In the wake of yesterday’s victory by James Webb in the Virginia Democratic primary, several people have weighed in with comments and speculation on what could become the race to watch in 2006.
First, The Washington Post has a lengthy analysis ooking at the question of whether Webb’s former ties to the GOP will be the wedge that gives him an advantage over Allen that Harris Miller would not have had.
He supported Allen and George W. Bush in 2000. He’s proud of Ronald Reagan — he was a prominent member of the administration — and couldn’t abide Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton. He has questioned affirmative action and supports gun owners. But he also thinks that the war in Iraq was a mistake and that Congress is overwhelmed by special interests and doesn’t do enough for the little guy. In all of these ways, he thinks he’s like most Virginians.
His first appeal was to people like himself. “It’s time to welcome home those Democrats who left for a time, the Reagan Democrats, the conservative Democrats, whatever labels we give them,” Webb said. “It’s time to welcome them home.”
If there is any state where it might be possible to bring the Reagan Democrats back, its Virginia. With notable exceptions, the Virginia Democratic Party is, on a whole, to the right of the national party as a whole. Still, its the national party that matters and one wonders if Webb will be able to convince those voters to vote for him while ignoring the fact that he’d be serving in the same caucus as Ted Kennedy, Harry Reid, and Hillary Clinton.
More importantly, the results of yesterday’s primary do not appear to bode well for Webb’s strategy.
They may be the ones who can deliver Webb to the Senate in the fall, but they are not the ones who gave him his victory yesterday. Although Webb has portrayed himself as the candidate who will appeal to conservative voters in southwest Virginia and bring out new military supporters in the Tidewater, it was the tried-and-true Democrats from Northern Virginia who provided his margin of victory yesterday. More than 42 percent of all the votes were cast in the Washington suburbs, and Webb won an overwhelming majority of them.
It may have been the first election in which all Virginians used electronic voting machines, but some precincts could have been counting on an abacus. Voters south of the Rappahannock River largely stayed home, and the loyal Democrats who turned out there voted mostly for the loyal Democrat on the ballot, longtime party activist Harris Miller.
This isn’t surprising, of course. Primary turnout usually is low, and this race wasn’t exactly garnering alot of attention over the past several weeks. I’m sure there were plenty of people who didn’t even know there was an election yesterday, and alot of those who did, didn’t care.
Most importantly, most Virginians have no idea who James Webb is, but they knew George Allen and, thanks to a term in Richmond that was largely successful and a good run in the Senate, its mostly positive. It will be hard to Webb to overcome that:
Allen has never lost a statewide race, and he has a huge advantage in fundraising: He has raised more than $10 million. And as withdrawn and shy as Webb sometimes can be, that’s just how outgoing and gregarious Allen is on the stump.
Democratic Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said at the outset of the campaign that Allen has an important political skill. “You’ll see him at some event talking to someone, and he seems like there’s nothing he’d rather be doing than talking to that person at that time,” Kaine said
In other words, Virginians largely like George Allen, and Virginia is a generally conservative state. That, combined with Allen’s huge advantage in money, will make it hard for Webb to control the debate, especially if the Democratic Party decides to concentrate its resources elsewhere. A final note on this topic, in the last week before yesterday’s election, I saw several George Allen commercials on television, even though he wasn’t even running on Tuesday and not a single commercial for either Webb or Miller.
The second item of interest related to the Allen-Webb race is this piece at Cato@Liberty.
Polls indicate that some 15 to 20 percent of voters hold libertarian views, differing from both liberals and conservatives. Webb?s opposition to the war and his boast that he?s ?pro-choice, pro-gay rights but also pro-Second Amendment? should give him strong appeal to those voters. He thinks the GOP-controlled Congress ?rubber-stamps? whatever the Bush administration does, and as a result ?we are on the verge of a constitutional crisis in this country . . . far more serious and far more widespread than anything we saw during the Watergate era.? However, the Washington Post editorialized that his ?somewhat strident populism on trade policy tends toward xenophobic sloganeering and business-bashing.? He?ll have to develop a more thoughtful position on economic issues to make much headway with libertarian-leaning voters.
If he does, it will be interesting to see what libertarians make of the choice between an orthodox conservative Bush Republican and an unorthodox antiwar Democrat. As governor, George Allen scored a 40 on Cato?s Fiscal Policy Report Card on America?s Governors (his predecessor, putatively liberal Democrat Doug Wilder, scored 75), and he has no notable achievements in the Senate. He voted for the war, the Patriot Act, the Federal Marriage Amendment, the Medicare prescription drug entitlement, and the No Child Left Behind Act.
Let the battle for the libertarian center begin.
On the whole, its fair to say that there are alot of positions George Allen has taken, mostly on social issues, that I disagree with. And, I guess I am part of that libertarian center that David Boaz is writing about. Would that cause me to vote for Webb ? Well, it depends on what that vote might mean; I would have to swallow very hard to vote for the man who may end up tipping the balance in the Senate and making Harry Reid Majority Leader and Ted Kennedy Chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
Further thoughts on Tuesday’s results and what this all means for November at Outside The Beltway, Spark It Up !, and The Mason Conservative
