Northern Va. a test for GOP wave

The suburban, Northern Virginia-based 11th District has been trending away from Republicans but the mood has changed dramatically since 2008, when President Barack Obama won easily here and Democrat Gerry Connolly captured the open House seat by a 12-point margin.

Republicans point to the 2009 state elections as evidence of how far the pendulum has swung in their direction, when the GOP ticket—Gov. Bob McDonnell, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli – rolled up easy wins here.

Sunday afternoon, all three conveniently gathered at the Fairfax County Republican headquarters for an 11th hour rally for Republican Keith Fimian and neighboring 8th District candidate Patrick Murray, hoping to recreate some of that magic that propelled them to office a year ago.

Fimian, who is making his second bid for the seat after losing to Connolly in 2008, witnessed about 400 raucous supporters waving signs saying “Connolly votes with Pelosi 92 percent of the time” and armed with stickers carrying a special holiday message: “it’s just too scary to vote for Gerry.”

The Republican officeholders and hopefuls hammered home the key issue that’s been working for their party across the country – jobs and the economy.

“Virginia is back on the right track, and one year later we’re asking you to go out and get America on the right track,” Bolling told the crowd.

Cuccinelli said it was time to “say goodbye to the Northern Virginia Boston pols”—a dig at both Connolly and 8th District Rep. Jim Moran, both of whom originally hail from Massachusetts.

McDonnell, whose win in Virginia’s off-year statewide elections was touted as evidence of a GOP resurgence, argued that his tenure so far provided proof that fiscal discipline could work to stimulate job growth. And he encouraged the volunteers who had made 21,000 calls on Saturday alone to keep up the work.

“They’re doable. They can be won, if you continue this pace over the next couple days,” McDonnell said of the local races on Tuesday’s slate, joking that “sleep is vastly overrated. You can sleep Wednesday.”

McDonnell told POLITICO after the rally that the closeness of the Connolly-Fimian race was proof that the Democratic Party wasn’t quick enough to react to the GOP sweep in the Old Dominion last November.

“I think they might have believed their own press a little too much back in 2008,” said McDonnell. “We’re a right-of-center nation. “

Fimian has been relying on the national mood in his rematch, and his brief remarks featured familiar GOP talking points.

“Our nation has been led into a valley of debt and deficit spending,” said Fimian. “Gerry Connolly is part of the problem. I’m part of the solution. “

He promised that, if elected, he wouldn’t be silent.

“I’m going to Congress to break china—china with a small c –not to accept the status quo,” Fimian continued. “I’m not going there to get along—I’m going there to shake things up and bring fiscal sanity back to our country.”

But one issue that’s diverted Fimian from his economic message in the closing days is a controversial remark he made to DC50-TV that if Virginia Tech students had been “packing heat,” the April 2007 university massacre would not have happened. Fimian apologized for his comments during a Friday WTOP radio debate and said he meant to say the tragedy could have been prevented if there were more armed security guards on campus.

Still, Fimian’s comments brought out several family members of the Virginia Tech victims to the Sunday events, who sought to meet with the GOP hopeful to discuss his remarks and his position on whether support closing a gun loophole that would require background checks from private sellers at gun shows.

“When he chose to bring this up, I felt like I had to come. I felt like it was personally addressed to me,” said Peter Read, an Annandale resident whose daughter Mary, then a 19-year-old freshman, was one of the 32 victims.

“So far he’s been willing to opine on whether my daughter having a gun would change the outcome of the 16th, but he won’t come out and say whether he will support making private sellers at gun shows do background checks,” said Read.

Fimian did meet with Read and other family members who came, telling reporters afterward that ““my heart goes out to” them and reiterating his apology for his comments. He said was still “not familiar with all the details” of the bill at hand and that he would look into it.

The gun issue remains one that Connolly’s camp insists has reignited their base just in the past few days. At a Democratic gathering Sunday at noon, the freshman congressman spoke to the more than 200 volunteers who had assembled before heading out to knock on doors and phone-bank. The crowd ended their rally with familiar cheers from President Obama’s 2008 campaign of “Yes, we can” and “Fired up, ready to go.”

Democratic Sen. Jim Webb spoke to Connolly volunteers at the Prince William County Democratic headquarters on Saturday, and on Monday the congressman will get an afternoon visit from Second Lady Jill Biden.

Connolly said he’s confident in the ground game his operation has in the final homestretch. While he tacitly acknowledged his party faced a sour national mood, he disputed the notion that attempts to tie him to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders would work in the 11th District, which has one the highest concentration of graduate degrees in the country.

“Clearly the ground is shifting and it’s a much less favorable climate, but that’s true for almost every midterm for the party in power,” said Connolly.

He took special offense with national analysts, particularly the Cook Political Report, which recently rated his race as a toss-up—meaning either side could win. And he said the media was reading too much into a recent ad buy in his district by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, noting that the ad reservation had been made there this summer.

“That took enormous courage for Charlie Cook to do yesterday. I mean c’mon,” Connolly scoffed. “I think Charlie Cook is just covering his bets so that if the number’s higher than he’s predicting, he can say, ‘Well, I did move a lot of these races into a new category three days from the election. ‘”

As for the Republican wins here last November, Connolly shrugged them off.

“Two years ago Obama performed strong in this district. It’s a swing district. So a year later I expect it to swing back,” he said.

Click here to read the full story.