By Robert Barnes and Matthew Mosk
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, November 3, 2006; A01
This fall, politicians, campaign strategists and demographers are looking for changing colors in the political foliage outside of the Capital Beltway: an even rosier tint to Calvert County, perhaps, or a bluer shade of purple in Loudoun County.
In the Republican-red commonwealth of Virginia, the question is whether recent Democratic success in Loudoun and Prince William counties is an aberration or a trend. In blue-state Maryland, where voter registration is so one-sided that it looks like a typo, Republicans see positive signs in exurbs such as Frederick County and in regions such as Southern Maryland.
Put simply -- and simplistically, many would argue -- politicos wonder whether Virginia's exurbs are becoming more Democratic and Maryland's are becoming more Republican.
Kevin Igoe, a Republican political consultant based in Maryland, summed it up this way:
"I definitely think the Virginia suburbs are becoming more liberal. I mean, look: The growth in the Northern Virginia suburbs exceeds the growth in the rest of the state, and it's more liberal than the existing electorate.
"I think Maryland continues to divide along two lines. The base of the Democratic Party keeps shrinking geographically into Baltimore, Montgomery County and Prince George's. Those jurisdictions are becoming more and more blue. And the rest of the state is becoming more Republican."
The problem is that boundaries drawn by surveyors hundreds of years ago are imperfect measurements of political attitude today.
Prince William and Loudoun have a distinct east-west split. Anne Arundel County, which has been a welcoming spot for Republican candidates for decades, can easily be divided into three regions with their own political identities. Frederick the city (D) contrasts with Frederick the county (R). Howard County, the center of Maryland in more ways than one, consists of the residents of Columbia and everyone else.
Robert E. Lang, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, which is headquartered in Alexandria, says booming, wealthy Prince William and Loudoun are no longer exurbs, but what he calls "emerging suburbs."
"You drive along [Route] 28 in Fairfax and Loudoun and you tell me what county you're in," he said. "There's no distinction. Loudoun and Prince William have been Fairfaxed."
Lang and other demographers believe that density is destiny: Large lots and single-family houses contain Republicans, high-rises and townhouses teem with Democrats. When Fairfax's population topped 1 million, its move to the Democratic column in presidential years was certain, demographers argue.
"Fairfax is just too urbanized to be anything other than reliably Democratic," Lang said.
Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, the Fairfax Republican for whom such geopolitical discussions are as interesting as sports fantasy leagues, draws the line short of Lang. "Fairfax and areas outside [the Beltway] will remain competitive," said Davis, who argues that recent voting patterns in Northern Virginia are more anti-Bush than anti-Republican.
But Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) won Davis's Fairfax-Prince William district last year, as well as the neighboring district represented by Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R). Kaine's victory there, in a district that stretches from McLean through Loudoun to the West Virginia line, was enough to persuade Democrat Judy Feder to launch a well-funded campaign that could be the toughest reelection battle of Wolf's 26-year congressional career.
Lang calls the Washington region "the Sunbelt of the Northeast," and he and colleague Thomas W. Sanchez note that Loudoun and Prince William are filling with people from all over the country drawn by job growth, not cheaper housing. In fact, incomes have soared in the area.
"This isn't part of the South, it isn't part of the North," Lang said. "It's part of generic, rich America, is what this is."
Even though Maryland is the more liberal state, the political trends there are more traditional: families moving from the urban core, a growing number of voters who find the Democratic Party moving too far to the left, distinct differences between urban and rural voters.
John Gibson, executive director of the Maryland Republican Party, said older rural Democrats and moderate blue-collar Democrats have more choices now.
"I think the Democratic Party in Maryland, especially in contrast with Virginia, has had such a stranglehold on the electorate for so long, people no longer see the party they grew up with," Gibson said. "Their party has moved so far to the left that at this point, the Republicans have a bigger tent."
It doesn't mean more Marylanders are becoming Republicans, however. More than 55 percent of registered voters in the state are Democrats, and 29 percent are Republicans, according to the most recent statewide figures. Those who don't sign up as either are the ones the GOP is actively courting.
Sen. Janet Greenip, a Republican who is finishing her first term representing southern Anne Arundel County, said she believes the political growth in her area has been among independents.
Most of them, she said, are Washington commuters who are seeking a more rural lifestyle, or military families moving near Fort Meade and the National Security Agency.
"Many of them are independent, but you see more conservative values," she said.
Southern Maryland is experiencing political crosscurrents as it undergoes dramatic demographic change, said Sen. Thomas M. Middleton (D), a Charles County politician for more than two decades.
In his county, African Americans moving down from Prince George's County have been driving growth. About 68 percent of new residents since 2003 have been black, and most have registered as Democrats, Middleton said.
The impact has been clear: In the September Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate seat, Charles was the only jurisdiction besides majority-black Baltimore and Prince George's to support former NAACP president Kweisi Mfume over the winner, Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin.
But neighboring Calvert and St. Mary's counties have seen the opposite trend. There, new residents are mostly white, many in the upper income levels.
"There, it's getting much tougher to be a Democrat," Middleton said. "The Democrats are being squeezed."
Middleton said he is looking for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Martin O'Malley to be elected and help shift those tides.
"I'm hoping he will work with us to bring the Democratic Party back to the middle," Middleton said.
But like Lang in Virginia, strategists in Maryland believe that county boundaries are an outdated way to look at voting patterns.
"What's happening in Maryland is increasing polarization between the densely populated areas and the not densely populated" ones, said former Democratic secretary of state John Willis, who teaches at the University of Baltimore. "You need to be looking at census tracts" rather than county lines, he said.
Gibson, the Republican Party official, agrees.
"Geographical modeling in the 1980s was very successful," he said. "Democrats turned out the cities, and Republicans turned out the suburbs and rural areas. The reality is that now we're kind of falling away from the geographic political model. Particularly in the last six years, campaigns have tried to focus on the voters, and not just where they live."
Through so-called microtargeting, the party can reach out to the one red household in the mostly blue block of intensely blue Silver Spring, for instance.
"I know our campaign and the party, we make a real effort to try to make a 39 percent Republican district into a 40 percent Republican district," he said.
Over time, he pointed out, even the little victories add up.
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