They are an unlikely duo, and may never be fast friends — but President Barack Obama needs Terry McAuliffe to win the Virginia governor’s race.
“Virginia was one of Obama’s big breakthrough states,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “He wants to preserve those gains for 2012.”
The 2010 midterms also are a concern for Obama, who trounced McAuliffe’s candidate and close friend Hillary Clinton in Virginia’s 2008 Democratic primary, before beating John McCain for the historically Republican state in the general election.
McAuliffe, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and first friend of both the secretary of state and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, is leading among three candidates for the party’s nomination in Virginia.
As a top adviser to Clinton’s campaign, McAuliffe regularly savaged Obama on cable television during the state’s bitter primary battle.
After Obama won the nomination, McAuliffe dutifully campaigned for him in Virginia.
Obama is expected to return the favor, if McAuliffe emerges after the June 9 primary as the Democrats’ nominee to face Republican former state Attorney General Bob McDonnell in November.
Obama and McAuliffe are not an easy fit. But politics has made stranger friends than the even-keeled, controlled Obama and the backslapping, fast-talking McAuliffe.
“If Obama can make Hillary Clinton secretary of state, he can pitch in for Terry McAuliffe,” Sabato said.
Much is at stake for Obama in Virginia, a state that proved key in securing the presidency, and one that Republicans desperately want back in their own column.
“Many have said that the road for the resurgence of the Republican Party and the conservative cause goes through Virginia,” McDonnell told CNN.
Shifting demographics in Virginia in recent years have not favored Republicans. Rapid growth in Northern Virginia has created a sizable bloc of voters in the District suburbs far more liberal than much of the rest of the state.
Former President George W. Bush won Virginia in 2000 and 2004. Bill Clinton never won the state, and Obama trounced Hillary Clinton by 64 percent to 35 percent in Virginia’s 2008 Democratic primary.
The state’s demonstrated lack of interest in electing either of the Clintons is playing out in McAuliffe’s primary race against state Sen. Creigh Deeds and former state Del. Brian Moran, with McAuliffe and Moran tussling over which of them is more loyal to Obama.
Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist who worked on the Bush-Cheney 20 04 campaign in Virginia, said the state has seen a trend among once-Republican voters becoming independents, and then voting Democratic.
“Democrats had the Potomac primaries in 2008 with a very pitched battle between Clinton and Obama, where both sides worked hard to register voters and compete,” Madden said. “By general election time, they had helped even the playing field in Virginia with Republicans.”
Madden said if he was told five years ago that McAuliffe would be running for governor of Virginia, he would have assumed that “Virginia was some suburb of Syracuse,” referring to McAuliffe’s hometown in New York.
