Conor Rogers, Editor-In-Chief
Ideology: Moderate Republican | Writing from: George Washington University
Creigh Deeds has spent much of his campaign for the Virginia Governor’s mansion trying to liken himself to Barack Obama, and tie Obama’s fight for change with his own goals for Virginia. Mr. Deeds now has much in common with President Obama, but unfortunately for the State Senator, he’s inherited all of Obama’s coalition problems, and none of the President’s popularity.
Just as President Obama fights to keep the Democrat’s liberal base happy, and conservative blue dogs in line, Mr. Deeds similarly struggles to appeal to pro-choice, young and professional, ‘soccer mom’ Northern Virginia (NoVA) while holding onto his home turf in the conservative southern three quarters of the state. For the very conservative Republican nominee Bob McDonnell, like the national Republican Party, is becoming quite easy to hold together. Sen. Deed’s candidacy marks a new tactic for Virginia Democrats; rather than run a conservative Democrat – in the likes of pro-gun Jim Webb, or pro-life Mark Warner – who can carry the DC suburbs, state Democrats have nominated an unabashedly pro-gay marriage, pro-choice, tax hiker nominated by the northern suburbs, that the party hopes can hold onto the rural parts of the state. Recent polls place Deeds double-digits behind McDonnell, and seriously lagging behind McDonnell in the southern half of the state. But, Creigh Deeds is winning in Fairfax and Arlington, right? Wrong. Recent polls find Bob McDonnell’s low-tax, pro-growth message running dead even with Creigh Deeds’ ‘Bob’s not pro-choice’ campaign push in the Washington suburbs.
An even more telling problem for Virginia’s newly openly socially liberal Democratic Party surfaced just this week. Campaign Deeds thought they had found a bombshell: in 1989, then PhD candidate McDonnell opined in a 90-page thesis that government must encourage two-parent families, put-down the idea of working mothers and uphold traditional definitions of marriage. The Deeds campaign has hammered this dissertation online, in Ads and in Newspapers, but McDonnell’s numbers have gone up, not down. By pushing McDonnell’s assertion that traditional families are the best type for Virginia as an intolerant and negative thing, Deeds has made a tremendous mistake. In the simplest terms, Creigh Deeds slammed McDonnell for supporting a traditional model of the family in a state that (with the exception of its northern suburbs) vehemently backs such an idea.
Perhaps the same political team advising Creigh Deeds to raise the pro-choice and family values issues is the same team that advised Barack Obama that sending a message straight into every school in America wasn’t going to stoke fears about big government. Both President Barack Obama and Gubernatorial hopefully Creigh Deeds find themselves between a rock and hard place (well, more accurately: the left and a central base). Social liberal Deeds trying to rope-in rural Virginia can only by analogized to President Obama trying to sell big government to blue dogs – and unfortunately for the political prospects of both men, their public opinion problems more than anaologize: they are the exact same. In Virginia and across America, independents that joined the ranks of the Democratic party in 2008 are giving it a hard second look – something that should trouble every democrat from Creigh Deeds and Jon Corzine to Barack Obama and David Axelrod.
Virginia Democrats always dreamed of the day when their state would look like a microcosm of the United States. Now that it does, they’ve never had a harder time campaigning in it.
Conor,
It should be noted that this reductive narrative of a ‘socially liberal NOVA vs. the rest of the state’ is a Republican creation that has failed since Mark Warner’s term as governor. If Bob McDonnell wins, it won’t have anything to do with Southern Virginians voting in fear of the big bad social liberal from the DC suburbs (Deeds is actually from a rural town in the Western part of the state, by the way).
There is no causal explanation that would account for any sort of relationship between Deeds’ and Obama’s poll numbers. The political climate at the state level does not necessarily mirror that of the national level. Despite the media’s obsession with Obama’s slipping approval ratings, Democrats have won three special elections for open state senate seats within the past two weeks. Two of these three states were McCain districts in states that voted for McCain (Louisiana and Kentucky) while the third state senate seat was located in Iowa, a state that is always competitive in Presidential contests. Deeds and Corzine’s problems (especially Corzine’s) stem much more from state-specific factors that are largely isolated from the national climate.
Democrats have misread Virginia as a Democratic-leaning swing state even though it is still very much the same state it was before Mark Warner’s term as governor. Mark Warner was a tremendous governor who succeeded a horribly unpopular Republican and his coattails swept Tim Kaine into office. Kaine isn’t nearly as popular as his predecessor and the political tides are naturally starting to turn. If Deeds wins, it will be because Democrats have correctly evaluated the state as a Democratic-leaning swing state as a consequence of ongoing growth in Northern Virginia. As I indicated above, however, I don’t think NOVA’s growth has sufficiently cast Virginia as this type of state but we shall see.
Tyler,
It should be noted that I’ve just spent an entire article explaining how this “NOVA vs. Virginia” situation actually is occurring. This isn’t a republican narrative – it’s a statistically demonstrable phenomenon that can be backed up by population growth, voting trends, changes in their state senate and house of delegates make up and the type of politicians the state has elected. Look across your campus to Rosslyn and tell me if it looks more like New York or Tennessee.
You said “there is no casual relationship that would explain … a relationship between Deed’s and Obama’s poll numbers” Did you read the article? I gave numerous reasons and explicitly stated that their poll numbers aren’t related, but are rather facing the same problems.
This article was absolutely not about the national climate affecting Virginia, and everything about the coalition problems within the democratic party manifesting itself in everything from the death of the public option to Creigh Deeds’ flailing campaign. In fact, I focused a good portion of the article on the thesis: a state-specific issue.
re: the state senate elections.
Of course state senate elections have nothing to do with the national climate, that’s why we have state senates. Local elections are more about what a candidate did when they were on town council than it is about what Obama is doing.