Anyone who knows Sen. Phillip P. Puckett knows the Russell County Democrat knows when to run from his party. He voted with Republicans on an issue that resonates powerfully in his coalfields district: shielding Virginians from Obama health-insurance requirements.
For months, Puckett has avoided the president. Puckett even declared he won't support Obama for re-election because, he says, Obama is anti-coal. Puckett's retreat, a reaction to a $1 million television advertising rant by out-of-state Republicans, is a reminder that local House and Senate contests are being nationalized — by both parties.
In Fredericksburg, Democratic Sen. Edd Houck ran a TV spot linking his opponent to the Koch brothers, bankrollers of conservative causes, and the loss of jobs to China. PolitiFact Virginia had one word for the ad: false.
Why talk about the real business of the General Assembly — roads, schools, police — when you can howl about irrelevant stuff, even to the point of poor taste? Witness the Loudoun County GOP Halloween email that parodies the Obama 'hope' poster: A zombie likeness of Obama with what appears to be a bullet hole in his head.
Efforts by Republicans and Democrats to tie legislative races to what's going on in Washington are not unprecedented. From 1971 to 1975, 23 Democratic House incumbents ran for re-election as independents rather than answer for the liberal excesses of their national party. Four decades later, the national-state connection is stronger because of demographic change, redistricting and the electronic distractions of the modern age.
Virginia, with a population north of 8 million, is less Southern. Half of the people who live here are natives, down from 90 percent a century ago. Come-heres bring the politics of their home states, where campaigns are more heavily influenced by national crosscurrents because local and state offices often are decided the same year as the presidency and Congress.
Dating to the conservative Democratic era, Virginia gubernatorial and legislative elections have been held off-year to insulate them from national affairs. In diverse, two-party Virginia, distinctions are eroding. Voters take their cues from beyond the state's borders. That's why it's still relatively safe for Northern Virginia Democrats to publicly stand with Obama and Bill Clinton.
With new House and Senate districts drawn to empower narrow bands of voters, partisan appeals are the rule. The one-note, anti-Obama theme of Republicans energizes their base, just as the silence of Democrats discourages their activists.
Because legislative elections generate the least interest in a state in which an election is held every year, candidates need a message that pierces the media clutter of the web and cable TV. It must be catchy, evocative. But increasingly, that means trivial.
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