By selecting a highly decorated Vietnam War veteran as their nominee for the U.S. Senate, Virginia Democrats are making the 2006 senatorial campaign a referendum on President Bush and the war in Iraq. Whether this strategy will be sufficient to unseat popular Republican Sen. George Allen remains to be seen.
James Webb, who lives in Falls Church, won 53 percent of the primary vote against onetime Fairfax Democratic Committee chairman Harris Miller, a wealthy former lobbyist who ran a more traditional grassroots primary campaign and spent nearly $1 million of his own money in an unsuccessful attempt to gain the nomination.
Webb was supported by national party leaders who saw him as more likely to defeat Allen in November by appealing to the so-called Reagan Democrats — the mostly conservative and centrist voters who left the party because of its weak stance on foreign policy and support of causes like gay marriage.
Considering Webb’s position on other hot-button issues besides the war, it’s not so strange that liberal stalwarts like Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., took the unusual step of backing the former Reagan Navy secretary in Tuesday’s primary.
The question now is whether Webb — who endorsed Allen and voted for George W. Bush six years ago — will run as a centrist Reagan Democrat or as the Kerry-Schumer-Reid liberal suggested by his positions on most issues of significance. Most of Webb’s 11,000-vote winning margin came from Northern Virginia’s 8th Congressional District, the most liberal in the state, which consistently re-elects Rep. Jim Moran no matter what.
Typical for an untested candidate who’s never run for public office before, Webb’s positions are all over the map. He’s for gun rights, but is for abortion rights and opposes the state constitutional amendment forbidding gay marriages and civil unions that will also be on Virginia’s November ballot. During an MSNBC debate with Harris, Webb said he is undecided about whether to support Hillary Clinton or former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner for president in 2008. He’s similarly vague on other issues such as education, tax policy, trade and immigration.
Nor was it a stretch for 2004 presidential candidate and fellow Vietnam vet Kerry to endorse the party-hopping Webb over Miller, a loyal Democratic Party activist. Webb and Kerry have a lot in common. Both have used their former military service in Vietnam to campaign against the current conflict in Iraq, which they view as among the nation’s greatest strategic blunders.
But Webb’s “Born Fighting” campaign slogan is somewhat misleading if he portrays himself during the general election campaign against Allen as anything but a traditional liberal on most issues. If he does, “Born to Run [from his positions]” would be more accurate.
