The McCain campaign unveiled on Wednesday a vast expansion of its effort in Virginia, including doubling its offices and field staff in what would be the most extensive Republican campaign organization in the commonwealth’s history.
It was a recognition that Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign has upped the ante, and another sign that Virginia’s newly minted swing-state status has broadened the electoral battlefield in the Old Dominion to an unprecedented degree.
Sen. John McCain and running mate Sarah Palin will also make more frequent visits to Virginia in the weeks leading up to the November election, McCain National Political Director Mike DuHaime told reporters on a conference call.
“No campaign at any level, no other presidential level, has ever organized down to this level on the Republican side in Virginia,” he said.
Over recent weeks, it’s grown increasingly clear that no corner of Virginia is being written off by either side. Obama’s campaign has set up 44 offices across the commonwealth, coupled with visits to seemingly inhospitable rural, Republican areas like Bristol and Abingdon. McCain’s campaign will open 12 new offices this week, bringing their total to 21.
“By opening offices everywhere, they are basically saying, ‘Look, a vote is a vote, and a vote in Galax is the same as a vote in Arlington,’ ” Gov. Tim Kaine, an Obama national co-chair, told The Examiner on Tuesday. “When you make gains in areas that are traditionally Republican, it’s kind of like a vote becomes two votes. You get one out of the other guy’s column and into your own. That’s why they are definitely focusing on areas where traditionally Democrats haven’t been strong.”
That’s not to say Republicans believe they might actually lose their traditional downstate strongholds. But they find themselves fending off rural overtures by an Obama campaign hoping to undercut the big numbers there that McCain needs to succeed statewide.
“Anytime Republicans are running in Virginia, everyone knows that you got to run up the numbers out west and down south, and you got to hold your own in Northern Virginia and in Hampton Roads,” said former Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore, McCain’s Virginia co-chairman. “You got to win two major regions to win the race, and if you just win two regions, you got to win them decisively.”
Polls show McCain and Obama essentially running neck and neck in Virginia, which has 13 electoral votes and hasn’t supported a Democrat for president in four decades.
McCain’s campaign turned its attentions this week to uprooting Obama from coal-rich Appalachia, starting a radio blitz that seized on a slip from Obama running mate Joe Biden, who said the campaign doesn’t support clean coal, even though Obama officially supports some use of coal.
Obama’s camp has adopted the same community volunteer-based model as it did in Iowa and South Carolina during the primaries, said Virginia campaign spokesman Kevin Griffis.
“Typically, campaign field organizers would be the ones to go door to door trying to organize the community, on the phone every night talking to voters,” he said. “What we found is that the best way to get the senator’s message out there, specifically for a candidate who is not a household name, the way to do it is for a voter to hear from someone they know, someone in the community, neighbors [who] go to church with them, kids [who] play little league with them.”
Republicans, despite their efforts to close the gap in office space, are skeptical of the rash of Obama offices that have hung out a shingle. Del. Chris Saxman, R-Staunton, also a Virginia McCain co-chairman, called this “overkill.”
“They have one in Staunton, Harrisonsburg and Bridgewater, do the math,” he said. “If people in those areas want to have an office, that’s their prerogative. I think there’s a lot of duplicative efforts in having three office within a 15-mile radius in the Shenandoah Valley. You wouldn’t have that many offices in a 15-mile radius in Prince William County or Fairfax County to deal with the number of people you’re dealing with.”
