About 70 Votes Decide Virginia GOP's Choice for U.S. Senate
By Tim Craig and Anita Kumar
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, June 1, 2008
RICHMOND, May 31 -- By a paper-thin margin, former Virginia governor James S. Gilmore III captured the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate on Saturday at a state party convention here that exposed some GOP doubts about Gilmore and highlighted the influence of social conservatives.
Gilmore defeated Del. Robert G. Marshall, a staunch opponent of abortion rights making his first bid for statewide office, by about 70 votes out of 10,378 cast. The margin was less than one percentage point.
Despite outspending his rival by more than 8 to 1, Gilmore was nearly upset by a coalition of antiabortion and anti-tax activists, libertarians and some moderate Republicans from Northern Virginia who backed Marshall (Prince William).
Many in that coalition banded together later in the day to help Del. Jeffrey M. Frederick (Prince William) oust former lieutenant governor John H. Hager as chairman of the state party. Frederick, 32, campaigned as a younger, more conservative alternative. Hager, 72, is Jenna Bush's father-in-law.
Gilmore is gearing up for a fall campaign against former governor Mark R. Warner, the likely Democratic nominee, in a contest that will draw national attention. The retirement of Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), no relation to Mark Warner, has given Democrats a prime chance to expand their Senate majority.
After winning the GOP nomination, Gilmore called for party unity.
"Don't be worried about the fact that every now and then we get ourselves into a contentious convention," said Gilmore, also a former attorney general and former chairman of the Republican National Committee. "When we come down to the end, we will be unified."
In his campaign, Marshall had criticized Gilmore's support for abortion rights until the eighth week of pregnancy. After his loss, Marshall said it was important to defeat Warner but stopped short of endorsing the Republican nominee. Marshall told supporters that the "party needs to be united behind principled, pro-life, real pro-life [leaders] who respect the rights of all people, old and young."
Division at the convention underscored one of the challenges Gilmore faces as he prepares to take on Warner, who has raised more than $8 million for his campaign.
But a Gilmore-Warner matchup is expected to be a slugfest. Each has vastly different opinions of the other's record and competing views on how to change Washington.
Warner, who is expected to become the consensus Democratic nominee June 14 at the party's convention, announced he will run his first statewide television advertisement Monday.
The ad features testimonials from former state Senate president John H. Chichester, a Republican, and business and civic leaders who credit Warner for closing a budget shortfall that, they imply, Gilmore created in his term as governor from 1998 to 2002.
Gilmore, who denies he created a shortfall, shot back at Warner on Saturday, charging that the Democrat pushed through a $1 billion tax increase in 2004 that wasn't needed.
"Mark Warner said, 'I will not raise your taxes.' . . . And then he pushed through the largest tax increase in Virginia history," said Gilmore, calling the Democrat "a limousine liberal."
Recent polling shows Warner starting the race against Gilmore with a double-digit lead. The Republican's approval ratings have fallen since he was governor.
But Gilmore thinks he can make the race competitive by connecting Warner to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, a senator from Illinois, and other Democrats in Washington. Gilmore also plans to link himself to presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain, a senator from Arizona.
Although many observers say Virginia is up for grabs in the presidential election, Republicans point to the state's long record of supporting their presidential nominees. President Bush won the state by eight percentage points in 2004, and exit polls that year found that four in 10 Virginia voters described themselves as conservative.
"Barack Obama and Mark Warner are out of touch. I can tell you McCain-Gilmore will defeat Obama-Warner," said Gilmore, who added that both he and McCain have a reputation for "straight talk."
Gilmore pledged Saturday to oppose raising taxes and support cuts in spending if elected. He said he will push to put conservative judges on the federal bench, support a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, protect the rights of gun owners and crack down on illegal immigration. Gilmore said he also wants to drill for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in an effort to lower the price of gas.
Dick Leggitt, Gilmore's campaign manager, said, "We're going to base this campaign on an appeal to the working men and women of Virginia."
Warner, who opposes gun control and describes himself as a "radical centrist," has built a national reputation among Democrats for his ability to appeal to rural and working-class voters.
Warner expects to do well in Democratic-trending Northern Virginia, where one in three voters lives. But Gilmore vowed not to concede the region.
"I reject the idea the people of Northern Virginia will vote liberal and wrong," Gilmore said. "If we stand for something, we will carry Northern Virginia."
Because of Democratic strength in recent years in Northern Virginia, Republicans have suffered several setbacks, losing the governor's mansion, one of the state's two U.S. Senate seats and control of the Virginia Senate.
Gilmore, 58, hopes to reverse that trend. He has solid name recognition across the state, an asset he used to help force retiring Rep. Tom Davis, a moderate Republican from Northern Virginia, to stay out of the Senate race.
But Saturday's nomination fight, in which some Davis loyalists worked on behalf of Marshall, showed that Gilmore has plenty of work ahead to shore up his base even as he pivots to face Warner.
"It will be a bit of challenge for Jim, because the social conservatives are not enthused and the moderates still harbor some grudges," said former state delegate Richard H. Black, a conservative from Loudoun County who supported Marshall.
Gilmore also faces a hurdle in raising enough money to stay competitive with Warner, who appears to have strong backing from Northern Virginia's business community.
Gilmore has raised about $1 million, but he spent all but $200,000 of it on his campaign against Marshall. In May, Gilmore lent his campaign $50,000.
"He will have to work very hard to raise the kind of money he needs," U.S. Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte (R-Va.) said.
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