Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Virginia Is for Democrats?   [Mark Krikorian]

Democrats yesterday took control of Virginia’s state senate, despite Republican attempts to use the immigration issue to resist the state’s ongoing Democratic drift. I thought this was especially telling: “Republicans were noticeably less organized in the final weeks of the campaign, with fewer and smaller rallies across the state and with their top leaders, including party chairman John H. Hager, Attorney General Robert F. McDonnell and Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, barely in public view in the final days.” The Dems had the energy and momentum and steered clear of any clarifying stance on immigration, like, oh, supporting driver’s licenses for illegals.

The center of the contest for the senate was Fairfax County, which despite all its genuine appeal, is now just a slightly more conservative version of suburban New Jersey. Immigration just wasn’t all that salient there, but where it was salient, it worked: the chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, for instance, who led the high-profile effort to pass a tough anti-illegal immigration ordinance, easily won reelection, as did every supervisor who voted for the tough measure. In the same county, 32-year incumbent Sen. Chuck Colgan faced his first serious challenge in years because of immigration, and won by a relatively small margin and only because he’s a widely liked, very conservative Democrat.

Even in more-liberal Maryland, the one contest where immigration was an issue – local elections in the city of Gaithersburg, the pro-enforcement camp carried two of the three seats at issue.

The incoming state senate majority leader was right when he said of his opponents’ prospects "I did not think that immigration in and of itself would carry the day.” Message for 2008 candidates: immigration is a political winner when it’s highly salient, but it can’t compensate for a lackluster campaign.

11/07 07:08 AMShare