Southwest Virginia has to feel special, being actively courted by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. He kicked off his campaign in Bristol earlier this summer, then returns to the region today to visit Lebanon, a place gaining notoriety as a growing technology center.
Obama surely got a map to Lebanon from former Gov. Mark Warner, who mentioned the tiny town in his speech to the Democratic National Convention last month. Warner shared it as a success story in Virginia.
For locals who once knew they would leave the region for education and work, they now are getting lucrative job offers from firms like Northrop Grumman and CGI, two high-tech firms that have been lured there.
In May, state officials joined an open house for the Southwest Virginia Technology Development Center, the centerpiece of technology in Russell County. It was highlighted during Warner’s speech to the DNC, an example of how small towns can grow their own jobs and security.
And Virginia is as important in this election as it has ever been. Longtime Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato operates the Center for Politics, which also manages “crystalball,” the political prediction site (www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball).
The site is calling Virginia, and its 13 electoral votes, “leaning” for Republican presidential candidate John McCain, or “currently tilting to one side, but reversible.”
Obama wants those electoral votes and isn’t being shy about visiting the Old Dominion, especially Southwest Virginia, where he will have a harder fight.
He’s also made several trips to Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.
Virginia is one of four “McCain leaning” states, along with Missouri, North Carolina and Florida, according to Sabato. Together, they account for 66 total electoral votes.
“McCain will have to work hard to hold these four usually Republican states,” the site states. “If he loses even one of them, he will be up against the Electoral College wall. His margins in all are currently weak to nonexistent. In leaning them to McCain, we are simply assuming that the voters’ history of going GOP in presidential years might enable McCain to pull a win out narrowly.
“Watch these states closely,” the site states. “If McCain secures them by mid-September, he has a shot at a November upset. If a wide variety of polls – not just one – shows Obama even or ahead in one or two of the states with only six weeks to go, then McCain is in considerable trouble.
“Amazingly, given the fact that the Old Dominion has voted Democratic exactly once (1964) in the past 14 presidential elections, Virginia may be the shakiest of the four for McCain, though Florida is also tight,” the site says. “Thanks to dramatic population growth in Northern Virginia and university communities, this is not your father’s Virginia. It’s a Mid-Atlantic state rather than a Southern state.”
And instead of assuming that supporters in Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia will carry him, Obama is working hard to appeal to voters in this region, too. This will be a tougher crowd to win on Election Day, but he deserves credit for making the trips to the region to try to win the votes.
And it’s an especially good thing for a potential future president to see how one Virginia town turned its economy around.
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