Has the GOP bottomed out?

Alfred Biddlecomb
Published: June 11, 2008

Be careful for what you ask for. You just might get it.

I wonder if Delegate Jeff Frederick came to that realization when he woke up the morning after being elected chairman of the Virginia Republican Party late last month.

The Virginia GOP has fallen a few rungs since its high-water mark earlier this decade when Jim Gilmore pushed his car tax through the General Assembly and Republicans completed a redistricting plan
that would make Elbridge Gerry blush (payback for generations misdeeds by the Democrats).

Frederick takes over a Republican Party that’s losing its moderate wing and losing statewide elections to liberal Democrats like Gov. Tim Kaine and Sen. Jim Webb. Frederick traveled south to Richmond
to wrestle the reins of the party from John Hager, promising to right the ship.

Now it’s put up or shut up.

To his credit, Frederick is as solid as anyone when it comes to campaigning and he has proven he can win elections. But it remains to be seen if he can convince Virginians (especially those in his own
backyard) to embrace a Republican Party that continues to push voters away with its hard core resistance to taxes and high priority placed on social issues.

This starboard list was evident during the state GOP convention on May 31. In addition to electing Frederick as chairman, the state party came within a few dimpled chads of nominating Del. Bob Marshall
as its candidate for the U.S. Senate. That would have been ironic since the convention itself was orchestrated by Gilmore as a means of slamming the door on Rep. Tom Davis in his quest to succeed
retiring Republican Sen. John Warner.

Now Gilmore faces an uphill battle against Democrat Mark Warner who is running circles around the car tax hatchet man in both fund raising and popular support. Nowhere is this more evident than in
Northern Virginia — a region of the Old Dominion Gilmore used to win the governor’s race in 1997.

Mark Warner is raising money by the boat load in the D.C. suburbs and has gained the support of Republicans John Chichester of Stafford and Vince Callahan of McLean. Callahan, who recently retired
from the House of Delegates where he was an influential budget writer, threw his support behind Mark Warner this week saying he was weary of the Republican Party’s confrontational stance and hostility
toward compromise.

Chichester, whose brand of budgetary conservatism clashed with Gilmore’s car tax risk-taking in the great budget stalemate of 2001, warned Republicans a few years ago that this day would come. Yet
the party continued to campaign on “no taxes” while pushing social and faith-based issues once elected.

It was Chichester who warned Gilmore in 2001 that the commonwealth could not afford continued phase out of the car tax. Gilmore persisted and the commonwealth faced a massive budget shortfall after
he left office that required a sales tax increase (among other things) to balance the books. Meanwhile, some Republicans couldn’t prepare the tar and feathers fast enough to punish Chichester for his
disloyalty to Gilmore.

Davis ran into similar frustrations dealing with state party activists. “I have had over 100 bills passed,” he told the Richmond Times Dispatch on May 29. “But anybody who compromises, you go back to
your party base and you’re an apostate. You’re squishy. You’re weak.”

It’s difficult to say whether Chichester and Callahan would have supported Mark Warner had Davis been the GOP Senate nominee. One thing is for certain, Gilmore’s candidacy has made it much easier
for Warner to campaign in Northern Virginia.

Republicans enjoyed no post-convention bounce from its quaint little gathering in Richmond last month. State Democrats high-fived one another after the GOP convention adjourned and celebrated by
parading Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama across the commonwealth. Obama, with Mark Warner, Gov. Tim Kaine and Sen. Jim Webb at his side, drew more than 10,000 to a rally last
week at the Nissan Pavilion. That’s Bon Jovi territory.

Suddenly, Virginia — which hasn’t supported a Democrat for president since LBJ — is in play.

It’s no secret why Obama came to Northern Virginia. The region flexed its muscles to elect both Kaine and Webb in recent years and could make the difference in handing over the commonwealth’s
electoral votes to Obama in November.

But wait, it gets worse. Democrats are also poised to pick up seats in the House of Representatives with the GOP possibly losing Davis’ seat.

Yes, Frederick has his work cut out for him. Will 2008 be the year that state Republicans bottom out or will there be more losses in the gubernatorial and General Assembly elections of 2009? If the
Republicans don’t turn it around by then, the Democrats will be poised to deliver some payback when redistricting comes up again.

Former Gov. Linwood Holton (Virginia’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction) once said that elections are won by campaigning for the center. Approximately a third of voters will vote Republican
and another third will vote Democrat. It’s the one-third of voters in the middle that win elections.

This one-third has been supporting Democrats in recent years and unless the Republicans can make inroads with the John Chichesters and Tom Davis’ of the world, they’re destined to the phone booth
from which Holton and his GOP allies emerged from 40 years ago.

Alfred Biddlecomb is the former Opinion Page editor for the Potomac News and Manassas Journal Messenger.