor and Senator George Allen. “Obviously Democrats have spent a lot of time here.”
“We are a true battleground state,” Allen said twice.
Rep. Eric Cantor, a Richmond-area Republican and member of the House GOP leadership who won some veep chatter this summer, agreed that Virginia would be tight.
“I think it is very competitive,” Cantor said.
Asked if McCain needed to return, he was judicious: “It’s up to them to allocate his time. We’re going to do everything we can for him.”
But discussing the boost Sarah Palin had given to the party’s grassroots, Cantor offered a standing invitation without being asked: “Anytime they want to send Gov. Palin in, we’ll welcome her with open arms.”
Longtime Virginia operatives are more outspoken, grumbling that McCain is now having to play catch up.
“He didn't take threat seriously soon enough,” said one Richmond-based GOP strategist in the state, noting that McCain had the nomination wrapped up in early March but didn’t have staff or infrastructure in Virginia until July. “One public visit since securing the nomination and I can’t tell you one significant surrogate who has come.”
It’s puzzling because McCain’s campaign is based in Arlington, Va., and the senator lives there when he’s at his headquarters or across the river in his Senate office. Yet whenever he’s back in the area he never ventures beyond the office and condo-filled Crystal City neighborhood to more politically competitive communities nearby where he could get extensive local media coverage by just dropping by a diner.
“He, not she, needs to return to northern Virginia,” said a veteran GOP operative from the region about the GOP ticket. “That's where he needs to perform, and where he can. He can get a lot of Mark Warner voters, but he needs to show the ticket-splitting centrists in voter-rich Fairfax and Loudoun [counties] some love and understanding.”
McCain’s top aide for the mid-Atlantic region, Trey Walker, held a conference call for party leaders on Friday and was pressed as to why McCain and Palin hadn’t been back to Virginia since their joint visit to Fairfax City last month.
“One of the hardest things we have to do is getting more folks to take a national view,” Walker told Politico, when told about concerns that the campaign wasn’t devoting enough attention to Virginia.