GOP Wins Lopsided Victory
Former Attorney General Robert F. "Bob" McDonnell, a calm, hard-line conservative Republican from Virginia Beach, clobbered his earnest but vaguely moderate Democratic opponent from Bath County, state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds, by 18 percentage points.
Bob McDonnell’s message, which was chock full of anti-tax rhetoric, appeared to resonate well with voters who have been getting steadily more unhappy with what they see as excessive government spending, both in Washington and Richmond.
Thus, after two straight Democratic governors, and just one year after the Democratic presidential candidate carried the commonwealth for the first time since 1964, Virginia’s Republicans have turned the momentum around and reclaimed the keys to the Governor’s Mansion.
Traditionally, low turnouts are said to favor the Grand Old Party. Tuesday’s Election Day results in Virginia did nothing to change that warmed-over wisdom, as only 40 percent of registered voters cast a ballot.
With 99.68 percent of the votes counted in the gubernatorial race McDonnell has tallied 1,157,672 votes, or 59 percent. Deeds has 814,032 votes, or 41 percent.
How much Deeds’ poor showing could be attributed to whatever President Barack Obama has done, or not done, during his nine months in office, depends on one’s point of view. Even though the Deeds campaign noticeably distanced itself from the White House, some Republicans would like to interpret the victory in Virginia as indicative some measure of buyer’s remorse about Obama.
Yet, there are plenty of Democrats who think Deeds deserved to lose his race against McDonnell because he ran an awkward, lackluster campaign with no clear message. The vibe of the Deeds candidacy certainly never connected with young voters in a way that resembled what Obama achieved.
Still, there will be pundits aplenty claiming that the recent national strategies of staging anti-tax tea parties and sabotaging/shouting down the town hall meetings to do with health care reform helped to pull Obama’s approval rating down; that they acted as a drag on the campaigns of Democrats everywhere.
Which means we’re likely to see lots more of the same, because whether Democrats like it or not, it probably did have some effect on yesterday's voting.
Last year 74 percent of Virginia’s registered voters turned out in the election that sent Obama to the White House and Democrat Sen. Mark Warner to the U.S. Senate.
Running for reelection, Republican Lt. Gov. William T. "Bill" Bolling easily defeated his Democratic opponent, Jody M. Wagner, by 56 percent to 44 percent.
In the attorney general contest, state Sen. Ken T. Cuccinelli III, the Republican, trounced Democrat Del. Stephen C. Shannon by 58 percent to 42 percent.
Elsewhere, across the nation, there seemed to be an anti-incumbent sentiment in the air. But that didn’t apply to the metro area’s elections for the House of Delegates.
Five incumbents won without major party/significant opposition. They were: Republican Samuel A. "Sam" Nixon Jr. in District 27; Republican Riley Edward Ingram in District 62; Democrat Rosalyn R. Dance in District 63; Republican M. Kirkland "Kirk" Cox in District 66; Republican James P. Massie III in District 72.
Incumbents also won in six seats that were contested. They were: Republican R. Lee Ware Jr. in the 65th; Republican G. Monoli Loupassi in the 68th, Democrat Delores L. McQuinn in the 70th, Democrat Jennifer L. McClellan in the 71th, Republican John M. O’Bannion III in the 73th, Democrat Joseph D. Morrissey in the 74th.
In the 69th there was no incumbent, as Frank Hall retired on April 14, 2009. Democrat Betsy B. Carr defeated two other candidates.
To fill out the remaining three years of Delores McQuinn’s term on Richmond’s City Council, representing the 7th District, Cynthia I. Newbille won easily against five opponents. McQuinn resigned her seat on council earlier this year, after she won what had been Mayor Dwight Jones’ seat in the House.
Trivia: For nine consecutive elections Virginia has elected a governor from the opposite political party as that of the sitting president in the White House. The string goes back to when Democrat Jimmy Carter was president and Republican John Dalton was elected governor in 1977.
McDonnell was the frontrunner from the get-go. He raised more money and ran a much smarter campaign than did his opponent. The McDonnell camp’s strategy to portray its man as a fiscal conservative, rather than put much emphasis on his cultural conservative stances of the past, worked like a charm.
McDonnell’s focused anti-tax message gathered the GOP faithful, nicely. It attracted more than enough Independents who voted for Obama last year. And, it did all that without waking up the sleeping dog Democrats.
Bottom line: Don’t be surprised to see McDonnell’s carefully crafted 2009 campaign touted by conservative pols and pundits as the best blueprint for more elephant stampedes in 2010.
F.T. Rea is a freelance artist and writer based in the Fan District. He publishes SLANTblog and the Fan District Hub, an independent community news Web site. Rea's work has been seen under a variety of local mastheads since 1972.
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