McCain Aide Sees Va. as Close but Winnable

Kaine, who has been mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate, will hold four town hall meetings for Obama on Saturday in Northern Virginia's fast-growing outer suburbs. On Sunday, Kaine will go door to door for Obama in Richmond.

A Democratic presidential nominee last won Virginia in 1964, but demographic shifts and a decline of the Republican brand in Northern Virginia has left Democrats optimistic that Obama can carry the state this year.

If Obama wins all the states that Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) carried in 2004 and adds Virginia and one other state that Bush also won that year, he would have more than the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. If McCain loses Virginia, he would probably have to pick off a heavily populated state that voted for Kerry, such as Michigan or Pennsylvania.

On Thursday, President Bush's former top political strategist, Karl Rove, wrote in an op-ed article in the Wall Street Journal that Virginia, Colorado, Ohio and Michigan will be the four states that will decide the election.

Rove said that Virginia, which Bush won by 8 percentage points in 2004, remains an "uphill climb for Mr. Obama, but not out of reach."

Robert D. Holsworth, a political science professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, said the comments by Rove and DuHaime prove that Republicans are taking Obama's efforts in Virginia seriously.

"I think the Republicans, for a while, thought it was a feint, they thought it was a bluff, and the Democrats were just trying to divert attention and make Republicans spend money," Holsworth said. "But now they are realizing Obama is very serious about Virginia."

DuHaime said that he still expects Obama to outspend McCain in Virginia but added that the GOP has a "battle-tested" team of staffers focused on guaranteeing a McCain victory. Yesterday, McCain's Straight Talk Express bus made two stops in Virginia to try to generate interest in his campaign.

"No doubt about it, it is extraordinarily important for us to win Virginia, and we are not thinking of a calculus without it," DuHaime said.