Though Virginia earned a reputation as a “birthplace of presidents” for supplying George Washington and other chief executives early in American history, the Old Dominion became an afterthought in presidential politics.
The state, which hasn’t supported a Democratic candidate since 1964, had been reliably placed in the Republican column early on in campaigns. But recent Democratic victories — the past two gubernatorial races and last year’s U.S. Senate race — have this year’s batch of Democrats paying attention to Virginia.
Old Dominion Democrats basked in that attention Saturday during their annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Richmond, which drew a record crowd of about 4,000.
“Virginia is nobody’s red state,” said Richmond Mayor L. Douglas Wilder, who served as Virginia’s governor from 1990 to ’94 and briefly ran for president in 1992. “Virginia is a winning state.”
Democrats could see evidence of the state’s increased importance by looking at the keynote speaker, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., perhaps the candidate with the best chance in history of becoming the first black president. Obama addressed the state party faithful at a convention center that is a short walk from the former White House of the Confederacy and the state capital with its display commemorating the date and exact spot where Robert E. Lee took command of the Confederate army.
“In 2008, it will be Virginia that delivers a Democrat to the White House,” said former Gov. Mark Warner, who flirted with a presidential campaign last year and helped launch the Democratic resurgence with a win in the 2001 governor’s race. “It wasn’t that long ago that the press and the pundits put Virginia solidly in the red state category and said that Democrats would never be able to take back the commonwealth. We proved them wrong.”
Republicans are not going to hand over Virginia. Just last week, two Republican presidential hopefuls — former New York Mayor Rudolph Guiliani and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. — campaigned in Richmond.
But Obama, who attended Harvard Law School with Kaine and Warner, likes his chances to win the Old Dominion in 2008.
“Virginia is going to be in play this election season,” he predicted.
