Just For The Hale Of It Obama and Me in Virginia |
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Perhaps the most telling result of the "off year" elections earlier this month came out of Virginia, where it was a "on" year. Virginia and New Jersey elect their state legislators in odd-numbered years, while all the other states do it in even-numbered years -- in concert with the congressional and presidential elections. In 2008, President Obama beat John McCain by seven percentage points, largely on the strength of a huge turnout by white collar liberals in the Washington suburbs of northern Virginia. He was the first Democrat presidential candidate to carry Virginia since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Democrats wrongfully saw this, along with an Obama victory in North Carolina, as the beginning of a Democrat revival in the South. There was a flurry of media stories on how the Democrats altered the political map. So, to keep the "mo" going, the White House and the Democrat National Committee poured tons of resources into the Virginia legislative races. The 2012 Obama re-election campaign held some 1,600 events in Virginia just in the past six months. Shortly before election day, Obama, himself, made a much-ballyhooed, three-day bus trip through Virginia and North Carolina. Besides the President, a flock of high-ranking government officials appeared on behalf of Democrat candidates, who looked forward to a jubilant election night. Instead, they got a nightmare. Virginia Republicans added seven new seats to their already comfortable majority in the House of Delegates, giving them two-thirds of that chamber -- the party's largest in history. The GOP also took control of the state Senate. This was notable because last spring, while Democrats controlled the Senate, they crafted a gerrymandered redistricing plan aimed solely at providing a firewall against a Republican takeover. This election in Virginia provided the first indication of how Obama would fare next year in a bellwether state, which the pundits say Virginia has become. Watching all this unfold brought back proud memories for me, personally. A PR job with a chemical company lured my family and me to Richmond, Virginia in 1959. I looked around for a way to get involved in politics, but I found no Republican Party; just "conservative Virginia Democrats," whose idea of conservatism was segregation of the races, a poll tax and no booze sold in restaurants. (You had to join a private club and bring your own.) This was the scene not only in most parts of Virginia, but in every southeastern state except Florida and Louisiana. Then one day, an attorney from one of Virginia's leading law firms came to our home. There is an "underground" Republican party ready to surface and would I run for the House of Delegates? Talk about a sacrificial lamb: Here I am a 31-year-old, "smart-ass" carpetbagger from New York daring to challenge one of the nation's most entrenched political establishments headed by the "Saint of the Old Dominion," U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd. The "Byrd Machine" saw that something was brewing in Richmond. So it created a House district that included the City of Richmond and an adjoining county (Henrico), where we lived and newcomers to the state were settling. Other House districts in the state were represented by one or two delegates, but Richmond-Henrico had eight, thereby diluting a modest Republican uprising in Henrico. The "Conservative Virginia Democrats" put up six long-serving incumbents and two well-known newcomers. The "underground" Republican leaders could recruit only five challengers, including myself. Come election night, the Byrd Democrats were stunned. Two of our five -- a well-known p/c insurance agent and the husband of a Richmond city council member -- won, defeating the two Democrat newcomers. As for me, throughout the campaign I was branded a "Rockefeller Republican" and scorned for favoring the sale of alcoholic beverages in restaurants. Despite this, or maybe becaause of it, I beat all 13 candidates in my election district and carried Henrico County handily. But I fell short in the city of Richmond and consequently lost the election by 73 votes out of more than 50,000 votes cast. What's more, the five of us captured national attention. When we forged ahead in early returns, it was reported to the nation by Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News. So when Republicans gave Obama and the Democrats such a thrashing in Virginia early this month, I felt a sense of pride, having been in the vanguard of two-party democracy in the "Solid South." FA
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