By Tim Craig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 25, 2006; B02
It's just 2,500 acres of one-time river muck.
But U.S. Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) hopes Portsmouth's Craney Island Dredged Material Management Area can help sink his Democratic opponent's chances of being elected to the Senate this year.
The man-made island, located between the James and Elizabeth rivers, consists of dredged material from Hampton Roads waterways.
Virginia and federal officials want to expand the island so they can build a new cargo terminal, which they hope will boost shipping traffic into the Port of Hampton Roads. The deep-water terminal could generate 54,000 jobs and pump an additional $1.7 billion into the state's economy, officials say.
At a debate Saturday in Hot Springs, Allen surprised challenger James Webb by asking what he thought of the island, never mentioning the planned terminal. Webb, who is making his first run at office, was forced to admit he didn't know what or where it was, causing Allen to get a chuckle out of the audience when he said, "It's in Virginia."
In a debate that had few fireworks, Webb's ignorance on the issue became a key theme of news accounts of the event, particularly in the Norfolk region, where the Democrat hopes to do well Nov. 7.
Webb, a former Marine who served as secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, has based his campaign largely around his disdain for President Bush's economic policy and invasion of Iraq.
Allen strategists say the Craney Island question was a deliberate attempt to catch Webb off guard by exposing his lack of knowledge on many local issues while undercutting his support in the Hampton Roads region.
"I just think [Webb] has been so immersed in literary and cinematic fiction for so long, he really doesn't have much of a grasp of the real issues in this race," said Allen campaign manager Dick Wadhams, referring to Webb's career as a novelist who also works on Hollywood movies. "I think his performance Saturday, as highlighted by this Craney Island issue, showed that."
Kristian Denny Todd, a Webb spokeswoman, said Allen was playing a game of "gotcha."
"Let's be frank. The majority of Virginians have never heard of Craney Island," Todd said. "This was a political maneuver. It had nothing to do with Jim's knowledge of Virginia issues."
But state and federal officials said yesterday that all Virginia residents should learn about the island, because their jobs may depend on it.
Since 1957, when the island's walls were completed, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been pumping dredged materials from the Elizabeth River and other nearby waterways to create the land mass.
The island, which is made up of more than 200 million cubic yards of sand, rocks and silt, has become a favorite spot for recreational fishermen and bird watchers. Hundreds of species of migratory birds nest on the island, including lesser yellowlegs, least terns and black-bellied plovers.
State officials now hope to cash in on the island's location by building the terminal.
The state's maritime industry, anchored by three shipping terminals -- at Newport News, Norfolk and Portsmouth -- is responsible for 165,000 jobs, said Joe Harris, a spokesman for the Virginia Port Authority.
"I do not think you can find another industry in the state that compares in terms of jobs and money generated from those jobs," Harris said.
With cargo traffic expected to increase, state officials say a new terminal on Craney Island is vital to keeping the port competitive with those in New York, Savannah, Ga., and Charleston, S.C.
Last week, the U.S. Senate authorized a 580-acre expansion of the island, which will cost $671.3 million. As much as $26.2 million in federal funds has to be appropriated for the project. The authorization is the initial step in getting the first phase of the terminal opened by 2017.
"It's going to make us an international port of some significance," said Portsmouth Mayor James W. Holley III, an independent who credits Allen with moving the project along.
Larry J. Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, called Allen's use of the issue "a clever ruse." But Sabato said he doubts Webb's response cost him any votes, although he said that could change if Allen begins using the issue in campaign commercials.
"The average person will be like, 'Can you believe it, Jim Webb didn't know about Craney Island,' when the truth is they didn't know about it either," Sabato said.