Va. Democrats' Surprising Plan: Call Bill Clinton

Once-Shunned Former President To Shore Up Support for Obama

RICHMOND -- A decade ago, Virginia Republicans would joke that their easiest path to victory on Election Day was getting the Democrats to have President Bill Clinton campaign for them.

Virginia Democrats rarely obliged, but they still took a series of punishing defeats during the 1990s because many voters in southern and central Virginia had a decidedly negative impression of the former president.

Today, Virginia Democrats hope to turn that joke around on the GOP when Clinton holds rallies in Roanoke and Richmond in support of Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Virginia Democrats say Clinton's campaign swing through Virginia, which is aimed at voters in the largely rural and suburban Richmond and Roanoke television markets, underscores how the state's political climate and the former president's image have changed dramatically since he left office in 2001.

With Virginia shaping up as a key battleground in Obama's race against GOP nominee John McCain, the fact that Democrats now consider Clinton an asset also illustrates how the nationwide economic crisis is a key issue in the presidential campaign.

"It does show a change of the times and how things are different in Virginia than they were a decade ago," said Lewis F. Payne, a Democrat who represented south central Virginia in Congress from 1988 to 1997. "Then, I guess Clinton would not have considered coming into downstate Virginia, nor would have anyone asked."

During Clinton's presidency, Democrats lost two successive governor's races, four congressional seats and more than a dozen legislative seats.

"There is no question Republicans were on an ascendancy in this part of the state when he was president," said House Majority Leader H. Morgan Griffith (R-Salem), who noted that the GOP went from 41 to 52 House of Delegate seats between 1992 and 2001.

Since Clinton left office, Virginia Democrats have been the party on the upswing, including winning two consecutive governor's races, the 2006 Senate race and taking control of the state Senate last year.

This year, Obama is hoping to keep the Democratic winning streak alive by becoming the first Democratic nominee since 1964 to carry Virginia. If Obama can win the state's 13 electoral votes, Democrats believe it will be almost impossible for McCain to win the White House.

Despite the well-publicized hard feelings between the two men during the primaries, Obama might need Clinton's help in the state. At his two rallies, Clinton will try to shore up Obama's support among white working-class voters who are hesitant to back the Democratic ticket. He also will remind voters about his belief that Obama is best suited to manage the economy, campaign officials say.

"I think for a lot of people he is a very powerful reminder of what America was like when government was working for them," said Kevin Griffis, an Obama spokesman. "It was a time when people's incomes were rising, it was easier to send their kids to school and government was running balanced budgets instead of deficits."

Even though Obama carried Virginia by 30 points in the state's Feb. 12 primary, his Democratic opponent, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), ran strong in many rural communities west of the Allegheny Mountains. Some of her supporters are threatening to back McCain, according to Democratic leaders.