Obama Makes Another Effort to Keep Virginia in Democratic Camp

By Heidi Przybyla and Julianna Goldman

Oct. 28 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama made a push yesterday to prevent Virginia, one of his greatest electoral prizes last year, from slipping back into Republican hands. Polls indicate it may be too late.
Obama headlined a rally in Norfolk and urged voters to look beyond the surveys showing Democratic gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds trailing his Republican opponent. The president said Virginians have the opportunity to “elect a man who represents a better kind of politics.”
“I don’t believe in ‘can’t,’ I don’t believe in giving up,” Obama said. He told the crowd he was “absolutely confident” that Deeds could win “if you are willing to work in this last week, if you are willing to make your voice heard in this last week.”
After becoming the first Democrat to carry Virginia in a presidential race since Lyndon Johnson in 1964, Obama paid only one previous visit to the state for Deeds. By contrast, Obama campaigned for Democrat Governor Jon Corzine of New Jersey in July and last week, and will return there before both states’ Nov. 3 elections.
Polls have shown a close race in New Jersey. In Virginia, Deeds has slipped 11 percentage points behind Bob McDonnell, according to an Oct. 22-25 Washington Post poll. McDonnell was backed by 55 percent in the survey, Deeds by 44 percent.
“A presidential visit isn’t going to do it,” said Mark Rozell, a political science professor at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia.
Core Voters
“When the campaign appears completely lost, they’re bringing Obama in to try to mobilize core Democratic Party voters who should already be in the Deeds camp,” Rozell said. “Deeds should be fighting for independent voters and persuadable Republicans at this point.”
Before Obama arrived for his second and possibly his final campaign appearance on Deeds’s behalf, White House officials distanced the president from the Democrat’s campaign.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, speaking with reporters on the president’s plane, pointed to the Post poll finding that 70 percent of Virginia voters aren’t making a decision on the gubernatorial election based on Obama. That means that it’s “just not the case” that a loss by Deeds could be “somehow a referendum on Obama,” Gibbs said.
The administration is “very comfortable” with the “big level of support that the Democratic Party provided” to Deeds, Gibbs said.
Gibbs on Oct. 26 declined to endorse the way Deeds has run his campaign. “That’s not for me to pass judgment on,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One as Obama traveled to events in Florida.
Campaign Stops
Obama, who campaigned for Corzine on Oct. 21, will make one more day of stops in New Jersey on Nov. 1, Gibbs said yesterday.
Even given Virginia’s 30-year history of selecting governors from the party outside the White House, this year’s race demonstrates the limits of Obama’s electoral coattails. Much of his 2008 victory in Virginia depended on a large turnout by black voters and support from independents.
These groups are eluding Deeds, with blacks unenthused about the race and many independents moving back to the Republican column, polling shows.
“The Republicans have the upper hand,” said Rhodes Cook, publisher of a nonpartisan newsletter in Virginia.
Voter Turnout
Deeds’s challenge is turnout. In 2004, former President George W. Bush’s vote totals were almost identical to what Republican presidential candidate John McCain got in 2008. The difference last year was that Obama got about 500,000 more votes than did 2004 Democratic candidate John Kerry. These were new voters, young voters, blacks and others.
“If we are able to mobilize a lot of those Democrats that voted for Obama in 2008 that are thinking about staying home, we’ll win,” said Mo Elleithee, a senior adviser to Deeds.
Obama benefited from antipathy over the Iraq war, a growing federal budget deficit and a sputtering economy, said Bill Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “It’s going to be hard to replicate,” he said.
In his speech yesterday, Obama displayed much of the enthusiasm that marked his appearances on the campaign trail last year, and the crowd responded in kind. He said of Deeds, “I would have liked this guy no matter what ‘cause he’s got a funny name like ‘Barack Obama,’” a line that sparked laughter and applause.
He said Deeds “may not be perfect. My wife reminds me I’m not. She is. Just like our spouses are perfect. But we’re not. Are you looking for slick, or are you looking for somebody who’s going to be fighting for you?”
Tough Race
Obama also said, “Let’s be honest. This is going to be a tough race. We’ve got a tough economy, and even if it wasn’t a tough economy, it’s always tough in Virginia” for Democrats.
Deeds told the crowd, “Reports of my demise are much exaggerated.”
In the Post poll, Deeds trailed McDonnell 61 percent to 36 percent among independent voters who were so crucial to Obama. Independent women, who split about evenly between the two in the weeks after the publication of a controversial master’s thesis McDonnell, 54, wrote 20 years ago, now favor McDonnell 57 percent to 40 percent, the survey found.
Deeds, 51, has sought to highlight the thesis that described working women as “detrimental” to the family and also was critical of women’s rights.
According to a Public Policy Polling survey released last week, 68 percent of blacks support Deeds, with 41 percent of those voters terming themselves “very excited” about the forthcoming election. In a similar poll in late October last year, Obama had 88 percent of blacks supporting him.