Kerry's Virginia folly

Democrats are prone, from time to time, to use poor judgment and waste a lot of money. The latest example is John Kerry’s belief that Virginia is a state he can win and his corresponding move to dump campaign dough here on television ads.

The Kerry campaign announced a week or more ago that they’ll be running ads on network channels in the Richmond, Hampton Roads, and Roanoke media markets and on cable in more expensive Northern Virginia. This is part of a multimillion-dollar blitz across a slew of states.

It’s generally been believed that no one today can win the presidency without rolling up victories in the South. This is especially true of Democrats – and even more so of their really liberal variety – who’ve been increasingly disadvantaged as the region has grown more conservative while their party, nationally, has become so much less so. A Virginia or Georgia or Alabama Democrat is a far cry from a Hollywood or northeastern one, which is the sort who’s come to at least symbolize, if not actually dominate, the party on a broad scale.

Nevertheless, Kerry obviously believes he has a shot at Virginia, owing perhaps to a misreading of Democrat Mark Warner’s gubernatorial win a few years ago and too sketchy an interpretation of the state’s growing urban demographics.

The last time a Democratic presidential candidate carried Virginia was 1964, when Lyndon Johnson beat the rock-ribbed conservative Barry Goldwater. Even that, however, deserves an asterisk, for other than that one faux pas Virginia’s really been voting Republican in national elections since Dwight Eisenhower’s ’52 run. Not even real southerners like Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Al Gore (if you want to call the D.C.-born and raised Gore a real Southerner) felt Virginia was enough in play during their White House bids to warrant serious campaign resources.

So why, then, would the liberal junior senator from Massachusetts – whose voting record is rated to the left of his state’s senior senator, Ted Kennedy – think right-leaning Virginians will go for him? And why would he be spending big money here?

Generally speaking, Kerry seems to want to at least stick an early fork in every state that even the most unconventional strategist deems a possible win. Kerry has noted more than once that had Gore won just one more state in 2000, he’d likely have won the Electoral College and, thus, the presidency. So in Kerry’s mind, no diagnostics should be spared right now while the close national polls are inspiring inordinate millions in campaign giving and he’s got the money to test even the chilliest waters.

Kerry and his campaign honchos also are likely listening to an enthusiastic Larry Framme, the Richmond lawyer and former state Democratic Party chief who resigned that post when the Kerry campaign was in its infancy to run its pre-nomination operations here. Kerry won the Old Dominion’s Democratic primary. Framme’s certainly talking up Warner’s win a few years ago and the governor’s general popularity now, not to mention the changing face of the state’s population.

But it’s a mistake, of course, to see Warner’s 2001 win and assume its dynamics can be replicated and produce a Kerry victory in ’04. While the millionaire Warner successfully honed a down-home persona with a banjo-hokey campaign song and a NASCAR sponsorship, few think Southside and Southwest Virginia voters are going to sprint to the polls for a stiff Boston Brahmin.

There may be some Big Labor types in the coalfields who’ll be drawn to Kerry’s pro-union voting history, but just wait until they find out how much he really hates guns. Recall, if you will, George W. Bush’s NRA-backed visits in 2000 to the hills and hollers of West Virginia, where in an effort to offset Gore’s considerable labor support Bush reminded Mountaineers of Gore’s anti-gun sentiments and voting record. Bush ended up being only the fourth Republican presidential candidate in nearly a century – and the first since Reagan in ’84 – to win the Mountain State. The same kind of Bush-Kerry gun-labor dynamic will play out across rural Virginia and help keep the state in Bush’s column, and that’s without even playing up Kerry’s stands on a number of social issues that conservative country folks likely will find objectionable.

Kerry certainly knows all of this in his gut. So it’s the more heavily populated parts of Virginia that he’s betting will offer the kinds of demographics that’ll deliver our state to him. It’s especially vote-rich Northern Virginia, home to lots of old-style liberals and Democratic-leaning federal workers, that he’s going after. There’s Hampton Roads, too, where Kerry, a decorated war veteran, believes the huge military presence will provide a sympathetic constituency. He spent last week’s Memorial Day at ceremonies in Portsmouth, his first Virginia trip since announcing his television blitz here.

But national and statewide Republicans do fairly well in the Northern Virginia suburbs, often splitting the region with a competitive Democrat, if not at times eking out a win. And when it comes to the Norfolk-Virginia Beach military community, it’s an even bet that Kerry will be remembered equally for his high-profile Vietnam War protests – he chucked some of his medals over the White House fence, you’ll recall – as his quite admirable Navy service there. Lay money that a war-time incumbent president wins big in Hampton Roads.

Kerry shouldn’t confuse urban with suburban. While he may win a few major cities, it’s in areas like Loudon and Chesterfield and Suffolk, to name but a few, where the Virginia GOP’s strength resides and blossoms year after year – and explodes in presidential election years. Add to this big vote totals from a predictable rural backlash against a Massachusetts liberal as well as lots of Bush votes from Hampton Roads’ military circles, and it’s a near given that Bush records a big victory in Virginia.

So if Kerry really wants to tilt at expensive Virginia windmills, let no Republican try to dissuade him. We’ll take his money. And we’ll laugh all the way to the polls.