Even before seven-term Republican representative Tom Davis announced his retirement, Keith Fimian was planning to run for his seat in Virginia’s eleventh congressional district. It’s not that Fimian opposes Davis, it’s that he had been expecting him to run for the Senate seat being vacated by John Warner. The Virginia GOP had other ideas, however, and opted for a party-nominating convention, guaranteeing that the moderate Davis would be passed over for the more conservative former governor Jim Gilmore (who now trails another former governor, Mark Warner, by a wide margin). Davis, tired of clashes with the Republican leadership and the growing unpopularity of Republicans in Northern Virginia, chose to retire from the House of Representatives.
The eleventh district, which includes most of Fairfax and Prince William counties in the D.C. suburbs, has been trending more and more Democratic for the last few years, and Fimian is facing an uphill battle to replace Davis. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) targeted the seat early and has heavily supported the party’s candidate, Gerry Connolly. The Cook Political Report has the race in the “Likely Democrat” column, but, as Republicans try to minimize their losses nationally, this still moderately conservative district presents an opportunity for the GOP to fend off a Democratic wave.
Fimian grew up in Virginia Beach and went to William & Mary on a football scholarship in the 1970s. He likes to tell audiences that he was on the last William & Mary team to beat Virginia Tech, Navy, and the University of Virginia in the same year. He moved to Northern Virginia 22 years ago and started a home inspection company. On the campaign trail, he stresses his business credentials, which he says taught him how to plan and to do more with less–good skills for any candidate to possess who hopes to serve in a Congress responsible for allocating decreasing revenues. Fimian also makes much of his outsider status as a novice politician.
Gerry Connolly, by contrast, is running on his experience in government. He is chairman of the Fairfax County board of supervisors, comparable to the mayor of a large city. “We pay our taxes,” he said at a September debate in Prince William County. “The deal is, the government ought to work.” He says the district needs a congressman with government experience who knows how to make things work.
Davis’s shadow looms large in the race. Fimian claims to be a moderate conservative in the mold of Davis. “I think in most ways we’re very, very similar,” he says. And Connolly goes out of his way to praise Davis: “The next congressman for the eleventh district has big shoes to fill,” he said at an October 8 forum in Springfield. (The irony is that Connolly began his electoral career by defeating Jeanne-marie Devolites for a county supervisor position in 1995. Devolites and Davis married in 2004.)
What happened in this region to turn a solid Republican district into a likely Democratic pick-up? Michael McDonald, a professor of government and politics at George Mason University, says the eleventh district is the “frontline” of the Virginia battleground. Two years ago, Davis won reelection with a smaller-than-usual percentage of the vote, and, in 2007, Devolites lost her bid for reelection to the state senate. McDonald says that Democratic gains in Northern Virginia in the last three years are unmistakable and likely hastened Davis’s exit.
Fimian, though, questions whether the Democratic trend is enduring. “Davis won this seat two years ago with 55 percent of the vote,” he told me. “It’s true that many people are unhappy with the current administration and that certainly gives the impression that maybe there is a trend here, but it remains to be seen.”
McDonald agrees that the movement toward Democratic candidates in this region can’t be solely ascribed to demographic changes. The national political trends that have benefited Democrats everywhere over the last three years are at work in Northern Virginia.
The candidates have met in forums across the district. Fimian doesn’t speak about the issues with the same fluency as Connolly, but his performances have improved with each debate, and he comes across as a likeable man. He focuses on the need to control spending and, at a Springfield forum, insisted that Congress must balance the federal budget by cutting spending. He later tells me that Congress’s “out of control” spending is what requires businessmen like him to get involved in politics.
Connolly is also promising to eliminate the budget deficit. But he wouldn’t name any programs he would cut when asked to at the debate in Prince William County. “Well, I don’t know. We’re looking right now at a situation where we actually have to add capacity.” He said he would balance the budget by “revising the tax cuts of the Bush administration that largely went to the wealthy and are bleeding us dry.”
Connolly’s campaign released a poll in July showing him up by 31 points, but Fimian says his internals have the race in a dead heat. Connolly certainly enjoys a large advantage in name recognition, thanks to his top job in the Fairfax County government and his victory in a competitive Democratic primary in June.
In August, the DCCC began sending mailings criticizing the pro-life Fimian for sitting on the board of Legatus, a lay organization for Catholic business leaders. Legatus’s website links to organizations which oppose abortion and contraception. The Diocese of Arlington released a statement in September defending Legatus. “The positions taken by Legatus with regard to issues of faith and morals have, at all times, matched the positions of the Catholic Church,” said diocesan chancellor Mark Herrmann in a statement.
“It is anti-Catholic bigotry, unabashedly,” says Fimian campaign manager Zach Condry of the DCCC mailers. “My faith means everything to me, but to bash me for being Catholic and to completely misrepresent my positions is just plain wrong,” Fimian tells me, surprised by the vicious attacks on his faith and character.
Connolly himself has questioned Fimian’s membership in Legatus, but he prefers to avoid the topic. At a forum sponsored by the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, Connolly and Democratic representative Jim Moran convinced a pliant moderator and a heavily Democratic audience to skip over two audience questions about the ads in order to discuss “substantive issues.”
There may be a silver lining to the Democrats’ nasty attacks. If victory were out of reach for Fimian, it is doubtful the Democrats would risk a voter backlash with controversial advertisements. Although the RNCC hasn’t said whether it will assist Fimian as the DCCC is helping Connolly, Fimian’s ability to self-finance and his fundraising prowess have him entering the final phase of the campaign with almost $720,000 on hand–$72,000 more than Connolly has to spend. Republicans in Northern Virginia are holding out hope that the slight rightward tilt of the district combined with Fimian’s ability to raise a lot of money will be enough to keep Tom Davis’s district red in a Democratic year.
Kevin Vance, a Collegiate Network fellow, is an editorial assistant at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
