By Lisa Rein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 2, 2006; B05
An unexpected political drama has played out for the last 22 months at the community hall in Clifton, a town of million-dollar houses on five acres in western Fairfax County that twice backed President Bush: The Democratic Women of Clifton was born.
Democrats in this fortress of Republican strength had for years seemed endangered or in hiding. In 2004 though, Jane and George Barker noticed a profusion of signs for Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry on their neighbors' lawns. "We started hearing from people that they were voting Democratic," said Barker, a stay-at-home mom married to a health-care planner.
At the group's inaugural tea in February 2005, she and fellow organizer Jane Blechman expected 15 women to show. They got 100. Today, there are 300 members.
After being sidelined in presidential politics for 40 years and state politics for more than a decade, Democrats in Virginia's largest county, home to one in seven votes in the state, are back on solid turf.
Fairfax has swung between red and blue in local elections and sends a mixed delegation to Richmond and Capitol Hill. Kerry carried it by 33,691 votes. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) easily won Fairfax last year. Former governor Mark R. Warner (D) found the county a fertile ground for votes in 2001. And several General Assembly seats turned from Republican hands to Democratic.
The tilt to blue is leaving a mark on the tight U.S. Senate race. Incumbent George Allen, a Republican who lives in the Mount Vernon area, is not contesting Fairfax as he did in 1993, when the county helped elect him governor, and 2000, when he narrowly lost it but went on to win his first Senate term.
Though he was in Fairfax yesterday, Allen has campaigned little in the county in the race's closing days, instead rallying his base in the Richmond suburbs and southwest Virginia and fighting for votes in Prince William and Loudoun counties. According to a recent Washington Post poll, Democratic challenger James Webb, who lives in Falls Church, leads Allen 60 percent to 36 percent in Fairfax, where the poll showed that the Iraq war, which Webb opposes, is unpopular.
This year, the county looks less like a battleground than a battle of margins that could determine Tuesday's winner, strategists on both sides say. Allen must minimize his losses in Fairfax to carry the state, while Webb needs to come close to Kaine's winning edge of 60,000 votes to offset Allen's strength outside Northern Virginia, analysts said.
"Fairfax was competitive when Senator Allen ran against [Democrat] Chuck Robb in 2000," Allen campaign manager Dick Wadhams said. "That dynamic has not changed in terms of it being tough to win. . . . I'm not conceding Fairfax."
The signs aren't promising for Republicans.
The county isn't growing by much, just 3.8 percent from 2000 to 2005, the U.S. Census Bureau shows. But like postwar suburbs from Long Island to Orange County, Calif., it's aging and changing. Cul-de-sacs lined with multicar garages are redeveloping into narrow streets of townhouses, condos and single-family houses with tiny lawns. Government workers who once commuted to the city are joined by transplants from the city and elsewhere: tech workers, lawyers, engineers, real estate agents, consultants, waitresses, salespeople and construction workers. More are single: 24.1 percent of households last year, up from 21.4 in 2000, the census shows. With 40 percent of its residents now black, Asian and Hispanic, Fairfax is looking more like New York City.
"We're a suburb with urban characteristics," Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerald E. Connolly (D) said.
Half the county's 1.1 million residents still live in single-family houses. But its changing face makes Fairfax more like a city at the polls: Democratic, moderate, drawn less to social issues than practical ones. In other words, not Allen's natural constituency.
"The best message for Jim Webb up here is 'change,' " said Steve Jarding, a senior Webb adviser.
For decades, the Capital Beltway cleaved a political dividing line in Northern Virginia, with Democrats generally inside and Republicans outside. Now observers in both parties agree that line has shifted west to Chain Bridge Road (Route 123).
"I'm not sure where the real Republican strongholds are anymore, except for the southern part here," said Supervisor Elaine N. McConnell, a Republican who since 1983 has represented the Springfield District of southern Fairfax, which includes Clifton. "You used to have whole blocks of areas you don't go to if you're the opposite party. Now it's harder to know where your people are."
The Springfield District, which includes Burke, Fairfax Station, Greenbriar and neighborhoods near the county Government Center, is still the toughest area for Democrats to crack. But Barker said of the new women's club in Clifton, "People are coming to us. They're finding us."
To be sure, some pockets of Fairfax have resisted Democratic incursion, a horseshoe from Great Falls west to southern Springfield. Living in the shadow of the federal government in Washington, voters are able to distinguish national from state and local politics, and they tend to split tickets.
Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) is a favorite for reelection against Democrat Andrew Hurst. Democrat Judy Feder might come closer to unseating Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) -- especially in the Fairfax corner of a district stretching to the Shenandoah Valley -- but the popular incumbent represents a heavily Republican area. The part of Fairfax represented by Rep. James P. Moran (D-Va.) has been reliably Democratic in recent years.
"Right now Fairfax is Democratic given the national paradigm," Davis said. "But these are independent people who, given the right circumstances, are going to vote for the best people."
Fairfax GOP candidates used to turn for support to Centreville, a fast-growing, affordable community of townhouses and strip malls in the Sully District. Now Centreville is less reliable. Down Route 29, the 1,100 townhouses and single-family houses of the FairCrest community replaced older Cape Cods and bungalows.
Chad Crouse, 38, who lives in one of those townhouses, says he is likely to choose Webb. Crouse, a statistician for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, moved to Fairfax in 1997 from Iowa.
Allen's hopes rest with voters such as Brinkley Moore, 24, a Navy brat who builds fiber-optic systems for a federal contractor in Chantilly. "Bush is good on terrorism," Moore said. Being young and new in town though, he's like many voters in Fairfax who aren't familiar with Allen's long history in Virginia politics. Sixteen percent of the county lived in a different residence a year ago, the Census Bureau shows.
Proof that Fairfax is hewing toward the political middle and away from social issues came yesterday as Allen stopped at the offices of TrafficLand, a company off Route 50 that uses an Internet-based network to track traffic movement.
Real-time images were projected onto a video screen as company founder Lawrence Nelson told Allen his technology "is making the roads a lot smarter" even if new roads aren't being built. Allen nodded in agreement.
Speaking to reporters outside, he said, "Our family, like others, is concerned about getting home," before he was whisked into his campaign van, which headed down Waples Mill Road into rush-hour traffic.
