Operation: Take Back Virginia
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Webb wants to raise taxes on Virginia's families, Allen continued, pointing to the children in the crowd, asking his audience to imagine what $2,000 less for that family of six would mean. He wants to give amnesty to undocumented immigrants, stealing more from that same family's pocket, and to commit the ultimate insult, redefining the marriage that keeps them strong to cover just about anyone. As Allen spoke, his audience gazed forward in distress. Earlier some people put their heads in their hands, rocking stiffly, as Fireball and 45 Magnum asked them to imagine a Congress with Nancy Pelosi in charge, or a country with Teddy Kennedy and Hillary Clinton in ascendance. Allen's talking points are the same featured on his relentless TV ads, and Webb has consequently spent most of the campaign reminding Virginians that he is tough, a soldier "born fighting," that he's never supported raising taxes on families, never supported amnesty for "illegals," a phrase that trips easily off his tongue, never regarded marriage as anything but the sole province of "one man and one woman."
In the last case, Webb echoes the log line used in ads to support Virginia's Ballot Question 1, which would amend the state constitution to insure that "only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by this Commonwealth and its political subdivisions." Webb opposes the amendment, and most of the time he tells his audiences that, too. Virginia, after all, has had a civil law defining marriage to exclude homosexuals since 1975, and a ban on civil unions since 1994. And the amendment proposal is so sweeping that it could apply to unmarried heterosexuals who are either "shacking up," as a Richmond man explained it to a friend, or in nonsexual relationships of mutual support. At a college stop in Richmond earlier in the week, Webb noted that the nuclear family no longer typifies the majority of American households. But he doesn't go the extra distance to imagine social protections and laws that would reflect that reality, beyond civil unions for gays, which he told the college students he supports philosophically. That was in a classroom. He told me he wasn't going to go near that issue in general campaigning. Webb doesn't use the word "discrimination," but then neither does most of the literature opposing Question 1. On the weekend, ads playing in the southwest on Fox radio had Webb asserting that he was a Christian, committed to the belief in marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and omitting any reference to his opposition to Question 1.
Earlier on Saturday protestors on either side of the question lined Main Street in Abingdon. Those for the "No" emphasized the harm it would do to heterosexuals, particularly the threat it would pose to domestic violence laws that now apply to unmarried people. I didn't get a chance to ask Theresa how she felt about the ballot question before she rushed into the cafeteria. Bill Carrico, the Republican candidate for Congress in "the Fighting Ninth" district that encompasses southwest Virginia, helped get the measure on the ballot. He was also at the dinner, a large man in a tight suit with a halting speaking manner, a former state trooper who emphasizes his humble roots, his understanding of the struggle of young families, and his desire to change laws so his children can pray anywhere in public school or public space at any time. Carrico is the sacrificial lamb, left to speak last at the dinner, almost an afterthought in the speeches of those who preceded him. He hasn't a prayer of unseating the Democratic incumbent, a hardworking nerdy fellow named Rick Boucher who has held the seat for decades and brought jobs, airports, roads. The marriage measure was purely tactical, to help turnout for Allen, the fourth T. Everything in the southwest will depend on turnout on Tuesday. Allen closed his remarks much as he'd opened them, with a booming voice and a cheerleader's cadence, calling on his fans to bring him across the finish line one more time. He had the people on their feet; then he tossed the football to a cheering man, who promptly fumbled it.
Up the highway that same night about 400 Democrats packed into the Abingdon High School cafeteria for a potluck and rally. They brought covered dishes, enough to load several long tables, with fried chicken and baked beans, pasta salads, sweet potatoes, deviled eggs, fresh ham and biscuits, green beans with hamhocks still in the slow-cooker, salads and sweet treats of all kinds. The dinner was free if you don't count the dishes, and the people buzzed with anticipation. They may be wrong. Their man Webb, ahead in all the polls but still within the margin of error, could lose. But momentum was on their side, and the atmosphere there was the same from as it was since the beginning of what the Democratic Party calls its Southwest Swing.
Every year since anyone could remember the last weekend before Election Day has brought the Democratic candidates for Congress, Senate, and governor through the southwest. Doug Wilder, now the mayor of Richmond, did it in 1989, before he was elected the only black governor in U.S. history. Mark Warner did it before taking the governor's seat in 1999, and Tim Kaine did it before succeeding him last year. The stops are always the same: Christiansburg, Pulaski, Fort Chiswell, Marion, Abingdon, Honaker, and so are the venues. Boucher organizes the rallies, and he told me this year's were the biggest he's seen. Part reward for past service, part encouragement to get out the vote one more time, they attract party activists mainly, but along the route every local pol said he noticed unfamiliar faces as well. Warner and Kaine were along for this trip, at each spot repeating what has become a Democratic mantra: nobody thought Warner had a chance, and he won; nobody thought Kaine had a chance, and he won. When the same team was together with Wilder for a rally in Richmond earlier in the week, they added that everybody counted Wilder out for mayor in 2004, and he won with 79 percent of the vote. The end of the story writes itself: at the beginning nobody thought Webb had a chance, and….
