Barack Obama visited regions of Virginia that could hold the key to winning the commonwealth’s crucial electoral votes as new polls give a contradictory picture of where the race stands less than two weeks from Election Day.
Making his eighth visit to Virginia during the campaign, Obama addressed crowds in Richmond and Leesburg.
He arrived more than an hour late for a planned noon rally at the Richmond Coliseum, where he told the crowd of 13,000 he would cut their taxes, reform health care and create jobs.
Obama criticized Republican opponent John McCain for spending too much time criticizing him. He also took a jab at McCain over “Joe the Plumber” who famously questioned Obama in person about his tax plan, saying it would hurt his efforts to own a small plumbing business.
“All I want to do is give Joe a tax cut,” Obama said. “John McCain likes to talk about Joe the Plumber, but he is in cahoots with Joe the CEO. Don’t let him hoodwink you.”
Obama had been riding a wave of good poll news in Virginia. But Wednesday’s surveys gave a conflicting snapshot of the race.
An NBC/Mason Dixon poll on Wednesday showed Obama with a two-point edge over McCain. But the CNN/Time poll released the same day put Obama up by 10.
While Richmond is expected to back Obama, thanks to its large population of African-Americans and college students, the city’s surrounding suburbs are battleground areas that Obama is working hard to win. The Richmond suburbs are home to many Republican voters but there are also a growing number of Democratic voters as well as critical independents whose votes helped Democrat Jim Webb beat incumbent George Allen in their race for the U.S. Senate by half a percentage point in 2006.
Berkley Stokes, a firefighter from the Republican-leaning suburb of Chesterfield County, said he has put an Obama sign on his lawn a few times only to have it disappear.
But he sees changes in the Richmond suburbs that have come with population growth.
“There is a lot of Northern influence now and it’s brought liberal thinking with it,” said Stokes, 43.
Political experts point out that while Democrats have seen success stories in Webb, Gov. Tim Kaine and former Gov. Mark Warner, who is running far ahead of Republican James Gilmore III in his bid for the U.S. Senate, Obama lacks the conservative qualities that helped each of them gain acceptance in what has traditionally been a Republican state.
“It can be extremely close,” Rep. Robert Scott, D-Va., warned the crowd. “Virginia is a battleground and whoever wins it will be elected the next president of the United States.”
Kaine, who also appeared at the rally along with Warner, told the crowd “it’s looking good” but to “consider ourselves the underdog.”
The rally attracted residents from across Virginia. Cumberland County resident Susie Booker drove more than an hour from her rural home to hear Obama, whose remarks about the need for job creation hit home.
“There are no jobs, there is nothing in Cumberland County,” said Booker, 43. “His words really touched me.”
