Blue shades in red Valley

By The News Virginian Staff

Published: August 15, 2008

Mark Warner, the presumptive U.S. senator, whisks into Waynesboro this morning to open the Democratic Committee headquarters in Willow Oak Plaza before setting off for Staunton, all in the name of painting the Valley blue. Translated, this ostensibly means winning Democratic majorities in central Shenandoah for Warner, Barack Obama and Sixth District congressional challenger Sam Rasoul.
Such an aim is not ambitious. It is illusory, like the idea of renewable energy supplanting fossil fuels in 10 years. Warner knows this, and so do all realists, of which there remain a few of Democratic hue.
Among registered voters, Republicans in the central Valley — composed of Waynesboro, Staunton and Augusta County — outnumber Democrats by a ratio of 3-2. In baseball, the difference is thin. In politics, it constitutes dominance, a space of 20 percentage points between the parties. In the 2004 presidential race, the gap between George W. Bush and Democrat John Kerry was twice that in the central Valley. Only those who hope for a different outcome in the Valley will be blue in the fall.
But outcome here is not what concerns Warner and his party. That the Valley will remain red and decidedly so, no matter how many metaphorical paint brushes Democrats brandish, is a conclusion both foregone and irrelevant. The issue is margin, and here is where the intrigue forms.
Kerry lost central Shenandoah by 19,431 votes in 2004. If Obama shaves 10 percentage points off the Republican share of the vote, producing election night results in line with the ratio of registered voters, the difference in the ballots will be cut by more than half, to roughly 9,300 votes. If the junior senator steals away an additional five percentage points, the vote margin will go down by half again, to roughly 4,650 votes. The end result could be that Obama picks up another 7,300 votes in a state that long has bled red but is considered in play.
Politicians and scolds are fond of telling Americans that every vote matters, but the 2000 debacle provided literal meaning to bolster the clichés. Democrats recognize the necessity of minimizing losses in order to gain victory.
Such considerations are insignificant in the case of Warner, who is rapidly ascending within his party, as evidenced by his being rewarded a keynote speaking slot in the Democratic Convention later this month. Warner is a stellar fund-raiser who will win easily over Republican Jim Gilmore in November.
Nor is Rasoul high on the minds of party power brokers. He is unlikely to topple Republican Bob Goodlatte, an eight-term incumbent in the Sixth District who has strong conservative credentials in a place that values them and has made few missteps and none major.
Obama is the point.
Virginia is one of two key states lost by Kerry that are within Obama’s grasp — Colorado is the other — and could provide enough Electoral College votes to nudge him into the White House. The Valley need not appear in a robust blue on election night to help make it happen, just a lighter shade of red.
Democrats can win in this way not because Valley voters are swaying in their political principles but because Republicans are neglecting true conservatives in pursuit of big-tent tactics. If that group continues to be ignored and is thus unmoved, and Democrats tap the reservoir of eligible voters of their own persuasion, Republicans will awaken Nov. 5 to a country turned blue for Obama, and the fault will be no one’s but their own.