VA: Fire the Consultants

by Patrick Ruffini :: November 7th, 2007 10:52 am

Last night, the Democrats took the Virginia Senate on the back of the GOP’s collapsing brand in Northern Virginia, where I live.

I don’t pretend to be an expert on Virginia politics. My focus is national. So this post will largely be observational, as I did little more than watch the ads, which were ubiqituous on cable thanks to the more than half a dozen competitive races in the region.

First: It’s time to fire the consultants who ran the same ImmigrationTaxesImmigrationTaxes cookie cutter race in every district, using the same message that killed Jerry Kilgore in Northern Virginia two years ago. So Ken Cuccinelli survived… by 90 votes… against a laughable opponent the Washington Post wouldn’t even endorse.

Second: Cutting and running from the GOP is even worse. Jeannemarie Devolites Davis’ anti-gun ad flopped, leading to the most lopsided unseating of the night. Didn’t 2006 teach us that there is no refuge for the Chafees and DeWines of the world when the GOP fails to advance an aggressive agenda?

Third: The days of Tom Davis giving us lectures about how to win elections in NoVa are over. See #2. (Yes, that was his wife.)

It’s time to say what needs to be said. Whether they were running to the right (Cuccinelli) or to the left (Devolites Davis), Republican Senate incumbents were running campaigns out of touch with the Northern Virginia electorate, whose bugaboos right now are traffic congestion and education.

The voters aren’t much interested in slash-and-burn attacks on illegal immigration or revisiting the wedge issues of ’80s and ’90s (the death penalty for Kilgore; guns for Davis).

Hitting hard on immigration might make sense in a place like MA-5 which doesn’t have a huge immigrant population, yet. But unfortunately, Republicans in Virginia are running on messages that are about a decade late. This isn’t your father’s Fairfax County anymore. The fact that there were a tangle of elderly Asian immigrants ahead of me in the voting line today requesting help filling out their English-only ballots is testament to it.

Now, don’t count me as a Tom Davis squish on this. Instead of applying blunt force on the immigration issue in a diverse community, you zero in on the illegal immigration-related quality of life concerns that 90% of the electorate can identify with, like the scourge of MS-13 gang violence in the region. Were I running in Northern Virginia, I wouldn’t mention the words “illegal immigration.” I would talk exclusively about MS-13, and about working with ICE to deport every violent criminal in the area illegally. This is the fatal mistake that ex-prosecutor Jerry Kilgore made in 2005 — and the GOP candidates this time around didn’t do much better.

Likewise, running a 1988-style campaign on “taxes” is too vague and diffuse. Zero in on the real source of taxpayer ire: rising property tax assessments. And tie it to competence. The housing boom was a veritable revenue bonanza for local governments, with double digit revenue growth year on year. At the state level, Mark Warner raised taxes. And even with state and local governments drowning in revenue, they still can’t build roads, they still can’t educate kids, they still can’t get things done. And now Tim Kaine and the Democrats want even more. Tim Kaine and the Democrats. Incompetent. Unaccountable. Arrogant.

Finally, traffic is the new wedge issue — on both sides. In the 2002 tax increase referendum, we used environmental concerns (or they used us) to wedge advocates of higher taxes from liberal inner suburbanites who ride Metro. In 2005, the Democrats used long commutes to pry away out outer suburbanites who would gladly pay more taxes for an extra half-hour with their families. We need to highlight the inherent fissures within the Democratic coalition again. And at a minimum, hold Democrats accountable for their promises on traffic and road-building. The RPV needs to launch a “Tim Kaine Commute-o-Meter” tallying the rise in the total commute for Northern Virginia drivers since Kaine took office. And our message could look something like this: Democrats like _____ are in the pocket of extreme, pro-regulatory special interests. They won’t build the roads we need to solve the traffic crisis.

Running on recycled political consultant wish lists failed. Running against the party failed. Why not try something different next time: offering principled conservative solutions to the things voters are actually concerned about?

Would any soon-to-be defenestrated Virginia Republican disagree?

Tagged: gop virginia

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