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GOP Looks for Its Lost Edge in Va.

The Associated Press
New York Times
Thursday, November 10, 2005

How could this happen in a state supposedly as reliably Republican as Virginia? A Democrat who objects to capital punishment, had a clear record of backing gun control and even boasted of supporting a $1.4 billion tax increase beat a conservative Republican by six percentage points Tuesday.

This is a state where Republicans dominate the congressional delegation and the Legislature—a state that has not voted for a Democrat for president since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

The race this time was not marked by the GOP infighting that helped departing Gov. Mark R. Warner—also a Democrat—win office in 2001. As a result, the latest Republican loss was all the more perplexing to party loyalists.

As Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine’s victory over former Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore became apparent Tuesday night, GOP conservatives were shocked into silence. Men and women wept and children huddled in prayer circles, eyes closed and heads bowed, as Kilgore’s victory party became a wake.

‘’We’ve got some work to do,’’ Linwood Cobb, a member of the state Republican Party’s governing central committee, said Wednesday. ‘’We have to find ways to come up with better ideas and to energize our base. We have to be a party of ideas again.’’

Kaine not only won big in Democratic redoubts, he also racked up astonishing victories in cities and counties where Republicans dominate, including Virginia Beach, home to religious broadcaster Pat Robertson.

The election proves that Virginia’s electorate is not as solidly Republican as some in the party imagined, said Mark Rozell, a professor of political science at George Mason University.

‘’Much like the Democrats had to rethink their dwindling status when they were running on gun control and abortion every election, you can’t just appeal to the core of your electorate,’’ Rozell said.

If not for Virginia’s unique prohibition against consecutive terms for governors, Warner would have been re-elected in a landslide. His record and popularity were seen as enormous factors in Kaine’s victory.

Strangely for Virginia, it was a tax increase that drove Warner’s job-approval ratings past 75 percent.

In 2004, Warner broke his promise not to raise taxes and proposed a $1 billion-plus package of tax reforms. Warner convinced the public that without it, state government would remain perpetually in the red, public education and the state’s prized public colleges would suffer, police could be laid off, and Virginia’s perfect bond rating would suffer its first blemish.

Seventeen House Republicans abandoned the GOP’s anti-tax orthodoxy and sided with Warner in the tax battle.

Although Kaine, as lieutenant governor, benefited from his association with Warner, Kilgore did not appear to gain from a last-minute campaign stop by President Bush, who is beset by low approval ratings.

At the White House on Wednesday, press secretary Scott McClellan dismissed suggestions Bush helped sink Kilgore.

‘’Any thorough analysis of the gubernatorial elections is going to show that the elections were decided on local and state issues and the candidates and their agendas,’’ McClellan said.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Virginia-Republicans.html

By The Associated Press

New York Times

Thursday, November 10, 2005

How could this happen in a state supposedly as reliably Republican as Virginia? A Democrat who objects to capital punishment, had a clear record of backing gun control and even boasted of supporting a $1.4 billion tax increase beat a conservative Republican by six percentage points Tuesday.

Copyright & Paid for by The Democratic Governors Association

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