Minorities, Gloomy Economy Cited in Obama Win in County

An influx of diverse voters and a faltering economy helped Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) win Loudoun County last week, political analysts said, something no Democratic presidential candidate had done in more than 40 years.

Democrats had not carried Loudoun in a presidential election since Lyndon B. Johnson's victory in 1964, a record of futility that mirrored their losing streak in Virginia as a whole. Obama won 53.6 percent of the Loudoun vote, compared with 45.5 percent for Republican Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), very close to their share of the state vote, according to unofficial results.

Loudoun remains one of the fastest-growing counties in the United States, and analysts cited the swell of its minority population as one of the factors that propelled Obama's win. The county's Hispanic population grew by 28,529 people from 2000 to 2007, according to a recent Pew Hispanic Center report.

A decade ago, the Republican Party's emphasis on entrepreneurship and family values appealed to some immigrant communities, said Robert D. Holsworth, a political scientist at Virginia Commonwealth University. But the party's recent calls for a crackdown on illegal immigrants, in Loudoun and nationally, have "been interpreted in some of these communities as almost anti-immigrant rhetoric," he said. "That's been very harmful to the Republican Party."

Mark J. Rozell, a public policy professor at George Mason University, agreed that Latinos "right now see the Democratic Party as a friendlier place." He said the Republican Party in Loudoun has not come up with a strategy for winning those voters.

"Changes were taking place before their eyes, people were coming into their county, and the Republicans weren't doing anything to reach out to those new people," Rozell said.

Tim Buchholz, chairman of the Loudoun County Democratic Committee, said the growing diversity population was evident to him as he campaigned door-to-door for Obama. He said he noticed emerging Hispanic, Indian, East Asian and Eastern European communities in areas such as Brambleton, South Riding and Dulles.

But local Republican officials said they thought McCain's loss in Loudoun had less to do with demographic changes in the county than with Obama's large budget, which helped in spreading his message.

"The amount of resources he was able to pour into counties like Loudoun made it a very uphill battle for Republicans to hold on to the county," said Glen Caroline, chairman of the Loudoun County Republican Committee. "We saw [Obama campaign] workers volunteering across the county from out of state, whereas our volunteers [were] a homegrown, Loudoun-based effort."

McCain's showing in Loudoun also was hurt by the national economic turmoil that most voters blamed on the incumbent party, political analysts said. The crisis on Wall Street became a primary concern for voters in the Washington suburbs, which already faced record numbers of housing foreclosures and plunging real estate values.

"These are the folks who are either suffering themselves or see on their way home every night the visible signs of an unsettled economy," Holsworth said. "You not only have empathy for the families that are going through this, but your own property values are affected."

Caroline said voters ultimately blamed President Bush for the financial markets' meltdown, and that in turn hurt Republicans. "Clearly the state of the economy in Loudoun didn't do much to help John McCain," he said. "I think the economy right now trumped the issues."