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Paint it blue. Obama’s trying

Andrew Romano
HE could've picked Ohio. Or Florida. Or any one of the dozen or so traditional swing states that have decided American presidential elections since the dawn of time (or at least 1992). But for his first official stop on the trail to November, newly minted Democratic nominee Barack Obama visited a place last week that hasn't voted for a dreaded Democrat since the slightly more southern Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas triumphed there in 1964. The special state? Virginia.
Sure, Virginia is for lovers. But is it for Obama? If past is prelude, the answer is no. In 2000, George W. Bush beat Al Gore there by 7 points, and four years later, the president expanded his margin, trouncing John Kerry by 8; before LBJ, no Democrat had won the commonwealth since Harry Truman in 1948.
But the Obama campaign is confident that it can turn the tide, citing the Old Dominion as part of a new generation of swing states. ’We want to campaign here and we want to win here," Governor Tim Kaine, Obama’s top Virginia backer, told the Associated Press.
Even John McCain’s campaign manager. Rick Davis, admits the longtime Republican stronghold is now in play. "I think it is a battleground state," he told The Washington Post. "I know they are targeting it, and we are cer-
tainly targeting it."
Neither Gore nor Kerry fought hard for Virginia -- much like Clinton, Dukakis, Mon dale, Carter, McGovern and Humphrey before them. So why the unprecedented push now?
The electorate is diversifying - -and it's heading in a Democratic direction. Between 2000 and 2006, northern Virginia's Washington, D.C., suburbs grew 15%; they now account for a third of the state's population.
Meanwhile, the ring of exurbs farther from the capital has exploded. Thanks to an influx of middle-class, well-educated voters, Loudoun County, for example, is now the fastest-growing swath of the country: since 2000, it's gained more than 100,000 people, a 60% increase.
Conveniently for Obama, these transplants tend to vote Democratic. In 2000, Gore won Arlington with 60% of the vote, but lost Fairfax and Loudoun counties with 47% and 41%, respectively; four years later, Kerry did better, outperforming Gore by 8 points in Arlington, winning Fairfax 54-46 and inching up to 44% in Loudoun.
But the real breakthroughs came in 2005 and 2006, when Democrats Tim Kaine (governor) and Jim Webb (senator) captured all three counties, cracking 50% in Loudoun, 60% in Fairfax and 70% in Arlington.
Both pols -- along with popu-
lar former governor and current Senate candidate Mark Warner --campaigned with Obama on Thursday in Bristol and Bristow, and they plan to continue through November.
If Obama can match the Democrats' 2005-2006 margins in the northern section of the state and sway a significant segment of the 131,000 new voters who've registered this year alone -- nearly half of whom are under 25 — aides think he can potentially paint it blue. His surprising 30-point win in the February primary wasn't a bad start.
Obama's other secret weapon: African-Americans. In Virginia, they account for 20% of the population -- and approximately 200,000 aren't registered to vote. With a 50-state registration drive already underway, Team Obama has the vision, organisation and resources -- an estimated minimum S300 million general-election fund, compared with S85 million for McCain -- to make an impact. Consider the math.
In 2004, Bush beat Kerry in Virginia by 262,000 votes. Assuming similar turnout, McCain's current one-point lead in polls would translate into a 33,000-vote edge. To close the gap, then. Obama has to garner only 16.5% of unregistered African-Americans.
Virginia, of course, won't fall into Obama's lap Of all this year's GOP candidates, McCain is by far the best match for the former Confederate capital; his moderate brand will keep him competitive in northern Virginia, while his military background gives him an added boost with the commonwealth's 800,000 veterans.
Moreover, much of the state .geography overlaps with Appalachia, where white, working-class voters resisted Obama's charms in the primaries. To signal that he's not ceding their votes, Obama picked Bristol -- the sole media market in the vast southwest part of the state — for the first stop of his general-election campaign, and brought Warner, who connects with the Nascar crowd, along for the ride.
The message was received. But it's unclear whether Obama, who's more liberal than Kaine, Warner and Webb, can gain enough ground here to put himself over the top.
According to Obama's aides, expanding the map is a way of forcing his (relatively underfunded) GOP foe to compete in places once considered safely red. "I think that we are going to have a larger battlefield in 2008," chief strategist David Axelrod told the Huffington Post. "We are going to Streich the Republicans. I don't think they can take for granted nearly as many states as they have in the past."
But considering Obama's difficulties in Florida and Ohio (Appalachia again) it may also be a matter of necessity.
If the Illinois senator can retain each of Kerry's 252 electoral votes, then pick off Iowa (where’s he's built a big organisation) and New Mexico (where he's the early favourite), Virginia's 13 electors would give him a winning majority -- with or without the two most traditional swing states of all.
Gentlemen, start yourengines.
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