Mediaboss Marketing

You just knew it would happen.

After losing four straight snap congressional elections in each, attempting to harness bipartisan rage over an unpopular president anxious national Democrats instantly looked on the Virginia gubernatorial contest as their last, best chance at relevance in the first, worst months of the Donald Trump era.

The outside world ought to butt out.

National Democrats are mistaking apples for oranges in drawing a parallel between special elections in isolated patches of four reliably red states with a statewide race in a purple state thats becoming blue, the shade of which given the surprisingly robust turnout in the Democratic primary earlier this month may be somewhere between cornflower and cobalt.

The fundamentals, as the political professions would say, always favored Republicans in those congressional districts in Kansas, Montana, South Carolina and Georgia, where a historic level of spending so elevated expectations for a Democratic victory that the party was helpless to explain the embarrassment of defeat.

The districts were drawn to elect Republicans. By margins vast and slender, the districts were carried by Trump over Hillary Clinton. For both reasons, the president could install the freshly re-elected incumbents in his Cabinet, confident they would be succeeded by Republicans. And they were.

The fundamentals in an election for Virginia governor continue to favor Democrats because the contest is at-large, decided by a border-to-border vote of millions, not thousands in which roughly a dozen populous cities and counties, most in the eastern half of the state and many left-leaning, will decide the outcome.

Losing for governor, then, despite those baked-in advantages, would be an abject humiliation for Democrats one not explained away as a consequence of the baked-in advantages Republicans had in the congressional elections through gerrymandering and Trumps strength within those manipulated districts.

Put another way: The Democrats strength in the Virginia campaign is macro. The Republicans strength in the U.S. House campaigns was micro.

In a suburban-dominated, increasingly diverse state such as Virginia, national Democrats donors, strategists, commentators and officeholders also may be overlooking an important distinction between the congressional races they lost and the gubernatorial election they hope to win: The former were fully federal in their focus; the latter, partially so.

Indeed, Virginia Democrats voting in record numbers that Ralph Northams advisers feared might portend his defeat for the nomination to Tom Perriello sided by a lopsided margin with the low-key Northam. They believed he more closely reflects the state as a whole and what its divided government demands in day-to-day leadership.

Northam, originally from the countryside but now ensconced in a city, emphasized his decade in state politics a sharp contrast with Perriellos years in Washington. Northam briefly belittled Trump, who lost Virginia to Clinton by 5 percentage points, as a narcissistic maniac to assure activists he has a capacity for the jugular.

However, its a putdown that could screw up Northams promised overtures to rural voters who overwhelmingly supported Trump. Democrats, dependent on metropolitan areas, talk about reaching out to rural Virginia. But so far, its just talk.

Perriello, because he declared for the nomination only five months before the primary, pinned his candidacy almost entirely to the notion that the growing Democratic vote, supplemented by a steady stream of newcomers to this Upper South state, could be mobilized by his eloquent, full-throated appeal to animus for Trump.

Many of the handicappers and a few activists mistook for momentum Perriellos constant presence on social media and his ability to stir audiences of wistful Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders voters. Both rattled Northam, demanding he sharpen his message and spend, spend, spend emptying his treasury of $8 million.

That means that more than advice, Northam needs money from those nervous national Democrats.

Northam, validated by endorsements from almost every elective Democrat in Virginia, was considered a better fit for the nomination because of his Richmond-centric rsum and the conditions under which the governorship is decided: an off-year election with a lower turnout that has a steroid-like effect on the Republican vote.

It is a narrowing bloc white, conservative, aging, heavily male, and largely rural that is, nonetheless, reliable and whose strength is enhanced by the usual, sharp drop in a Democratic vote that tends to peak in presidential years and stirs a bit in congressional years.

To win in November, Northam and his Republican opponent, Ed Gillespie assuming each secures his respective base, perhaps an uncertainty for Gillespie because of Corey Stewarts Trump-like renunciations must still secure a hefty slice of the right-leaning independent vote.

The Quinnipiac Poll this past week showed Gillespie ahead with self-identified independents, but trailing Northam head-to-head by 8 percentage points, apparently burdened by Trump-inflicted damage to the Republican brand and the accompanying erosion in grassroots morale.

No one should be surprised, then, if Gillespie and his running mates, Jill Vogel, for lieutenant governor, and John Adams, for attorney general, go their own way, scrounging for the votes of ticket-splitters.

Might that be the Republican candidates last, best chance at relevance in the first, worst months of the Donald Trump era?

Contact Jeff E. Schapiro at (804) 649-6814. His column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Watch his video column Thursday on Richmond.com. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter, @RTDSchapiro. Listen to his analysis 8:45 a.m. Friday on WCVE (88.9 FM).

Continued here:
Schapiro: No matter what national Democrats say, Virginia's is a state election - Richmond.com