Richmond, Virginia
IT WASN’T AN EXPLICIT DEAL — an early presidential primary in Virginia in exchange for fund-raising help — but it was pretty close. Last winter, aides of Virginia governor Jim Gilmore chatted with strategists for Texas governor George W. Bush’s presidential campaign. Though Gilmore hadn’t endorsed Bush at the time (later he did), his aides wanted to know if moving the Virginia primary up to February 29 would suit Bush. The answer was yes, Virginia being a strong Bush state.
Indeed, the Bush and Gilmore camps now call Virginia a “firewall,” certain to protect Bush if he stumbles in Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina. In return, Gilmore got celebrity assistance in pursuing his dream of Republican control of the Virginia legislature. Bush was the featured speaker at two Gilmore fund-raisers, Bush’s wife Laura appeared at another, and his father, President Bush, was the attraction at a fourth. The result: at least $ 2 million funneled through Gilmore’s PAC to GOP candidates around Virginia this fall.
The quasi-deal is a measure of how badly Gilmore wants to lock up Virginia in the November 2 election. “We’ve arrived at a historic cross-roads and I’m the governor of Virginia,” Gilmore says. Thanks largely to him, Republicans have a better than even shot at capturing the state-house and making Virginia the second southern state entirely in GOP hands (the first is Florida). The top three statewide offices, plus the state senate, are already held by Republicans. So the target is the 100-seat house of delegates, now split 50-50. Boyd Marcus, Gilmore’s chief of staff, predicts Republicans will wind up with 51 to 55 seats.
That small a pickup may not sound like much. But Virginia could be a bellwether state. In 1993, Republican George Allen talked up conservative issues and upset favored Democrat Mary Sue Terry in the governor’s race. The next year, Republicans won Congress, using many of the same issues. “You can’t always say what happens in Virginia is a precursor,” admits Marcus. “But sometimes it is.”
At the least, victory in Virginia would show that realignment toward the GOP, while stalled nationally, is not entirely dead. And it would allow Republicans to control apportionment of the state’s 11 congressional districts based on the 2000 census. That could lead to a potential pickup of two or three House seats. “If we do win [in 1999], it’s historic,” says Gilmore. “If we don’t, it’s just more of the same.”
Since the 1960s, Republicans have made steady progress. By 1987, they held 36 seats in the house and 10 of the 40 in the senate. In 1995, the numbers were 47 and 20. Then-lieutenant governor Don Beyer, a Democrat, broke the tie in the senate, leaving it in Democratic hands. The 1995 race was significant because it marked the first major effort by a GOP governor — Allen — to win the statehouse. However, he started late and made the election a referendum on his governorship, notably the rejection by Democrats of his tax and spending cuts. He failed.
Gilmore’s tack is as different from Allen’s as Gilmore himself is from the ex-governor. (Allen is favored to oust Democrat Charles Robb in next year’s U.S. Senate race in Virginia.) Allen is charismatic, Gilmore methodical. “Gilmore doesn’t have the personality of Allen, but he has the intelligence to make up for it,” says political scientist Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia. On election night in 1997, even as he was winning the governor’s race overwhelmingly, he expressed disappointment that Republicans had failed again to win the legislature. Within weeks, he’d begun planning for 1999.
Gilmore’s aides polled in many parts of the state and concentrated on recruiting candidates in winnable districts. Gilmore himself took sides in four primary fights, winning two. “I’m prepared to take a few chances with my popularity,” he says. What’s been “extraordinary” about Gilmore’s effort, says Sabato, is the fund-raising. “He’s done what no previous Republican governor has tried. He’s outraised Democrats, and in many districts he’s outstrategized them.”
What’s also been unusual is Gilmore’s conniving. After his election in 1997, he began appointing Democrats in the legislature to his new administration. He focused on Democrats in swing districts, and the strategy worked. Republicans won all seven special elections and took over the state senate. This year, the outcome depends on a dozen contests, mostly in southside Virginia or Fairfax County, the Washington suburb. Republican PACs may funnel as much as $ 4 million into these races.
Gilmore is an unqualified conservative (“Conservatism is conservatism,” he says), but his brand is close to Bush’s “Compassionate” kind. He’s jumped on normally Democratic issues and proselytized before black and labor groups. “I don’t go to the African-American community and talk like a liberal,” he says. “I go and talk like a conservative. I want to make conservatism applicable to everyone. I’m not going to shut the door or be ugly or rude or offensive to union leaders.”
In 1997, Gilmore’s slogan was: “Education First, Then Cut Texes.” As governor, he’s blunted the education issue by implementing stringent standards and regular tests, increasing school construction funding, and earmarking half the state’s lottery revenues for local school boards. Despite opposition by Democrats, he enacted a five-year phaseout of Virginia’s hated car tax. “Gilmore’s governorship would have been destroyed had the car tax plan not been passed,” says Sabato. Now, Gilmore wants to make Virginia a model of conservative governance under which cutting taxes is routine and expected.
His adherence to low taxes was tested this summer when Democrats and the state’s business community clamored for a tax hike to pay for new roads and mass transit, particularly in congested northern Virginia. Gilmore says he “never” considered a tax hike. “I personally insisted we break out of the shackles of gas tax increases to fund transportation.” Instead, in September, he proposed a clever scheme for new roads and commuter rail, financed chiefly out of Virginia’s share of the tobacco settlement. Within a month, the traffic gridlock issue had “lost traction,” the Washington Post declared. And so had Democratic hopes of thwarting Gilmore on November 2.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
