As in 2006, November Election Might Hinge on One Loaded Letter

"I will ask voters, 'Do you want to have a fresh direction, or are you satisfied with the current track we are on as a state and a state government?' " Petersen said. "You have had over a decade of Republican control in Richmond. Are you ready for some new leadership there? That is my campaign."

In past state legislative races, voters have largely ignored such argument. They instead mostly base their vote on local issues and personalities, not broader philosophical arguments about party control.

Petersen points to last year's campaign for control of Congress as a guide. Fed up with Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress, voters ousted more than two dozen incumbents, many of whom represented suburban districts in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states.

In race after race, party affiliation, not individual issues, seemed to determine the outcome. In Rhode Island, for example, voters tossed Lincoln D. Chafee out of the U.S. Senate because he was a Republican, even though he was so liberal he didn't vote for Bush in 2004.

Devolites Davis, a longtime advocate for the disabled and mentally ill, said her polling indicates that her constituents took out their frustrations on national issues such as the Iraq war in last year's elections. Fairfax County voters, she says, historically don't vote for a candidate based on party affiliation alone.

Even as Fairfax County voters were giving Webb the big margins he needed to unseat George Allen, they also voted to reelect Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R), who is married to Devolites Davis, albeit by a much smaller margin than in his past races.

But there are already signs that, as her husband found out last year, Devolites Davis will face a tough campaign in a district filled with suburban voters who demographers say appear to be increasingly aligning with Democrats.

In February, New York Democrats picked up their first state Senate seat on Long Island in more than two decades after an unusually large number of voters turned out for a special election in traditionally Republican Nassau County.

In that race, the GOP candidate said she would be an "independent voice" in the Republican-controlled New York state Senate. But the Democrat countered it was time to send Republicans a message by voting for change.

Sound familiar?