Handing a clean sweep to incumbents, voters on Tuesday turned away bids from challengers urging change in Northern Virginia’s congressional delegation.
The vigorous but ultimately doomed attempts to unseat the region’s four sitting representatives — three of them Republican — came amid a massive national push by Democrats to seize Congress from the GOP. As was widely expected, the region’s powerful, well-financed incumbents each won by wide margins, despite the changing political tide.
The battle for Virginia’s expansive 10th District was the most closely watched of the four, though it was dwarfed in the press by the ferocious Senate race. A victory for Democrat Judy Feder over Rep. Frank Wolf, a conservative Republican and 26-year-veteran in Congress, would have signaled a tremendous shift for thedistrict. Instead, Wolf easily won the right-leaning rural western portions of the 10th and the more Metropolitan east.
“It was hard to imagine Frank Wolf being seriously in trouble,” said George Mason University Public Policy Professor Mark Rozell. “But I think people put a little bit more credibility on the challengers here because of the overall Democratic trend in the country.”
As the election drew nigh, political observers began to view the race as less of a walk for Wolf. Feder’s camp orchestrated an unexpected fundraising push that put her war-chest on a nearly equal footing with her opponent’s. She also garnered interest from the national Democratic party, which offered a late-in-the-game donation of $75,000 to her campaign. One analyst went as far as calling the race a “toss up.”
In the 11th District, Rep. Tom Davis trounced Democrat Andrew Hurst, a political newcomer who had worked to tag the Republican as an influence-peddler and Bush-Administration sycophant. None of the accusations stuck; Davis sailed to victory with a broad lead.
In the 8th District, the cards were stacked against Tom O’Donoghue from the start. The Republican struggled in raising money and support in the liberal district, which includes the closest suburbs of Washington D.C.
His opponent, Democrat Jim Moran, garnered two votes for every one of O’Donoghue’s.
In the 1st District, Republican Jo Ann Davis also defeated her opponent, Democrat Shawn O’Donnell, by a substantial margin.
Part of the Washington DC Examiner’s 2006 election coverage.
