WTOP, the DC area’s top-rated news radio station, is reporting that Mitt Romney will touch down in the Old Dominion today, joining Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) on a visit to Northern Virginia. McDonnell will thank volunteers at the Fairfax County GOP HQ who are toiling away ahead of November’s hotly contested state legislative battles.
Don’t expect an endorsement from this event. The report repeats McDonnell’s insistence that he won’t issue an endorsement in the Republican presidential nomination race until after Virginia’s upcoming off-off year elections. But WTOP does quote George Mason University polisci prof Mark Rozell who suggests this joint appearance might be engineered to let observers speculate about a Romney-McDonnell ticket next year.
It’s also a chance for Romney to rub shoulders with (very) likely Republican primary voters. Although Romney dropped out shortly before 2008’s Virginia Republican primary, he would have likely performed well in Northern Virginia. Fairfax is home to the sort of growing and affluent suburbs – formerly solidly Reepublican, now trending Democratic – where Romney found his strongest support in primaries last time around – and where President Obama ran up the score in the general election. This is the turf where the 2012 Republican nominee will need to be competitive again to win in the Electoral College.
