Most candidates for the United States Senate are home grown and rise through the ranks of state politics. Frequently, they’re members of the House of Representatives, prominent state legislators or, perhaps, a former governor like Sen. George Allen. On rare occasions, they are first-time candidates like Mark Warner was when he ran for the Senate in 1996.
But sometimes, particularly for the Senate, a special type of candidate emerges: the celebrity candidate. With ties to the politics of their state often slim, celebrities’ name recognition — and the excitement they bring to their campaigns — often proves hard for their opponents to match.
There are lots of examples. Virginia’s senior Republican Sen. John Warner was once such a candidate. Or more accurately, his wife at the time of his election, actress Elizabeth Taylor, was a Hollywood celebrity. Sens. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C., are two celebrity candidates who had only limited ties to the states they now represent. In Clinton’s case, she had never even lived in New York; Dole hadn’t called NorthCarolina home in decades. However, both trumped homegrown candidates to win a Senate seat.
There is, of course, a flip side. Some celebrity candidates don’t do all that well. For example, in 1994 Bill Brock, a former Republican senator from Tennessee, thought his national status as a Reagan cabinet member would give him a shot at Sen. Paul Sarbane’s seat in Maryland. But Brock ended up losing. The same thing happened to several other prominent figures who wanted to be senators. Playing heavily on his military record, retired Gen. William Westmoreland lost a GOP primary in South Carolina. And while former Chief of Naval Operations Elmo Zumwalt got the Democratic nomination in Virginia, he lost in the general election. Their celebrity status just wasn’t enough to carry the day.
This year, Virginia has another celebrity candidate: former Reagan administration Navy Secretary Jim Webb. Webb fought in Vietnam and is a well-known writer and personality. But he has a problem that faces many celebrity candidates, and that’s finding enough support in their respective state parties to get the nomination. Most celebrity candidates are outsiders to their state’s political organizations and just don’t have the ties and friendships homegrown politicians count on.
That’s always a challenge, but it’s one many celebrity candidates manage to overcome. However, in Webb’s case, it may be particularly tough.
That’s because Webb wants to run as a Democrat, but up until a few months ago, he never said he was a Democrat. In fact, his credentials as a Republican are pretty solid. His hero is former President Ronald Reagan, he has at times been a self-professed conservative and hasn’t always been that friendly to traditional Democratic ideals. Voters in Democratic primaries tend to be more liberal and for most of them, Webb’s conservative stands and fondness for Reagan aren’t much of an asset.
But that doesn’t mean Webb is out of luck. The two issues that almost all prospective Democratic primary voters agree on this year is their dislike of President George W. Bush and their opposition to the war in Iraq. It’s on these two issues that the more liberal Democratic base may be able to find something in common with Jim Webb.
Webb is passionate in his opposition to the president and his handling of the war. But will Webb’s stands on these two hot-button topics, combined with his celebrity status, be enough to persuade the majority of Democratic voters to trust this one-time Republican with their party’s nomination?
That’s the big hurdle Jim Webb’s candidacy still has to overcome.
David S. Kerr is a federal employee, occasional writer and political activist in Fredericksburg.
