New Interest in the Old Dominion

Here is a Washington Post article about the presidential campaign in Virginia.

Virginia has become such a reliably Republican state in recent presidential elections that even in 1976, when Jimmy Carter was the last Democrat to carry a "Solid South", his Republican opponent Gerald Ford won Virginia's electoral votes, the only ones he won in any southeastern state. From 1952 to 2004, Virginia supported only one Democrat for president, when they went along with Lyndon Johnson's landslide in 1964.

The Post piece points up the recent Democratic trend in Virginia, where Democrats have won the most-recent elections for senator and governor. However, there are certain quirks about its gubernatorial elections that need to be taken into account.

Virginia has odd-year gubernatorial elections, held the year after each presidential election. There is a four-year term, and no governor is allowed to serve consecutive terms. In each of the last eight elections, Virginians have elected a governor of the party opposite to the one who won the presidency the year before. I find it odd that the most-recent exception was Republican Mills Godwin, who was elected in 1973, the year after Richard Nixon's landslide reelection victory for president, but after the Watergate scandal had begun to erode Republicans' electoral prospects.

So, was the 2005 victory of Democratic Governor Tim Kaine a sign of revivial for that party, or merely a protest vote against George Bush? And, if Kaine and other leading Virginia Democrats successfully work to elect Barack Obama, will their reward be to lose the governorship in 2009?

Be that as it may, a return of Virginia to the Democratic column in presidential elections would be a significant shift. I'm reminded of the way in which California started voting Democratic in Bill Clinton's two presidential victories, after having voted Republican in nine of the previous 10 presidential elections. California, of course, has a much larger impact, but if Virginia is nearing a similar tipping point, it will matter.