The anti-tax Virginia Club for Growth also protested the endorsement in a statement that said Kilgore bowed to pressure from the chamber not to oppose efforts to raise regional taxes.
One political certainty has existed for the past century: The winning candidate for governor has carried Fairfax.
Kilgore, the former attorney general, said yesterday that he "will be spending a lot of time in Fairfax" in the next month, focusing on several issues his strategists believe will resonate with county voters. They include his pledges to widen Interstate 66 inside the Beltway and allow local governments to raise their own taxes for rail and road projects, his attention as attorney general to fighting gangs and his stand against illegal immigration.
"I think I'm being underestimated in Fairfax County, and that's just fine with me," Kilgore said.
Kaine said he plans to spend about 35 percent of his time between now and Election Day campaigning in Fairfax and the rest of Northern Virginia.
His strategists see Kerry's nearly 35,000-vote margin in the county as a sign that the increasingly urban county is drifting Democratic. Yesterday, the candidate offered a transportation plan with likely appeal to Fairfax voters, pledging to give local governments the power to reject rezoning proposals if they determine that nearby roads could not handle traffic from the new development.
Kaine said the county's importance was brought home to him the moment he entered the George Mason student center yesterday morning with his son, Nat, a high school sophomore, and was greeted by Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerald E. Connolly (D).
Connolly asked Nat, "What do you have to remember about this race?" Kaine recalled. "Nat repeated the line that Gerry has drilled into his head: 'It's all about Fairfax. It's all about Fairfax.' "
Larry J. Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said it is inevitable that the Fairfax streak in statewide races will come to an end some Election Day. "All it is going to take," he said, is a "close election won by a Republican in which Fairfax County voted for the Democrat."
