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From the Chair ... Mark Warner’s and Tim Kaine’s election victories have encouraged us all. Once again we’ve shown that the right Democratic candidates can win at the state level. We were greatly aided by Jim Gilmore, however. Even The Wall Street Journal noted his poor performance as governor, especially his handling of the car tax. Yet we can’t depend on Jim Gilmore’s continuing assistance! We have to work harder for other Democratic candidates who support strong public schools, equal opportunity for all, and smart development. The Republicans have a limited agenda of cutting taxes and funding for public services, and making sure that corporate interests are protected regardless of any damage to the environment or sound public policy. Warner’s victory shows that Virginians, including reasonable Republicans, will vote for Democrats when given a clear choice between irresponsibility and wisdom. Locally it was encouraging to see Delegate Bill Barlow reelected to the Virginia House, Mary Minor reelected and Ann Brown elected to the Williamsburg JCC School Board, and John McGlennon reelected to the Board of Supervisors. But Patrick Pettitt’s and Jim Icenhour’s narrow defeats, in the delegate and supervisor campaigns they worked so hard to win, were heartbreakers. I hope that they will run for office again in the future. I am pleased to have been elected chair of the committee last month and grateful for your unanimous vote. In this first message as chair I also would like to recognize the excellent work done by the outgoing executive committee, especially former chair Mike Halpin. He has worked hard the past three years for our candidates, and I hope he and other members of the outgoing board will continue to be active in the committee as we move forward. Your new officers have already met to organize and set priorities. We will continue this process at our next general committee meeting at 7:00 p.m. Thursday, January 24 at the Human Services Building on Olde Towne Road. [Note the new time.] I hope you can join us. Meanwhile I’d like to offer a few preliminary thoughts. We need to get more people involved in making decisions and organizing events. I will welcome everyone’s help and ideas. We need to listen more carefully to each other. Rather than personally take responsibility for all projects I’d like to appoint committees to take the lead. Also, I will be relying heavily on elected leaders such as John McGlennon and Mary Minor for advice as I take on my new responsibilities. I look forward to working with each of you as we move forward. Together we can make a difference. Ralph Bresler |
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Send your opinion on any federal, state or local issue to publius@jccdemocrats.com for possible publication. The executive committee of the James City County Democratic Party has adopted a new policy requiring that authors of Publius essays be identified. This quarter we’re offering a selection of provocative quotations from one of Virginia’s savviest political observers, Prof. Larry J Sabato of the University of Virginia’s Center for Governmental Studies. The excerpts come from Sabato’s just-published paper, 2001 Gubernatorial Election in Virginia: The Return of Two-Party Competition: Over the course of the last decade, the Virginia Republican party won just about everything: all presidential contests; the governorship, lieutenant governorship, and attorney general’s post; both U.S. Senate seats; eight of eleven U.S. House seats; and both houses of the General Assembly. Democrats had begun to despair that Virginia had moved so strongly into the GOP column that its nominees were no longer competitive. The 2001 elections proved those fears exaggerated. Mark Warner rescued his party from a dismal fate, and carried in a Democratic lieutenant governor with him. Still, Republicans had reason to be pleased, or less displeased than they would otherwise have been. The race for governor was closer than many polls had predicted, and the lieutenant governor’s election was a squeaker. The Republican candidate for attorney general captured the only landslide of Election Day, and Warner’s coattails proved completely insufficient to do anything about a Republican near-sweep of close House of Delegates contests; the GOP captured a massive 64 seats, a gain of 12—a greater total than their own party leaders had dreamed possible. Both parties could be partly satisfied with the 2001 results, then, and so could the citizenry, since vigorous two-party competition is one major key to long-term good government. For Democrats, though, the victories were especially sweet. Written off as a spent force only a year earlier, they proved fully capable of capturing the state’s highest office against the odds in conservative Virginia. The Virginia Democratic breakthrough had regional and national implications, too. Combined with Democrat James McGreevey's landslide victory in the nation’s only other gubernatorial contest in New Jersey, Warner's triumph suggested that Democrats could win under the most hostile of conditions — in a time of war, with the Republican president at stratospheric popularity levels, and (in Warner's case) in a conservative, Republican-leaning state.
Regionally, there was also good news for Democrats. The 2001 result in Virginia means that for the first time since 1994, Democrats will control a majority of the Southern governors. Just since 1998, moderate-conservative Democrats have wrested statehouses from Republicans in Alabama (1998), South Carolina (1998), Mississippi (1999), and Virginia (2001), while losing only one Southern governorship to the Republicans, Florida in 1998. This substantial comeback for the Democrats is especially noteworthy since the South is clearly the most Republican of all American geographic regions in modern times. Even before September11 irrevocably changed the political climate, and most everything else in America, the 2001 campaign for governor in Virginia was unusually quiet, even dull. Partly, this was by Democratic design. Simply by virtue of being a Democrat, Mark Warner was presumed to be on the wrong side of many social and economic issues in conservative Virginia. “Quiet” meant that Warner was steadily reassuring voters that he would not raise broad-based taxes, would not spend money recklessly, would preserve Second Amendment rights, would uphold the traditional family, and generally would govern as a classically cautious Virginia businessman: no tumult, no upheaval, and “bipartisan administration.” Even on abortion, his one truly liberal position, Warner pointed to the Republican legislature and suggested he would not change the status quo and might merely veto further restrictions on abortion.…. [Mark] Earley’s central campaign theme — that Warner’s support for a possible Northern Virginia referendum to raise the local sales tax for roads and schools made him a “big-taxer” — was simply rejected by a sizeable majority. Just 34 percent agreed with Earley that “Warner was supporting a nine hundred million dollar tax increase,” while 56 percent believed that “all [Warner] was doing was supporting the right of people to choose to tax themselves in a vote...” There was also a clear indication that the strong Democratic canvass and GOTV operations had an effect. Marginally more voters reported that they had been contacted by telephone and mail originating in the Warner campaign than Earley’s organization. The demographics of the electorate on November 6, 2001 also worked to Warner’s advantage. Women were 52 percent of the Election Day turnout, and they favored Warner by 53 percent to 39 percent for Earley. Men were in Earley’s corner, by a relatively narrow 49 percent to 44 percent. This ten-point “gender gap” is a relatively standard one in politics across the country; in this particular case, women’s strong preference for the Democrat won out over a male predisposition for the Republican. African-Americans were also 15 percent of Election Day turnout, a healthy proportion that argues success in that portion of Warner’s GOTV effort. The GOP survey shows Warner winning blacks 73 percent to 18 percent for Earley, but the margin of error for this small subsample is in double-digits; the sample black precincts presented elsewhere in this chapter would suggest that Warner was closer to 90 percent of the black vote, with Earley’s backing just over 10 percent. Among whites, with a large, reliable subsample, Earley edged Warner by only 50 percent to 44 percent. Normally, a Democrat needs just over 40 percent of the white vote to win statewide, assuming a solid black turnout, and that is precisely what Warner achieved.
Also worth noting is the [President George W.] Bush factor, or rather, non-factor …. Whether Bush could have elected Earley with a one-day downstate stumping tour of Hampton Roads, Richmond, and Roanoke is unknowable but tantalizing. Chances are that the president would at least have made the contest closer, and possibly given a tight race to GOP lieutenant governor candidate [Jay] Katzen. Instead, Earley was reduced to airing on the final weekend an unconvincing endorsement spot from New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. It was obvious that Giuliani barely knew Earley, and the Yankee mayor of the Big Apple — while a national hero — could barely swing an election to his chosen successor, Michael Bloomberg, in his own backyard. Virginians might give money to Rudy for his city, but they were unlikely to give his candidate their votes in a state they knew far better than he possibly could. |
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James
City County Democratic Committee Vol. 9, No. 1 — January 2002 |
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