I am honored to be serving as the 70th governor
of the Commonwealth of Virginia. How I got to
the governor's mansion is a story that may be of
interest to other Democrats, especially given the
daunting challenges my campaign faced.
For starters, I ran in a state that President Bush had
won by 8 percentage points in 2004. In addition, I
began with a 21-point name identification deficit and
lagged behind in every poll -- sometimes by double
digits -- until September 2005, only two months before
the election. Finally, I was targeted by an unprecedented
series of negative attack ads and was financially out-raised
and outspent through most of the contest.
Yet I won the popular vote by a margin of 6 points
and more than 113,000 voters. I attribute my victory to
three factors: the exceptional popularity of Gov. Mark
Warner, my predecessor and partner over the past four
years; my campaign's understanding of Virginia's changing
demographics; and my ability to speak directly to
voters and offer them a positive vision for our future.
As a candidate in 2001, Warner had
offered voters a compelling story. He
was a successful businessman who
wanted to use his boardroom expertise
to fix a government so badly mismanaged
that the Republican governor and
the Republican state legislature couldn't
even reach agreement on a state budget.
After four years at the helm, Warner
was given great credit for enacting
record spending cuts, thus preserving
Virginia's sterling credit rating. He also
enacted historic bipartisan budget
reform and earned the ranking of Best-Managed State from Governing magazine.
Warner's approval rating grew to a
record 80 percent.
Voters in 2005 understood that
Virginia was much better off than it had
been four years earlier. At the same time,
voters were anxious about the direction
the country was going under Republican
management. The voters also knew that
I, as lieutenant governor, had worked
closely with Governor Warner, while my
opponent, Jerry Kilgore, the state attorney
general, had fought against him on
practically everything.
Just as Warner had done in 2001, I
had to accomplish three things to win
in a red state. First, I had to find and
energize Democratic voters. Second, I
had to share my story with the voters.
Third, I had to reach out to independent
and Republican
voters in a strategic way.
And that's exactly
what we did.
The generally
positive feelings
Democrats had heading
into the election made them
easier to energize. This was a
significant contrast to Republican
voters, whose enthusiasm
was dampened by
dissatisfaction with the
Bush administration, various
Washington scandals,
and criticism over the
response to Hurricanes
Katrina and Rita. In
Virginia, Kilgore was failing
to excite his Republican base.
That lack of enthusiasm was
highlighted last summer, when,
in the GOP primary, nearly 20
percent of Republican voters supported
Kilgore's little-known and
underfinanced challenger.
To find and turn out Democrats,
we identified and targeted a group we
labeled as "federal Democrats" -- people
who vote in presidential election
years but typically stay home during
statewide elections. A quick examination
of the last few election
cycles illustrates just
how significant that
block of voters is.
In 2001, Mark
Warner won the governor's
race by a margin of
4.5 percentage points.
Three years later, John
Kerry lost Virginia by
8 points. But Kerry
received almost half
a million more
votes than Warner.
We spared little, in terms of time and
attention, to reach these voters, knowing
they would vote for us if we got
them to show up at the polls.
I also thought it was important to
tell my personal story and share my
values and motivation with voters.
After all, a candidate who fails to clearly
define himself will be defined by his
opponent's attacks.
I wanted to explain to people how
my faith and my heart for public service,
formed while serving as a missionary
in Central America, inspire
me to seek public office. As a law student
at Harvard 25 years ago, I
found myself with a lot of options
but little direction. I decided to take
off a year and work with Catholic
missionaries in Honduras. I was the
principal of a small vocational
school, teaching carpentry, religion,
and academics to children who had
no other educational options.
Second only to becoming a father,
that experience was the most formative
of my life. It has influenced
everything I have done since -- from
my career as a civil rights attorney to
my service in local and state offices.
Just as it is in my life, my religious
faith was a vital part of that story. I spoke
about it often. But it wasn't clear until
late in the race how much of an impact
my faith would play in the contest,
when Kilgore ran aggressive death
penalty attack ads. Using the family
members of crime victims, Kilgore
insisted that my personal faith-based
opposition to capital punishment
would prevent me from carrying out
executions. The ads were shocking and
emotional. They led some pundits to
immediately claim they would sink my
campaign.
We quickly pointed out several
untruths in the ads. A backlash began
to form in both the press and the public
to the nasty tone of Kilgore's campaign.
I was also able to respond
through my own ads, telling voters that
I took the oath of office as seriously as
my wedding vows.
We understood from the beginning
of the campaign that our path to victory
would be different from that of
Governor Warner's 2001 campaign.
Our strategy had to reflect that reality.
Warner had run against a suburban
Republican from the Hampton
Roads/Norfolk area, thus making the
rural parts of the state the battleground.
Warner focused a lot of his
campaign on rural areas, especially in
southwestern Virginia. He promised
that a combination of new technology,
better educational opportunities, and
more attention from the state government
would create a brighter economic
future. That focus paid off when he
performed remarkably well in the rural
areas.
My opponent, by contrast, was a
southwest Virginia native, with strong
family and professional ties throughout
the region. We knew that he would run
well there. So we focused our strategy
on winning extra support from the
suburbs, where two-thirds of Virginia's
population lives.
I had already decided on a policy
platform that held a natural appeal
for suburban voters. It included tax
relief for homeowners, a statewide
pre-K initiative, a balanced approach
to growth, and new transportation
solutions.
Our campaign strategy focused on
eight "battleground" localities. These
were suburban counties in Northern
Virginia, Richmond, Hampton
Roads, and Central Virginia that
routinely go Republican. Our goal
was not to win these suburbs, but to
cut in half the GOP's usual margin of
victory.
But we dramatically exceeded our
expectations in the "battleground"
localities. Rather than just cutting our
margin of defeat, we actually won six
of the eight counties we targeted. We
also out-performed our goals in the
other two. And therein lies the secret of
our statewide victory.
Even as we methodically laid out
our strategy, told my personal story,
and offered an optimistic message of
building on our success on key issues,
Kilgore only relied more heavily on
negative television and radio attack
ads.
When Kilgore's death penalty attack
ads failed to generate any movement in
the polls, he tried to label me as a tax-raiser,
a liberal, and a flip-flopper.
When those failed to gain any traction,
he tried to focus the race on the issue
of illegal immigration, which was a
growing concern in Northern Virginia.
His attacks attracted national media
attention, because illegal immigration
is a hot topic in other parts of the
country.
I responded by saying that I was
opposed to illegal immigration, but that
it was wrong to ask our local police officers
to do the job of the federal government.
I also reminded people that if
Kilgore really wanted to do something
about immigration, all he had to do was
pick up a phone and call Bush and his
Republican friends in Washington. He
could tell them to do their jobs by
enforcing the immigration laws.
When you consider the margins by
which I won the regions he targeted
with that attack ad, an argument can be
made that it ultimately backfired.
While motivating our Democratic
base, we strategically and successfully
reached out to independent and
Republican voters. We fought hard
and avoided being the other side's
punching bag. At the same time, we
held the high ground by offering a
positive message for the future. And
most important, our agenda focused
on the real-life issues -- homeowner's
tax relief, pre-K, transportation --
that mattered to the suburban voters
we targeted.
Winning support in fast-growing
suburbs was the key to winning this
election. In 2004, Bush won 97 of the
nation's 100 fastest-growing counties.
To counter that trend, I aimed to connect
with those voters by running a
campaign focused on "quality of life"
issues. Overcrowded schools, highway
congestion, sprawl, housing prices, and
property taxes are problems that didn't
go away when the 1990s ended. They
are big concerns in the places where I
campaigned and won.
When I told suburban voters that I
wanted to help them "grow right and
get there faster," it resonated with suburban
voters, regardless of what political
affiliation they held. This addressed
their top two concerns: How to preserve
the lifestyle they sought by moving
to the suburbs, and how to contend
with the biggest drags on their
quality of life there -- transportation
and traffic.
That's why, as governor-elect, my
first act was to hold town hall meetings
in key locations, around the state, to
discuss transportation solutions.
I now have the opportunity to put
my platform into place. It won't be
easy. Republicans control both chambers
of the Virginia Legislature. But I
welcome the challenge.
