Prince William, the State's Bellwether

Obama's Win There Signaled Democrats' Inroads in Va.

Prince William prided itself as being the last Republican redoubt in Northern Virginia.

The county gained national attention for a crackdown on illegal immigrants, and its legislative delegation has some of the most strident anti-tax Republican state lawmakers. When the neighboring Loudoun County Board of Supervisors went Democratic last year, Prince William maintained its GOP dominance.

But on Nov. 4, the once reliably red county in a reliably red state went solidly for Sen. Barack Obama, signaling a political shift in Virginia politics.

Although Prince William County was crucial to Obama's winning the state, Virginia Democrats had begun a steady march into the fast-growing outer counties before the 2008 presidential election. A shift in the county's demographics and a crashing housing market has made the Democratic Party more attractive to Prince William residents. In making a play for the county, Obama's campaign exploited those new political dynamics.

As a result, Prince William became a bellwether county in a presidential battleground state.

"Prince William County is the gateway between Northern Virginia and the rest of Virginia," said Board of County Supervisors Chairman Corey A. Stewart (R-At Large). "We've proven that, as goes Prince William, so goes Virginia. The Obama camp understood that. The [Sen. John] McCain campaign failed to recognize that."

Even though Obama took Prince William, the Board of Supervisors is still controlled by Republicans. But members of both parties predict that will change when the eight-member board is up for election again in three years.

The transformation is taking place beyond Prince William and Loudoun. Other counties on the suburban fringe are closing in, too. Even though Obama did not win Stafford, Culpeper and Fauquier counties, his vote totals were roughly 10 percentage points larger than those of the Democratic presidential candidates in 2000 and 2004.

Those counties "used to be the heart of red America; now, they are burnt orange," state Sen. J. Chapman "Chap" Petersen (D-Fairfax) said.

Obama crossed the magical 60 percent threshold in Northern Virginia by winning among both whites and African Americans -- Northern Virginia was only part of the state where Obama won white voters -- as well as old and young voters, and by dominating among the region's moderate and independent voters.

"Once you start developing an area and it continues to urbanize, the philosophy changes," said Michael P. McDonald, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an associate professor at George Mason University who studies voting patterns. "People become more receptive to government playing a role in their everyday lives."

Those trends tend to give Democrats an advantage. At the local level, Democrats have long ruled the Fairfax County board. Democrats took control of the Loudoun County board last year. In Prince William County, however, Republicans still hold a 6 to 2 advantage.