Asked why Virginia has become a Democratic state or at least is Democratic-leaning, former governor Jim Gilmore had a one-word answer: “Fairfax.”
Fairfax County, population 1.1 million, is a wealthy, highly educated, and increasingly liberal suburb of Washington. In 2016, Hillary Clinton trounced Donald Trump in Fairfax by nearly 200,000 votes, more than enough to guarantee she would carry the state.
Crowning a Democratic candidate is a new role for Fairfax. It’s only in recent years that it has produced Democratic landslides. Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush—Republicans all—won the county and the state. So did GOP nominee Bob Dole in 1996.
But none of them won as emphatically as Clinton. And it was a signal of the political change that has overtaken Virginia, thanks especially to a single county, Fairfax.
Republicans aren’t doomed in Virginia. But their political trajectory is pointing that way. Not since 2009 has a Republican candidate won statewide. That was the year Bob McDonnell was elected governor, while easily winning a majority in Fairfax. (Gilmore won in 1997.)
Fairfax isn’t the lone reason for Virginia’s political transformation, but it’s the biggest one. Developer John T. (Til) Hazel, who built a sizable chunk of Fairfax, echoes Gilmore. “The impact of Fairfax County and Northern Virginia on the state cannot be overestimated,” he told me.
Despite the Democratic tide, Repub-licans aren’t forlorn, not yet anyway. They control both houses of the General Assembly, the House overwhelmingly, the Senate narrowly. And of Virginia’s eleven U.S. House members, seven are Republicans.
William Howell, retiring this year after 15 years as House speaker, insists Republicans still have an important advantage, “good-quality candidates of good character.” To win, they must be conservative, but not too conservative. If they meet the Howell standard, a Republican can win statewide.
Since Virginia elects its governors in odd-numbered years, we will find out this fall if Howell is right. The frontrunner for the GOP nomination is Ed Gillespie, the former White House adviser to George W. Bush who came within an eyelash of defeating Democrat Mark Warner in the 2014 U.S. Senate race. Howell says Gillespie is an ideal candidate. Ken Cuccinelli, who lost to Democrat Terry McAuliffe in 2013, wasn’t.
As luck would have it for Republicans, McAuliffe cannot run for reelection. Virginia is the only state that bars a governor from serving consecutive terms. If he could run, even many Republicans believe he would win.
McAuliffe, a liberal, and the Democratic candidates for governor are a far cry ideologically from the conservative (and segregationist) Democrats who ruled Virginia for a century before falling out of favor in the 1960s. That’s when Republicans emerged.
They peaked in 2001, after a sweep of major offices. The governor, two U.S. senators, six of eleven House members, and majorities in the state House and Senate were all Republicans. So were the lieutenant governor and attorney general.
And that’s precisely when the drift to Democrats began. The causes were largely demographic. Virginia’s three population centers—Northern Virginia, Richmond, and the Tidewater—surged in population and diversity. The new voters were—and are—disproportionately Democratic.
Fairfax led the way. Its population roughly doubled between Reagan’s election in 1980 and Trump’s in 2016. Perhaps more important, the ethnic makeup of the electorate changed dramatically.
In 1980, Fairfax was almost 90 percent white, 5.8 percent black, and 3.9 percent Asian. Reagan won with a percentage in the mid-to-high 50s. Last year, whites were 61.4 percent, blacks 9.6 percent, and Asians 19 percent. Hispanics went from 3.3 to 16.4 percent. And as we know, voters of different types vote differently.
Fairfax had been transformed in other ways unkind to Republicans. Once suburban and rural, Fairfax is now more crowded and affluent. It’s the second-richest county in America, with an annual median household income over $110,000. It’s reputed to have America’s number-one high school, judged academically. (The student body there, since 2009, has been majority Asian.) In short, Fairfax has morphed into an upper-middle-class, liberal, achievement-oriented enclave of professionals, high-tech executives, bright immigrants, and tenured bureaucrats. Groups like that lean liberal.
But did one county change an entire state? Not quite. Fairfax had help. Its neighbor to the west, Loudoun County, ranked first in wealth nationally, went 3-to-2 for Clinton. Inner suburbs Arlington and Alexandria voted better than 4-to-1 for her. Reagan won both in 1980.
College towns flipped too, as the University of Virginia’s Larry Sabato points out. Republicans won Albemarle County, home to UVA, until 2004. Trump was crushed there. Harrisonburg, where James Madison University has its campus, is similar. The shift to Democrats “has transformed Harrisonburg,” Sabato says.
Democrats recognized the new possibilities during George W. Bush’s presidency. John Kerry’s campaign in 2004 thought about a big push in Virginia, then backed off. Four years later, Obama went full speed ahead. There were doubters up until the day he won Fairfax and the state.
Until Tim Kaine ran for governor in 2005, Democrats worried about losing the conservative rural vote. Kaine “ran solely as a candidate of urban and suburban Virginia,” says Sabato. He won. He won again in the 2012 U.S. Senate race and was picked to be Clinton’s running mate last year.
Democrats no longer fret over losing conservative voters. Their candidates for governor, former congressman Tom Perriello and lieutenant governor Ralph Northam, have moved sharply to the left. Too far to the left, Howell says. Northam, in a stolen moment, admitted to having voted twice for George W. Bush.
As for Fairfax, Republicans believe they need a minimum of 40 percent there to win a presidential race in Virginia. Mitt Romney got 39 percent in 2012. Trump fell to a new low for Republicans: 28.6 percent.
This was not a surprise to Trump strategists. They got mixed results when they tested the appeal of Trump’s message around Virginia. It didn’t work in Northern Virginia, Fairfax especially. They quickly figured out why. “His entire message of ‘drain the swamp’ was an attack on their livelihood,” a Trump operative says. And that was it for Trump in Virginia.
Fred Barnes is an executive editor at The Weekly Standard.
