Prince William, the State's Bellwether
Obama's Win There Signaled Democrats' Inroads in Va.

By Kristen Mack
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 12, 2008

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.

County supervisors, who were elected to four-year terms last November, will not be up again until 2011.

It won't be long before Prince William's population is majority minority, and that means some incumbents will be vulnerable, Supervisor John D. Jenkins (D-Neabsco) said. Tremendous population growth, fueled almost entirely by minorities, has made Prince William the most ethnically and racially diverse county in Northern Virginia.

In the city of Manassas Park, where there had not been a Democrat on the local ballot in more than 20 years, two won seats on the council last week.

"This election we made a determined effort to recruit candidates," said EJ Scott, the chairman of the Manassas/Manassas Park Cities Democratic Committee. "This ride was partly due to the coattails of an inspirational candidate like Barack Obama. But it also has a lot to do with the complexion of our area."

Republicans downplay the political shift and say there is no reason they can't be competitive on the new playing field, especially if they continue to focus on quality-of-life issues.

"It's too early to draw any long-term conclusions about what Virginia will look like over the next several years," Prince William Supervisor Michael C. May (R-Occoquan) said of his party statewide. "We'll have to see if this is a long-term trend and whether we can regain our footing and redeem our advantage."

Obama became the first Democrat to carry Virginia in 44 years. The state will be represented by two Democrats in the U.S. Senate for the first time since 1970. And the Democratic Party picked up at least two, possibly three, U.S. House seats.

Prince William Democrats hope to keep newly identified voters engaged and replicate that kind of success on the local level.

"We have a superior ground game, and we've been growing since 2005. We have a volunteer base of 5,000 people throughout the county who are still willing to work hard," Pete Frisbie, chairman of the Prince William County Democratic Committee, said of the contacts the local party made during this year's presidential campaign.

Just because Democrats made gains on the national and state level doesn't mean they will translate locally, Stewart said. Local GOP elected officials have catered to issues that are central to the quality of life in the outer suburbs, such as controlling growth and development, building roads and even cracking down on illegal immigration, he said.

"It's not a rejection of conservative principles; it's a rejection of a Congress and president that failed to get anything done," Stewart said of last week's results. He said he has faith in the independence of Prince William voters.

"They vote for the candidate, not the party," he said. "We've held our own, largely due to the nature of the issues we address."

Polling director Jon Cohen contributed to this report.