“My husband and I worked hard all our lives to get what we got now. We scratched and saved. Now [Barack Obama] wants to tax and spread our wealth around to someone who didn’t work like we did?” — Shana Dudham, 43, interviewed at Shoney’s Restaurant in Roanoke.
Encouraged by the election of Democrats Tim Kaine and Jim Webb two years ago, Barack Obama’s campaign has flooded Virginia with money and campaign workers in an attempt to flip the once reliable GOP stronghold into a blue state despite its four decades-long record of voting Republican for president.
The Obama camp has poured $4 million into ads and set up 51 field offices (compared to John McCain’s 19) as it attempts to pry the Old Dominion out of the GOP’s column. Pundits and pollsters have all but inaugurated Obama as the next president of the United States.
Not so fast, as Philadelphia Bulletin reporter Michael Tremoglie discovered when he went down to Roanoke to check out the newest battleground state for himself.
Tremoglie’s conversations dovetailed with what a longtime Democratic activist in Northern Virginia told me this week: a third of her friends in the party have privately told her they are sitting out the election because they can’t quite force themselves to vote for the Republican ticket, but don’t think Obama is experienced enough to be president either.
If Virginia is all sewn up, as polls showing Obama 10 points up suggest, why is the Democrat wasting precious time trolling for votes in a state he’s already won? Yet Obama made two appearances in the Old Dominion in the past week alone. Was he there to shore up a drifting base?
University of Richmond political scientist Daniel Palazzolo told Examiner congressional correspondent Susan Ferrechio that he doesn’t think that just mobilizing newly registered Obama voters will be enough to win Virginia’s 13 electoral votes.
If Democratic Party loyalists in Northern Virginia and blue collar workers downstate are not yet solidy behind Obama two weeks before the election, the outcome in Virginia is still far from certain.
