Why Virginia Is Tilting Toward Kerry

By Benjamin Wallace-Wells, Washington Monthly. Posted September 27, 2004.

The strangest thing about states is that they actually have characteristics. Start on the bank of a river, sweep down over thousands of square miles of American turf, farms, suburbs, and cities, and stop at a line of longitude; it's not exactly a likely method for creating a unique culture. And yet somehow, again and again, it does. Vermont is only split from New Hampshire by a skinny river and a line slapped on a map, but its culture is completely distinct, organic spinach versus the Old Man of the Mountain. Residents of Massachusetts think Rhode Islanders are parochial, and Iowans think Kansans are hopeless hicks. And people who move to Virginia from neighboring North Carolina or West Virginia believe that they have traded up in the world, to a state that's more prosperous and classy, the heart of the Southern establishment.

It is this cultural difference that explains one of the mysteries of the current presidential race: John Kerry, the Massachusetts Yankee, is doing rather well here. He launched his campaign at Norfolk Naval base with an aircraft carrier in the background, and went on to crush Sen. John Edwards, a native from North Carolina, in the state's March primary. Most observers had thought that if Kerry stood any chance in the South, it would be in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana – the states which Clinton won and Gore came closest to taking. But soon after he became his party's presumptive nominee, a strange pattern kept popping up in the polls: In Virginia, not considered a swing-state, Kerry stayed close behind President Bush. State Republicans called it a mere blip, complained that the race was still young, and grumbled when local papers called them up to ask whether Bush might lose the state come November. Political scientists and pollsters mostly agreed that a Virginia win would be a long-shot for the man from Massachusetts. But by the eve of the Democratic convention in late July, Kerry and Bush were in a statistical dead-heat, and while Kerry's campaign chose to pull its Television advertising from Louisiana and Arkansas, it kept buying ads in Virginia. Six months ago, Larry Sabato, the esteemed University of Virginia political scientist, told reporters that Kerry was a dead duck in the state. Now, he tells me, Virginia is still Bush's to lose – but Bush may very well lose it.

A win for Kerry in Virginia, or even a competitive finish here, would qualify as fairly stunning political news. Virginia is commonly thought of as the seat of the South, a place of countless shrines to Confederate warriors, the home of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign headquarters. Virginia did not go for either Clinton or Carter, both Southern Dems. In fact, it hasn't voted for any Democratic presidential candidate since 1964 and has long been the most reliably Republican state in the South.

But drive around Virginia, like I did early last month, and you realize pretty quickly that those same qualities that distinguish the Old Dominion from the rest of the South also help explain the surprising buoyancy of Kerry's candidacy. Put simply, Virginia is the Massachusetts of the South. Both states pride themselves on the lead roles they played in the nation's founding. Colonial Williamsburg, Mount Vernon, and Monticello are as revered locally as are Plymouth Rock, Old North Church, and Bunker Hill. Both states have long maritime traditions and booming high-tech suburbs. Both have cultures that admire good government, revere brave public service, trust leading families to run things, and generally eschew ideological zealotry and radicalism.

All these attributes can be seen in the kind of individuals who win statewide office in both places. Virginia's senior U.S. senator, John Warner, is a GOP version of Kerry: well-born, courtly, hardworking, a party man but with an independent streak, and a decorated Navy veteran. Warner refused to endorse Oliver North, the Republican candidate for the state's other Senate seat in 1994 because North was too radically conservative. And Virginia's current governor Mark Warner, is a Democratic version of Massachusetts' GOP governor Mitt Romney: competent, ideologically moderate, and a successful business entrepreneur. This centrist Chamber of Commerce sensibility, which helped make Virginia reliably Republican long before the less genteel parts of the South, is what's now helping shift the state towards Kerry's column this fall.

Benjamin Wallace-Wells is an editor of The Washington Monthly

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