State Dems eyeing possible Senate takover

McLEAN - It's been a rough run for Republicans in a state once as thoroughly red as Virginia, and Democrats believe this is the election when they finally reclaim control of the state Senate.

The past two governor's elections and last year's U.S. Senate race produced Democratic winners. Every legislative election since 2003 has seen the Democrats gain seats.

Now Democrats are fighting all out to counterbalance the powerful GOP ascendancy of the 1990s in an effort to win their first Senate majority in 12 years. Their chances of gaining the 11 GOP seats they would need to take over the House are almost nil this fall.

Winning the Senate is critical for both parties because it's the last state Senate election before the General Assembly redraws Virginia's legislative and congressional district boundaries in 2011. The party in control can tailor the lines with computer precision to lock in or expand its advantage for another 10 years. The Democrats are desperate to establish a beachhead in the Senate, and the GOP is marshaling its money and strength to deny them one.

The key battleground is the Washington, D.C., suburbs, one of the nation's fastest-growing regions, where Democrats have done better with each election since 2001.

If the Democrats can win four seats the GOP now holds, they can rule the 40-member Senate at least until 2012, and three of the seats they're targeting are in northern Virginia.

All three districts illustrate the advances Democrats have made in northern Virginia and Fairfax County in particular.

In Sen. Ken Cuccinelli's district in western Fairfax County, for instance, Republican Mark Earley narrowly carried the district in the 2001 gubernatorial race against Democrat Mark Warner.

Four years later, Democrat Tim Kaine won the district by 12 points. And last year, Democrat Jim Webb carried the district by nine points over Republican George Allen.

Cuccinelli acknowledged the trend, though he thinks Democrats overstate it. And he acknowledged that in northern Virginia, where voters are more attuned to national than state politics, candidates are more likely to sink or swim on their party label.

"But I happen to be pretty good at getting my base to turn out, so we'll see what happens," said Cuccinelli, who won four years ago with 53 percent of the vote.

His Democratic challenger, school board member Janet Oleszek, wants to tie Cuccinelli to the GOP's right wing.

"The malaise of the national Republican party is also visible in the malaise of an extreme incumbent who is persistently introducing divisive legislation based on his own social agenda," she said.

Cuccinelli bristled at the labels of extreme and "kooky" that Oleszek has used. He broke with the anti-tax wing of his party, for instance, and supported a compromise transportation package that allowed regional tax increases and other fee increases to pay for new projects.

"It was a difficult vote ... but ultimately that's the kind of compromise my constituents expect me to make," he said.
The most closely watched race, perhaps, will be in the Vienna area, where Democrat and former House member Chap Petersen is challenging Republican Sen. Jeannemarie Devolites Davis, wife of U.S. Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va.

No other district in Virginia held by a Republican has as many Democratic voters. As a result, Devolites Davis often finds herself touting herself as the more progressive alternative to Petersen, particularly on gun control.

Devolites Davis also acknowledged the importance of national politics to northern Virginia's political landscape, but she said in the last few weeks she has noticed that moderate Republicans seem to be returning to the fold as Hillary Clinton has emerged as a strong front-runner in the 2008 presidential race.

"She is a very polarizing figure and in her own way she is moving Republicans back to the Republican way of voting," Devolites Davis said.

The race has become particularly harsh. At a debate sponsored by a gay-rights group, Devolites Davis referred to Petersen's membership at Truro Church, a prominent congregation in Fairfax that last year voted to split from the Episcopal Church over Episcopals' acceptance of a gay bishop and other theological issues. Devolites Davis said the issue is valid because Petersen is positioning himself as a supporter of gay rights, yet remained silent about the congregation's decision.
Petersen said he was taken aback that Devolites Davis attacked his religious affiliation.

"I was baptized into Truro as a baby," he said. "The fact that she'd attempt to make it a campaign issue ... was a little bit over the line."

And Petersen disputed the notion that Devolites Davis is more socially progressive, citing high marks she has received from the conservative Family Foundation. The Richmond-based nonprofit advocacy group in 2006 led the successful campaign for a statewide referendum to approve a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage or any arrangement approximating it in Virginia.

"If my opponent wants to try to reinvent herself, it's a free country," he said.

Also in Fairfax County, Republican Sen. Jay O'Brien is being challenged by Democrat George Barker. O'Brien said that transportation is the top issue, but illegal immigration is also a big issue with voters, despite Democrats' effort to minimize the issue.

"Democrats don't want immigration to rise to the level where voters would base their vote on it because Republicans own that issue," said O'Brien, whose campaign ads attack Barker for his stance on the issue. O'Brien said he supports efforts by local legislators in Prince William County, where several of his precincts reside, to deny services to illegal immigrants.
Barker said he favors a more targeted approach, including Fairfax County's use of a task force to investigate excessive crowding in single-family homes, a complaint that is frequently associated with illegal immigration.

But Barker says transportation is by far the top issue, and he has criticized O'Brien for his support of abusive driver fees, which were part of this year's compromise transportation bill and generated a strong backlash against their implementation.
O'Brien said he believes the idea of higher fees on bad drivers to both raise money and deter bad driving is a good one, but he accepts the fact that the public does not support them.

"The public has spoken," O'Brien said. But the overall transportation package, he said, was a successful compromise and he's happy to claim some of the credit for engineering it.

Outside northern Virginia, there are other opportunities for the Democrats to pick off the seats held by Republican senators who are retiring, or Republican incumbents they see as vulnerable.

Democrats never anticipated that the seat of Sen. Marty Williams, R-Newport News, would be in play. Williams was upset by Republican primary challenger Tricia Stall in June after a bitter campaign.

With Williams sidelined, Democrats in the 1st Senate District pounced at the opportunity to run against Stall, an anti-tax activist who signed a pledge with a group known as the Alliance for the Separation of School and State to support "ending government involvement in education."

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and Senate Democratic leaders began recruiting candidates to oppose Stall, and they found John Miller, a former television news anchor who works at Christopher Newport University for school president Paul Trible, a former Republican U.S. senator from Virginia.

Transportation in a region split by large bodies of water and burdened with heavy traffic has been the top issue, with Stall blasting away at the 2007 Republican-authored transportation plan and the regional taxing and road-building authorities it established in Hampton Roads and northern Virginia. The tactic worked against Williams in the primary: The authority and the additional taxes it imposes in the region have been broadly criticized.

Miller argues for a reworked statewide transportation plan that doesn't put the heaviest burden on the state's two most populous and economically vibrant regions.
There are other races where Democrats also believe they can take away Republican seats:

- Ralph Northam, a Norfolk doctor, is challenging Sen. D. Nick Rerras in the 6th District, which takes in Republican-friendly Virginia Beach, but also Democrat-leaning Norfolk as well as Mathews County and two counties on the Eastern Shore.

- Former Del. Albert C. Pollard Jr., a centrist Democrat from Lancaster with a strong environmental streak, is running against moderate Republican Richard H. Stuart of Montross for the seat of Republican Sen. John H. Chichester, the powerful Finance Committee chairman who is retiring after 30 years in the Senate. The district leans Republican.