The People's Republic of Northern Virginia is, in the eyes of many downstate Virginians, the root of all evil. Some years back, an anti-sprawl group in Fredericksburg to the south ran ads on local television stations. Ominous music played as a fleet of SUVs sped past a strip mall. Then came the booming voiceover: "Citizens! Do you want to FAIRFAX Fredericksburg?"
NOVA -- comprising Arlington and Fairfax Counties, the city of Alexandria, and (depending who you ask) the exurban counties of Loudoun and Prince William -- is increasingly culturally and politically divorced from the rest of the state. The former home of Robert E. Lee is now a Yankee foothold of yuppies, immigrants and bureaucrats who pass smoking bans and demand more money from Richmond for gargantuan transportation projects that would allow them more pleasant commutes to their DC offices. There they spend their day suckling at the taxpayer's teat and dreaming up new ways to meddle in the lives of hardworking folk down south. Here is where Obama has staked his efforts to win this reliably red state and with it, possibly, the election.
Virginia has changed. Voters here have elected two Democratic governors in a row. In 2007, Democrats wrested control of the state Senate. Both Governor Tim Kaine and Senator Jim Webb were on the short list for Obama's VP slot -- which, given the traditional role of VP nominees in securing their home state for a ticket, sent a message about the party's hopes for Virginia this election. Democrats will fill both Senate seats by the fall, as former governor Mark Warner looks forward to a cakewalk election and possible aspirations for higher office down the road. According to University of Washington pollster Loren Collingwood, Virginia is turning into a new Illinois: "Both states are characterized by, on the one hand, heavily populated urban cores (Northern Virginia and Chicago, respectively) that lean Democratic, and on the other hand downstate rural counties that tend to vote Republican" -- with the votes of the former increasingly swamping the latter. In an MSNBC interview, Nancy Pfotenhauer, a senior advisor to the McCain campaign (which maintains its national headquarters in Arlington) ventured from politics into metaphysics, bluntly characterizing the divide as one between Northern Virginia and "the real Virginia."
Polls indicate Virginia will be one of the closest states in the election, with Obama currently maintaining a narrow lead. As McCain pulls out of Michigan and Pennsylvania looks like a long shot, Old Dominion is one of the few states still up for grabs, and a must-win for the Republican nominee.
All of this is a little hard to process for Virginians who can't remember the last time their state went blue in a general election -- that is, anyone who was born after Lyndon Johnson was president. And there is good reason to be skeptical.
For one, contrary to Pfotenhauer's ontology, Northern Virginia has never been a bastion of liberalism. NOVA is still conservative, albeit a different kind of conservative than seen in the rest of the state. It's the guns-and-God vs. Beltway Bandit brands of conservatism; Jerry Falwell Republicans vs. Tom Davis Republicans. Where downstate Virginians abhor taxes, the defense contractors in Rosslyn don't particularly mind them: they know where their salaries come from. They're less likely to rally for the Ten Commandments in their kids' schools than for an IB curriculum. This is not to say there are no churches in Fairfax, just that they are all Korean.
For another, voting patterns look a lot different for statewide vs. general elections. Those predicting an Obama blowout point to a county-by-county breakdown of the 2006 race that thrust Tim Kaine into the governor's seat; the corresponding map shows a solid band of blue stretching all the way from DC to the Kentucky border. However a similar map for the 2004 Bush-Kerry matchup shows a few lonely specks of blue awash in a sea of red. Why the discrepancy? This is not because of a sudden drastic shift to the left in those two years. On the contrary, historically, Virginia voters have proven much more open to Democratic governors and senators than Democratic presidents.
What is notable about Virginia politics is not the degree of its leftward tilt, but rather its geographic spread. It was the north that carried the state for Kaine, including surprisingly strong showings in Loudoun and Prince William counties. The latter made national news in 2007 for harsh anti-immigration measures passed by the county Board of Supervisors, deputizing local police to detain suspected undocumented immigrants. This has in turn sparked a backlash from the now nearly 20% Latino population. The Prince William County Board can fan nativist hysteria for votes, but not for long. Just as immigrant communities are growing across the region, raising families and becoming citizens, gentrification is pricing them out of the DC housing market. So they move further south and west, changing the demographic and political makeup of Virginia along the way.
For the first time in 44 years, the capital of the Confederacy is officially in play in a presidential election, and the winner of its 13 electoral votes may be a liberal African American from Chicago. It would be one of the most remarkable moments in Northern Virginia history, perhaps since the opening of the Springfield mixing bowl interchange.
