Big Win In Virginia
Early in what was supposed to be a long night, AP has called the Virginia Governor's race for Tim Kaine.
My own quick look at the county returns indicates that Kaine beat Jerry (No Relation) Kilgore all over the place.
Kaine ran ahead of Mark Warner's winning percentage in 2001 in the Northern Virginia suburbs, in Richmond, in Norfolk, and in Charlottesville. Kilgore did better in many rural counties, especially in and near his southwest Virginia base, but not by much, and without any sizeable increase in Republican turnout.
This is a big win, folks. Tim Kaine, a former civil rights attorney, big city mayor, and death penalty opponent, beat the long-groomed, geographically advantaged candidate of a united GOP in a state that hasn't gone Democratic in a presidential election since 1964.
It makes it that much sweeter that George W. Bush flew into Richmond on election eve to lend his dubious prestige to ol' Jerry.
This is a clear national defeat for the GOP, and a good sign for next year.
Exxxxcellent! How schweeet it is!
This is a clear national defeat for the GOP, and a good sign for next year.
Got that right. Good job Kaine, and good job Jerry Kilgore too. =p
Ed Kilgore, so whose going to break down the road to victory, step by step? I'm sure you, Josh and others all have plenty to say on this.
My request is to skip the glorification and myth making, getting straight to the meat of how he won and why, aside from the obvious facts like Bush and Republicans generally stinking it up.
November 8, 2005 6:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
As a Virginia absentee voter watching this race from Taiwan, I see this as the best news since Scooter Libby's indictment. Already the Republicans are trying to spin this as merely local politics. But it's a blow to the RNC machine which spent unprecedented resources on this state campaign. Kaine's victory promises decent governance in Virginia for 4 more years, something for which we can't be too grateful.
November 8, 2005 7:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're trying to get election results from what passes for cable "news" on TV.
I didn't expect any news out of Larry King, since he had Jennifer Annison on - but at 7PM (Pacific) I expected to get at least some information on CNN.
Foolish me. Instead, Anderson Cooper 360 leads with a fluff piece about divorce, while MSNBC has some sleaze or other.
Hmmm ... do you think if it were a Republican night, the cable nets might be paying more attention? Just saying.
-- Rick
November 8, 2005 7:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
how he won and why, aside from the obvious facts like Bush and Republicans generally stinking it up.
Actually, I think the latter may have had a lot to do with it. Not just what was happening on the national scene, though I'm sure that was no small part of it, but the way the campaign was conducted locally as well. The Republicans went negative early on, and everyone I have talked to about this race--and believe me, most of the people I know lean Republican--were not at all happy with the tone of the race.
Me, early in his term as Attorney General, I had some respect for Jerry Kilgore, because he showed a willingness to make calls against his party when they were in the wrong. Even then, it was widely assumed that the 2005 gubernatorial race would be Kaine vs Kilgore, and in 2002, I thought I could be content (though not entirely happy) whichever way the race went.
But once Kilgore, flush with cash and with the help of some of the people responsible for the Swift Boat ads against Kerry, started airing despicably negative ads, I lost all respect for him. And I suspect some moderates who might otherwise have voted for him reacted the same way.
Interestingly, Potts was much less a factor (at 2% of the vote) than had been predicted, and Kaine, at least from the last tallies I saw, was carrying a majority of the vote. He'd have won with or without Potts in the race.
November 8, 2005 7:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
There need to be a poll on whether Bush hurt or helped Kilgore...
dlw
November 8, 2005 7:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
As Virginny goes, so goeth Georgia?
November 8, 2005 7:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is good news. I've been away from news sources all day and wondered if what you'd written, Ed, was really true. And so I went googling. Yes, it looks like Kaine has won, but look at this report from a TV channel in Roanake (Kilgore's district, no?):
Election day voting is going on across the Old Dominion, but everything has not gone smoothly in Roanoke County.
News 7 has received calls from several voters in at least four different precincts who say their votes for Tim Kaine were not recorded or took several attempts to go through.
They contend the electronic touch screens repeatedly indicated they were voting for Republican candidate Jerry Kilgore instead of registering their intended vote for his Democratic opponent Tim Kaine.
Roanoke Co. Registrar Judy Stokes says she doesn't want to say the problem is operator error on the part of the voters, but she points out the touch screens are sensitive. She says anyone who is having difficulty voting should ask one of the poll workers for assistance.
State election officials have been told of the problem. They believe if there is a problem, it could have been caused by the way the machines were stored.
The Kaine compaign is reportedly watching the situation in Roanoke County.
November 8, 2005 7:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is true that the kind of man Kaine is really represents a winner contrary to the conventional WIZ on VA. But here are a few issues (I must say that my prediction that the race was too close to call was off) that are of particular interest:
(1) Impact of the issue of abortion, which was raised front and center, in the closing weeks of the campaign. Obviously, since I have rarely in my life even visited Virginia and never lived there, I can't really judge the politics on the ground there, but I was worried -- as my discussion post on the subject reveals http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/10/28/1844/3887
Here is one despairing comment that I wrote, though I later came to see the race as too close to call:
If Kaine is able to pull off this election after making abortion a central issue in VA (I would bet against it), then all I can say is that the antiChoicers had better watch out; if they can't win VA, one of the dozen reddest of the red states, their prospects nationally are dismal. I can say that the reaction if Roe v Wade is overturned in the blue states would be enormous, as it should be.
But the key here is that Kaine, having made abortion a central campaign issue -- apparently, as one poster noted, Kilgore was disingenuous on the issue, which helped A LOT -- in a state that has voted for the Repugs for Prez since 1964, then all the claims, eg, by Nicholas von Hoffman at the Huffington Post,
that abortion is an "albatross" for the national Democratic Party are total crap. (See von Hoffman, ostensibly pro-choice, on his hope that Roe v Wade is overturned: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicholas-von-hoffman/you-may-not-wa nt-to-hear-_b_9357.html)
So let's review this. After the Democratic national leadership were silent about the flimsiness of the flipflop spin, the central Repuglican spin of the election, for five months while it hardened into a national cliche, (as well as other matters like their logo, as well-deconstructed by a graphic designer, once it was too late, of course, in the Oct 9 2004 New York Times oped page, as subliminally conveying weakness and indecision, or the handling of the "Bai Lie" featured in The New York Times Magazine Oct 10) and then there was the media lockdown during Votergate 2004 -- then, in denial of all this getting with the program and justifying the lying, the Democratic Leadership like Al From sought to further 'get with the program and justify the lying' based on an interpretation of the election as a rejection of blue-state values.
Al From and others have been pushing for the Democrats to jettison its pro-choice plank, one if the Party's most popular, in fact in pursuit of the agenda of Al From et al and not of victory for the Democrats at all, in whose name this principle is supposed to be compromised.
But there are others, like Nicholas von Hoffman at Huffington Post who insist on peddling the line that being pro-choice is an albatross for the Democrats. The Kaine election is a good time to tell them to SHOVE IT, and make the point as explicit as you dare.
(2) The presidential campaign of Warner . This election would seem to set the stage for a Warner candidacy for prez. As long as he takes an antiwar and not a fudgy (Clark, Kerry) or hawkish (Hillary Clinton, Joseph Lieberman) position on the war, like Dean, Gore, Boxer, the caucus started by Maxine Waters, and others have taken, then he should be seriously considered as a proven winner from the South who opposes the Iraq War without fudging -- everything that Hillary Clinton is not.
And those are the two key political lessons, in addition to all the usual ones cited by others, that I take out of this election
November 8, 2005 8:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
News 7 has received calls from several voters in at least four different precincts who say their votes for Tim Kaine were not recorded or took several attempts to go through.
Oh, dear. This election was the first one with touch screen machines for quite a few Virginia localities, and I was afraid we might see problems like that. I hope they can get those questions resolved.
My own county of Henrico was using touch screens for the first time this year, too, but I will say that the poll worker in my precinct who was demonstrating how the new machines worked was VERY CLEAR that if there was any problem at all with the machine, a poll worker should be called over before recording the vote or leaving the machine. My chief complaint about Henrico's machines is that there is no paper trail. Maybe Roanoke's experience will underline why that is necessary, and if the Republicans feel that lack of a paper trail has disadvantaged them, then maybe, since they have a majority in the state legislature, it will give them an incentive to address that issue.
Just heard on the local news that the Dems also picked up seats in the House of Delegates. (Didn't catch how many.) That is very good news indeed. Seems Leslie Byrne has lost the Lt. Gov's race, but the real surprise there is that it was a close as it was. I had expected her to get skunked.
November 8, 2005 8:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
It certainly doesn't appear that Kilgore's numbers went up after Bush's one and only visit to the state Monday night...
November 8, 2005 8:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dunno about Georgia; the recent pattern in Virginia (whose governor's race is always the year after the presidential one) is that the state elects a governor who is in the opposite party from the sitting president. Buyer's remorse, I suppose...
November 8, 2005 8:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Shades of Harris Wofford, 1991? We can hope.
November 8, 2005 8:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Perhaps I need some help from other folks who have paid more attention to the campaign, or vice versa, but having looked at Kaine's website, I'm not sure why anyone is talking about how great it is that Kaine won while talking about abortion. He was endorsed by neither NARAL nor Planned Parenthood, and with good reason:
I will reduce abortion in Virginia by enforcing current Virginia restrictions, passing an enforceable ban on partial-birth abortion, ensuring women's access to health care (including legal contraception), and promoting abstinence-focused education and adoption.
We should reduce abortion in this manner, rather than by criminalizing women and doctors.
This guy is light years from being pro-choice. I have a faith-based objection to abortion as well, but that leads me to say only that I would not seek one for myself and not to in any way suggest that it's ok for the state to seek to control others' rights and choices. Moreover, Kaine opposes same-sex marriage. He's to the right of the current governor, and with his support of abstinence based curricula, sounds dangerously like the wackos on the other side of the Potomac.
Truth to be told, I voted today, then I drove away, put my head in my hands and wept. Granted, Kaine was running long before the President fell on hard times, but I can only hope that the margin of victory was so narrow because he sounded so much like the President. Is this really the best we can do?
As a black woman, I vote in every election because I know that people died so that I could do so. I felt no pride in voting today, however. I merely felt like I had elected the horrible candidate rather than the reprehensible one.
November 8, 2005 8:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
I sure as hell hope so! It's about time the people of my new state (GA) woke up and realized they were voting against their own best interests. The problem is the media around here is piss poor. Even in Atlanta the news coverage is horrible. People just have no idea what's going on so they don't go out and vote and if they do vote they vote the way they were told in church.
November 8, 2005 8:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am so glad that we won. It shows what the GOP problems have been affecting races across the country from Virginia to New Jersey. Also, this will give us momentum riding into next year's 2006 races!!!!
November 8, 2005 8:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just got back after a brief visit to a Kaine victory party in northern Virginia.
A few numbers (rounded off to nearest 1000):
Kaine won the state by 115,000 votes, give or take. Turnout was just under 44%.
He won Fairfax County, where we live, (northern Va. DC suburbs, which has 1 million residents--1 in 300 Americans lives in Fairfax County, Virginia), by 60,000 votes (60-38).
He won Arlington County (northern Va. DC suburbs) by 29,000 votes (74-24)
He won Richmond city (southern Va), where he was Mayor at one time, by 27,000 (76-22)
He won Alexandria city (northern Va. DC suburbs) by 16,000 votes (72-26)
Fairfax County last year went for Kerry by around 52-48, the first time in ages it has gone for a Dem in a presidential election.
Ruy T wrote in the Emerging Democratic Majority (3 years ago?) that Virginia could go Dem in a presidential election in 10 years, partly because the biggest population growth is in northern Virginia, which has been trending steadily Dem. Kerry pulled out of Virginia to put his eggs elsewhere and was beaten soundly here.
I took a shift outside our polling place, which Kaine carried by 460 votes (66-32). Our precinct Chair is absolutely amazing, incredibly well organized, hard working and good at getting others to help her.
I had a number of people take me aside and they weren't talking about Kaine or Kilgore, they were talking about Bush and the Republicans and what a disaster they are. I did have one person decline a ballot--on account of John McCain not being on it.
I haven't seen exit polling data on why people voted the way they did today.
Kaine ran on Mark Warner's coattails and this had to have helped him. There was prominent reference to his working with Warner and being endorsed by Warner in the phone calling scripts I worked with in the runup to last night. Warner is extremely popular here (neighborhood of maybe 70% of so), has gotten things done you wouldn't think he could get done with a Republican state House and Senate.
As of now it's looking as though Dems will pick up maybe 1 or 2 seats in the Virginia House, which is around 60-38 Republican now. It doesn't look as though there will be much change in the party makeup of the Senate.
Kaine, like Warner, is good on education funding and is committed to a full push for making preschool available to all 4 year olds whose parents want that. One other poster said Kaine is more conservative than Warner. That is certainly true on abortion. On the death penalty he is personally opposed but said he would uphold the law, which means who knows what when he gets clemency petitions. Warner is pro death penalty. Warner's background is as a business exec.
With 99.05% of precincts reporting as I write, the Dem Attorney General Deeds is up by about 1400 votes after being down 7000 as of around 2 hours ago.
Both our Lt. Gov and AG candidates got outspent by 2-1 or thereabouts. The LG lost 50-49. Maybe Deeds will eke it out in the AG race. With a little more money...Byrne, the only woman elected to represent Virginia in Congress before she was defeated by Rep. Tom Davis after one term, might have won. Coulda woulda shoulda.
There is certainly a feeling among Dems in this part of the state that the wind is behind our backs in Viriginia, that the trend strongly favors Dems because the major population growth is in the most heavily populated part of the state, in the northern Va. DC suburbs, which has been trending steadily Dem.
November 8, 2005 9:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Kaine, having made abortion a central campaign issue
Oddly enough, this is news to me; I never heard this down here in Richmond. The Richmond paper had a whole separate section on the election in Sunday's paper; I didn't see abortion mentioned even once. The top issues covered in that spread: transportation, public education, higher educatoin, the environment. Top issues in the campaign ads (besides character attacks): the death penalty and illegal immigration (in the governor's race) and prosecution of child molesters (in the attorney general's race).
But much of Virginia is probably much less conservative on the issue of abortion than you might think. My hunch is that the exurb areas around major cities, in spite of the fact that they tend to be largely Republican, would be leery of heavy restrictions on access to abortion.
November 8, 2005 9:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
It doesn't look as though there will be much change in the party makeup of the Senate.
Umm--maybe that's because state senate seats were not up for election this year? ;-)
Great post--thanks for the analysis!
November 8, 2005 10:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's still a long night for Virginians who care about integrity and commitment to making law work for the people. Creigh Deeds appears to be behind by less than .1 percent of the vote total, triggering an automatic recount. The beginning of a long couple of weeks...
I won't consider this a big win, just a win, unless Creigh makes it to Attorney General. A recount also severely complicates the issue of a possible special election to replace him as state senator. If he holds off resigning his senate seat until the recount is done, it won't be possible to elect a successor in time for that person to take office by the beginning of the legislative session, which is only two months long.
Not very meaningful or interesting to people outside Virginia, but it's going to have a real impact on our lives.
November 8, 2005 10:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Abortion was absolutely not a relevant issue in this race. Mark Warner won four years ago by making abortion a non-issue -- he said "let's keep the laws as they are." Kaine said the same thing this time, and it was a smart move, because it prevented abortion from mattering in the race.
People can kvetch about Kaine's stance on abortion all they want, but there's a reason why he won by over 6% -- his positions are those supported by a majority of Virginians. He could have taken a more progressive stance on abortion, but then we would have lost.
-Waldo Jaquith
November 8, 2005 11:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, um, excellent point! :<)
November 9, 2005 5:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
In the DC area, Kilgore was running ads attacking Kaine for "having it both ways". Kaine's a pro-life pro-choice Democrat - his religious beliefs make him pro-life, but he's also committed to reproductive health access. He's of the Clintonite "safe, legal, rare" school.
As a result, Kilgore alleged that Kaine ran pro-choice adds in DC attacking Kilgore for wanting to ban all abortions, even rape (if not performed within seven days of the crime) but ran his pro-life message in rural VA. The Kilgore abortion ads appeared in the last week or so, after about a week's worth of "He's a Flip Flopper" ads.
November 9, 2005 6:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm a Northern Virginian (Fairfax County). My take is that the two GOP reps here, Tom Davis and Frank Wolf, have reason to be nervous. Davis probably more so than Wolf.
For background, Davis' district encompasses most of Fairfax and some of Prince William counties. Wolf's district is made up of Western Fairfax, a large part of Loudoun county, some of Prince William, and some of the GOP western counties.
IMO, they need to be nervous not only because of Kaine, but because of the delegate races in their districts. There were three open delegate seats in Fairfax County. Democrats won all three handily. In one contested race in southern Fairfax/northern Prince William, the GOP incumbent squeaked by with a four-point race. Another Prince William GOP incumbent had a one-or-two point re-elect margin. The notorious Dick Black, Delegate for a Loudoun district, whose repetoire included passing out plastic fetus replicas during abortion or birth control debates, got a spanking. He lost his seat by 12-15 points. Kaine got 60 percent of the vote in Fairfax and won both Prince William and Loudoun counties.
If this is a harbinger, start looking for GOPers in blue states and districts to start distancing themselves from rightie rhetoric in a major way.
November 9, 2005 7:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
American -
Does that mean that the win is primarliy due to new voters who recently moved into Va.?
We need to take a different view of the win if it is new voters vs. voters who used to vote one way and who changed.
November 9, 2005 8:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Irish
Good question and good point. I don't have data at hand to answer your question. I would think some already know the answer to this off the top of their heads, with the VA and/or Fairfax County Dem party if not also here on tpmcafe, but I would need to look into it.
November 9, 2005 9:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
With 99.88% of precincts reporting, Deeds, our candidate, is again trailing, this time by 2007 votes. Does not look good at the moment, but as they say it is never over until it's over.
November 9, 2005 10:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dreamer -
Thanks for trying to get info.
Seems important to our analysis since if new voters from out of state then need to know their politics and also need to know where they come from since that changes the dynamics where they used to live.
Also curious because past analyses I've read have that said that shifts to/growth in suburban and exurban populations are more Republican. If my memory is correct is this limited to other parts of the country? Is Virginia similar, different?
November 9, 2005 10:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
My understanding is that exurbs in most parts of the country tend be Republican. Not so at all, necessarily, with further in suburbs and in particular inner ring suburbs.
By far the best data I've seen on this, although by now it is somewhat dated, is Myron Orfield's book American Metropolitics. It was a real eye opener for me as I had had similar impressions as you expressed. It has all sorts of very cool color maps to display the data which make it worth a look for that reason alone. The book has much of interest to suggest about possibilities for forming liberal/progressive coalitions.
BTW, I replied to one of your blog posts from a couple of weeks ago or so, "cupa coffee...". Just want to be sure you see it...
November 9, 2005 11:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
there were about 5 that were in the "contestable" category, genius boy, ones the dems thought they could take from reps, and they lost 4 of them; meaning they stayed rep. hows that for analysis.
November 9, 2005 11:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dreamer -
Responded to your commet in my past blog.
To others here -
I suggest that you check Dreamer's ideas about participating here in a blog I started Oct 16, title: Cup of Coffee and Insight.
November 9, 2005 12:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
My fault - The Cup of Coffee post was in Culture Table (not my blog as I said above.)
Coffee post contains some great comments by Amercian Dreamer.
November 9, 2005 1:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Are you talking to me? Because if you are, you've got the gender wrong. Also, the message you're answering was in regard to the state senate--and senate seats were not in play this year; only seats in the House of Delegates.
If you were talking about the House of Delegates, then you've missed the really important point, which is that it is a scandal that there were only competitive elections for 5 seats out of 100. Of those 5, the Republicans lost 2: one to a Democrat and the other to an Independent. That second was a remarkable win; it was a campaign run on a shoestring. I saw exactly one television ad for Leslie Waddell, whereas I saw one every single night for weeks for her Republican opponent. He had the endorsement of former long-time Congressman and mayor of Richmond Tom Bliley, and also of US Sen. George Allen. But the ultra-conservative Times-Dispatch pointedly refused to endorse him (which is in itself rather remarkable) because of a gay-baiting fund raising letter Marrs sent out this past summer.
I don't think taking down 2 out of 5 is so bad. Waddell had Mark Warner's backing, and though she herself is a former Republican, she has said she does not intend to caucus with them.
November 9, 2005 7:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Also re exurbs, Kaine carried two exurban counties in the northern Virginia DC suburbs which in local races are dominated by Republicans--Loudoun County and Prince William County.
From an article in today's WashPost, "Newcomers Push Outer Suburbs Left", by Rosalind S. Helderman: "Not since Douglas L. Wilder's historic run for governor in 1989 has a Democrat captured a majority of the vote for governor in Loudoun County."
The article suggests that Kaine's support for reigning in out-of-control development appealed to many exurban voters. Some of his TV ads featured shots of bulldozers to drive home the point.
The Myron Orfield book I mentioned to you, American Metropolitics, offers a lot of information well presented, along with his perspective, as a practicing Minnesota state senator, on so-called "smart growth." It is a good introduction to some of the issues that are common concerns in many metropolitan areas around the country, although his is not the only approach to "smart growth," a term which means different things to different people. A common thread is that smart growth policies in one way or another attempt to deal with what are thought by supporters to be harmful consequences of suburban/exurban sprawl.
It would be interesting to hear from northstardon, anti-Manichaean, and others here from Minnesota for their take on these issues and how they play out in that state.
November 10, 2005 6:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
If there are more voters coming into Northern part of Virginia enhancing our position in Virginia this is a good thing. I still believe that Virginia is still conservative, but they are open to the idea of voting in a traditional Democrat like Mark Warner. My buddy is from Virginia, and he told me he knew of many conservatives that would vote for someone like Mark Warner if they ran for President. I really like Mark Warner, and I think he would make an excellant President, I wish he would have not declined to challenge George Allen for his Senate seat, since he is ahead in polls in a head to head matchup against Allen by about 8 percent.
November 11, 2005 1:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Will put Orfield on the list of books to read. I first learned about smart growth in articles about doing it in a small state, RI. Smart growth to me is one of those ideas that makes so much sense that it is hard to see why it is not a driving force.
I would like to find someone who looks at the psychological, the sense of belonging in different types of communities - exurban, suburban, urban. To me a key issue is the continuum of sense of belonging to empty, disconnected. For example, I wonder about the growth and impact of megachurches in exurban communities. In an TV piece of few weeks ago these megachurches fill members' lives with all sorts of activities and ties well beyond a once or twice a week service.
November 11, 2005 3:58 PM | Reply | Permalink