Sabato Highlights✰✰✰ 5 ✰The 2001General Election ✰✰ ✰Democrats Recapture Governorship after Eight Years Out Overall ☑ Aft er eight years out of power, the Democrats reclaimed the governorship with Mark Warner and also secured the lieutenant governor’s post with Tim Kaine. Both won narrow victories, 52.2 percent for Warner and 50.3 percent for Kaine. ☑ The Republicans triumphed in down- ballot races, however. Jerry Kilgore cap- tured the offi ce of attorney general with the largest statewide percentage of the winners, 60 percent. And the GOP collected a startling 64 seats out of 100 in the House of Delegates (66, counting two conservative Independents who usu- ally vote with the Republicans). It was only in 1999 that Republicans elected their fi rst House of Delegates majority, a “mere” 53 seats. Redistricting earlier in 2001 produced most of the electoral gains, of course. Statewide Offi ces ☑ Over 1.9 million Virginians cast ballots in 2001, an eight percent gain from the last governor’s election in 1997 but only 46 percent of registered voters and 36 percent of those aged 18 and older. ☑ Warner and Kaine won over six in ten votes in the more liberal central cities, but McEachin secured a surprisingly low 54 percent in the cities. Warner nar- rowly won suburban Virginia and also scored a breakthrough in the rural areas, with over 51 percent of their votes. Kilgore swamped McEachin in both the rural areas and the suburbs. Katzen garnered small margins in both rural and suburban areas, but it could not overcome Kaine’s large central- city majority. ☑ All three Democrats exceeded 90 percent in black- majority precincts across Virginia. Mark Earley had won 16 percent in his successful contest for attorney general in 1997, but that proportion declined to seven percent in 2001. ☑ One Election Day “exit poll” showed a substantial gender gap, as usual. Warner won women, 53 percent to 39 percent, with men favoring Earley by a smaller 49 percent to 44 percent. Earley won the votes of whites by just 50 percent to 121 44 percent; a Democrat in Virginia needs only about 40 percent of the white vote to win statewide. ☑ A tiny four percent of Democrats defected to Mark Earley, but 11 percent of Republicans voted for the Democrat Warner. Warner also carried Independents by 56 percent to 34 percent. House of Delegates ☑ An amazing 278 collective years of seniority was lost to the House of Delegates in a single election. Of the 100 incumbents, just 78 were returned to offi ce (17 had voluntarily retired, and another 6 were defeated at the polls—5 of the 6 in the general election). ☑ For the fi ft h consecutive legislative election, Republicans secured an absolute majority of the statewide vote and their largest proportion ever (55.5 percent). Democrats recorded their lowest percentage in modern times (39.1 percent). Campaign Finance ☑ The six statewide candidates on the November ballot spent a massive $39 mil- lion—a 59 percent increase over 1997. ☑ Warner outspent Earley by $19.9 million to $11.5 million, and once all Warner campaign committees are added to the mix, his money edge grew to $22.5 mil- lion to $11.5 million (approaching a two- to- one ratio). ☑ Nearly $13.4 million was spent on all campaigns for the House of Delegates in 2001; when added to the statewide candidates’ war chests, the year’s total reached a staggering $53 million, easily an all- time record. ☑ Republican House of Delegates candidates outspent the Democrats by 56 per- cent to 39 percent—a proportion very close to the percentage of votes received by each legislative party. 122 Virginia Votes ✰ 1999–2002 ✰✰✰ 5 ✰The 2001General Election ✰✰ ✰Democrats Recapture Governorship after Eight Years Out ver the course of the last decade, the Virginia Republican party won just about ev- Oerything: all presidential contests; the governorship, lieutenant governorship, and attorney general’s post; both U.S. Senate seats; eight of eleven U.S. House seats; and both houses of the General Assembly. Democrats had begun to despair that Virginia had moved so strongly into the GOP column that its nominees were no longer com- petitive. The 2001 elections proved those fears exaggerated. Mark Warner rescued his party from a dismal fate and carried in a Democratic lieutenant governor with him. Still, Republicans had reason to be pleased, or less displeased than they would otherwise have been. The race for governor was closer than many polls had predicted, and the lieutenant governor’s election was a squeaker. The Republican candidate for attorney general captured the only landslide of Election Day, and Warner’s coattails proved completely insuffi cient to do anything about a Republican near- sweep of close House of Delegates contests; the GOP captured a massive 64 seats, a gain of 12—a greater total than their own party leaders had dreamed possible. Both parties could be partly satisfi ed with the 2001 results, then, and so could the citizenry, since vigorous two- party competition is one major key to long- term good government. For Democrats, though, the victories were especially sweet. Written off as a spent force only a year earlier, they proved fully capable of capturing the state’s highest offi ce against the odds in conservative Virginia. The Virginia Democratic breakthrough had regional and national implica- tions, too. Combined with Democrat James McGreevey’s landslide victory in the nation’s only other gubernatorial contest in New Jersey, Warner’s triumph suggested that Democrats could win under the most hostile of conditions—in a time of war, with the Republican president at stratospheric popularity levels, and (in Warner’s case) in a conservative, Republican- leaning state. Regionally, there was also good news for Democrats. The 2001 result in Virginia meant that for the fi rst time since 1994, Democrats would control a majority of the Southern governors. Just since 1998, moderate- conservative Democrats wrested state- houses from Republicans in Alabama (1998), South Carolina (1998), Mississippi (1999), and Virginia (2001), while losing only one Southern governorship to the Republicans, Florida in 1998. This substantial comeback for the Democrats was espe- cially noteworthy since the South is clearly the most Republican of all American geo- graphic regions in modern times. Yet that nature reasserted itself in 2002 and 2003, when the GOP reclaimed the governorships in Alabama, South Carolina, and Mississippi.1 1. The successful Democrats, other than Warner, were Don Seigelman (Alabama), Jim Hodges (South Carolina), and Ronnie Musgrove (Mississippi). Jeb Bush is the GOP exception in Florida. But 123 General Election Campaign Even before September 11 irrevocably changed the political climate, and most ev- erything else in America, the 2001 campaign for governor in Virginia was unusually quiet, even dull. Partly, this was by Democratic design. Simply by virtue of being a Democrat, Mark Warner was presumed to be on the wrong side of many social and economic issues in conservative Virginia. “Quiet” meant that Warner was steadily reassuring voters that he would not raise broad- based taxes, would not spend money recklessly, would preserve Second Amendment rights, would uphold the traditional family, and generally would govern as a classically cautious Virginia businessman: no tumult, no upheaval, and “bipartisan administration.” Even on abortion, his one truly liberal position, Warner pointed to the Republican legislature and suggested he would not change the status quo and might merely veto further restrictions on abortion. Except on economic development, education, and transportation, Warner seemed to be saying, “You won’t even know that I’m there.” His well- funded and or- ganized campaign methodically reached out to every identifi able Democratic, inde- pendent, moderate Republican, and nonpartisan constituency. He started substantial television and radio advertising in August, and save for the period immediately aft er September 11, never went “dark” (off - air) until November 6. Particularly memorable was Warner’s outreach to rural Virginia, where Democrats had been electorally hammered statewide since 1989. In his Senate run in 1996, Mark Warner had done better than expected, winning 50.8 percent of the rural vote. However, an angry Oliver North constituency was somewhat responsible; the 1994 North vot- ers, concentrated in downstate rural areas, were determined to seek revenge against U.S. Senator John Warner, who abandoned Republican Senate nominee North in order to back Independent Marshall Coleman.2 In 2001, Warner reconnected with rural citi- zens through extensive campaigning in Southside and Southwest localities. He focused on their economic plight and relatively high unemployment rates. He became the most pro- gun rights Democratic candidate for governor since Gerald Baliles in 1985, know- ing that hunting and fi shing is a way of rural life. He organized an active “Sportsmen for Warner” group, and their blaze orange signs seemed to be everywhere. His colorful Roanoke supporter, Dave “Mudcat” Saunders, wrote a bluegrass song that was omni- present on appropriate TV and radio media markets. The lyrics, sung to “Dooley,” hailed Warner as a “good ol’ boy from up in Nova- ville,” and went in part: Mark Warner is ready to lead our Commonwealth, He’ll work for mountain people and economic health. Get ready to shout it, fr om the coalmines to the stills, “Here comes Mark Warner—the hero of the hills!” Warner . for public education, Warner . what a reputation, Warner . vote in this election, To keep our children home. As the election results would show, all the eff ort worked well enough. It added a few percentage points in most rural cities and counties, substantially cutting the usual GOP margins there. in 2002 Seigelman lost to Bob Riley (R) and Hodges was denied a second term by Mark Sanford (R).