If Virginians went to the polls today to choose the next president of the United States, pollsters and political analysts say they would choose the Democratic ticket of Sen. Barack Obama and running mate Sen. Joe Biden.
But if the election came down to a street corner in Abingdon on a recent October afternoon – where a McCain supporter waved a GOP campaign sign – and votes were registered by motorists’ honks and thumbs-ups, the presidency would go to Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin in a landslide.
And if the outcome hinged on the ballots of a dozen or so voters in a middle-class Bristol neighborhood on a different day last week, the nation might wake up with no president.
Perhaps no scenario accurately reflects voter attitudes in a race hopelessly scrambled by race, gender and the specter of financial crisis. Yet what seems clear is that Southwest Virginia will play a vital role in which way the state tips, a level of influence that has earned the region unprecedented political attention.
From the start, the burden has been on Obama to flip a state with a changing political complexion – one that has elected Democrats in the last two gubernatorial races and most recently sent one to the U.S. Senate, but has not supported a Democrat for president since 1964.
To that end, the Illinois senator made Bristol his first stop after sewing up the nomination in June, and with his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, has concentrated unprecedented campaign firepower in this part of the state, combining to spend more than one out of every four days they have campaigned in the commonwealth in Southwest Virginia.
In this highly unconventional election, the oft-quoted wisdom by political strategists is that Obama is charting a well-worn path for Democrats in a statewide election – riding to victory on the bluest parts of the electorate while holding down losses in more conservative rural areas.
Can a man with an unusual biography and an exotic-sounding name accomplish this with one, two or three visits? Are the repeated visits enough to curb the skepticism? Can he carry the region outright?
The answers vary by source.
“There is literally zero chance” Obama will carry Southwest Virginia, University of Virginia political professor and analyst Larry Sabato said last week. “This is all about the margins.”
Rural folks “like to get to know you,” said Sabato, who has family in Tazewell. “Obama obviously was not well known; McCain was. This is an attempt to get Obama better known, to bring Democrats back home, with no chance of winning over Republicans there,” he said.
Of Obama’s multiple visits, Sabato said: “You have to go repeatedly. You can’t make one visit.”
But more than an electoral strategy, Obama’s repeat visits are evidence of a unique approach to politics, said Solon Simmons, a professor at George Mason University’s Institute of Conflict Analysis and Resolution, who has been studying the presidential campaign.
“This is an attempt to be transformational,” Simmons said, describing Obama’s stops in rural areas as “leaning into the wind.”
“Whether he can be or not, he’s attempting to do it. He wants to be a Roosevelt or a Reagan, not a Clinton,” Simmons said.
Simmons believes Obama’s attention to Southwest Virginia goes beyond the election.
“I think he’s looking to govern, not just to win. He’s trying to win people over,” he said.
Jon Carson, national field director for the Obama campaign, said his candidate’s sights are focused on Nov. 4, and not beyond.
“To win Virginia, it’s very clear we need to win the votes of people who voted for President Bush twice,” Carson said.
Neither McCain nor Palin has ventured into this region – though the Alaska governor is scheduled to appear in Salem, Va., near Roanoke, on Monday – but the campaign is still banking on the region to carry it to victory.
Mike Reynold, state director for the McCain-Palin campaign, said: “We’re going to win Virginia, and a large reason is folks in rural Virginia.”
Boucher’s pitch
Democratic U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher remembers the last time a major party presidential nominee came to the western part of Virginia. The 13-term congressman was a 12-year-old in 1960 when he went to see John F. Kennedy speak at the Roanoke airport.
As one of Obama’s state surrogates, Boucher made the point early on that by coming to Southwest Virginia, Obama could capitalize on an overlooked area of the state.
“Our region has been effectively ignored by the presidential candidates of both parties for almost 50 years,” Boucher said.
By visiting, Boucher believes, Obama “can harvest more support than a similar visit to an urban area that sees candidates on a regular basis.”
But can he really harvest votes in a region that turned out overwhelmingly to support George W. Bush? A region where voters in the February primary preferred Sen. Hillary Clinton by margins of between two and three to one?
Boucher thinks he can.
The reason, he said, is the region’s voters “are Democratic, but they will not vote for a Democrat for president unless they have the sense that the candidate is attuned to this region’s needs.”
The polls thus far have spotlighted traces of Democratic strength in Southwest Virginia, which is where Democrat Mark Warner, a former governor, holds his largest advantage – 66 percent to 26 percent – in the U.S. Senate race against Republican Jim Gilmore, also a former governor, according to a Mason-Dixon poll conducted Oct. 20-21.
Support for Obama, however, has not mirrored Warner’s rural advantage, and last week Obama polled virtually the same – 39 percent to McCain’s 54 percent – as he did in the last Mason-Dixon survey released two weeks before.
Boucher minimized the significance of the poll of 625 voters – “the margin of error is enormous. It’s not reliable enough to give you any kind of fair read” – but guesses that the Arizona senator still leads in his district.
“I dare say, Sen. McCain is still ahead in the 9th District,” Boucher said, but there has been “a definite movement towards Sen. Obama.”
Boucher is not alone in saying so.
“The McCain people took Virginia for granted, which very well may have been a fatal mistake,” Sabato said.
McCain’s struggle
In Tazewell County, where Sabato’s mother lives, most of his family voted for Hillary Clinton in the primary, the analyst said.
“They didn’t like Obama, initially,” Sabato said. “Most, maybe all” threw their support to McCain, but lately Sabato has heard some momentum in Obama’s favor.
“Economic dislocation helps the out-of-power candidate,” Sabato said.
McCain also is up against a field operation with more than 50 offices statewide – more than twice the number of McCain’s offices – as well as a gaping financial disadvantage.
But while McCain has not had to introduce himself to voters in the same way as Obama, a political neophyte, he has had to generate a level of enthusiasm about his candidacy that did not materialize after the state primary.
In the Southwest counties where in 2004 support for George W. Bush ranged from 51 percent to 66 percent, McCain did not crack 40 percent against the more popular Gov. Mike Huckabee.
In early October, the McCain campaign opened 12 new campaign offices – including one in Abingdon – to bring the total to 21 statewide, campaign spokeswoman Gail Gitcho said.
“We’re a very lean campaign operation. We’re committed to winning Virginia. Just because we don’t have the offices there doesn’t mean we don’t have the activity there,” Gitcho said.
Both campaigns say they are pleased with their progress at this stage. “We always expected a challenging fight,” said Reynold, with the McCain-Palin campaign. “We expect to earn every vote. Polls show us now at parity with our opponent.”
Carson, the Obama campaign’s national field director, said Virginia is one of five states “we believe we can win. From the beginning, we’ve said the position we would like to be in is with a whole host of states that Bush won in 2004 in play for us. I think that’s where we find ourselves.”
Front lines
What the polls might not capture – but what is crucially important in a battleground state – are the foot soldiers pounding the pavement and making their pitches.
Outside the GOP headquarters in Abingdon on a recent October day, Dennis Wisnoski stood by the roadside waving a banner for the ticket he believed would be most likely to shake things up in Washington, D.C.
The real change agents are McCain and Palin, said Wisknoski, a 35-year-old U.S. Army veteran. He also said the Republican leadership fears his candidates.
“They’re terrified [McCain and Palin] are going to shake up the status quo,” Wisknoski said. “They’re scared crap-less they’re going to get elected.”
Political parties, he said, “don’t mean a whole [lot] to me,” and then he volunteered what could pass for blasphemy at this late stage of a close campaign: kind words for the enemy.
Obama, he said, “is very eloquent.” And of Biden: “I like him.”
Wisnoski is no red-meat conservative: He voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, Ross Perot in 1996, and Bush in the last two elections. But he is on the trail five days a week, a campaign aide said, waving banners, calling voters and knocking on doors.
On a different day, for a different campaign, Bernard Via also is knocking on doors on behalf of his third choice for president.
Via is a bankruptcy attorney whose Democratic bona fides include a stint as party chairman for Bristol and an unsuccessful run for commonwealth’s attorney in 2003. He liked John Edwards early on due to his emphasis on the middle class. He got behind Hillary Clinton during the primaries. And he has come around for Obama only recently – even though, he quips, “George W. Bush has been good for business.”
Via doesn’t wear Obama campaign accessories, but he does wear his religion on his lapel – a button announcing his support for his pastor.
One day last week, Via canvassed McChesney Heights, a neighborhood of humble, mostly single-floor brick houses, which he describes as “rock-solid, middle-class Bristol.”
Seeking out undecided, newly registered and sporadic voters, Via knocked on the door of Catherine Parks, 81, who, when asked about her preferences for the candidates, said “I don’t know that much about it, now.” Via marked her as undecided.
Mike Lee, 35, a planning manager for Sandvik Manufacturing, said he supports Obama for president and Warner for Senate.
Brandon Willis was not home, but his father and mother told Via to mark him down for McCain.
Don Ashley, a 24-year-old art student at Virginia Intermont College, at first said he is undecided about the presidential race, but after talking with Via said he is leaning toward Obama.
Mark Glovier, 39, a cell phone technician for Touchstone Wireless, doesn’t particularly like either candidate for president. He wants someone who will lower his taxes, and make gas prices go down – “but I don’t know if either one can do that,” he said.
Willard Dixon, 88, has made up his mind but would not say for whom.
“I don’t think it’s anybody’s business,” he said. “I don’t think Congress is doing a good job. They’re dragging their feet. All they want is money up there.”
Dixon concluded with one statement not in dispute in this hard-fought campaign.
“I don’t think we can stand another four years like the last.”
dgilbert@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2558
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