Prince William is a hotbed of activist conservatism, with a more "mainstream" conservative republican as the chair of our board of supervisors, a guy named Sean Connaughton.
He ran for Attorney General in the primary, and was opposed by a majority of the republicans in the county committee. Needless to say, this has led to some bad feelings in the county republican caucuses. The "hard" conservatives also ran a solid conservative against a revered long-time delegate who frankly is pretty conservative himself, but voted for the tax increase in 2004. That left a lot of bad blood between the mainstream and conservative republicans.
I talked to conservatives who weren't voting for Kilgore because he didn't sign the tax pledge, and moderates who wouldn't vote for Kilgore because he was seen as the pick of the hard conservatives.
I'm wishing, but not hopeful, that our prince william republican party will take this election to heart and come back together. However, in FR-land, our problems would be seen almost as typical "true" conservatives against RINOs -- and we all know how THAT argument is playing out.
One more insight: The republicans had two long-time incumbent delegates covering Prince william and Loudoun, both were strong social conservatives. The democrats heavily targeted these two. One of them (Loudoun) lost. I'm sure that is both a reflection of the changing nature of Loudoun, and an explanation for why Kilgore lost. 2 years ago I think neither had an opponent.
BTW, people are ignoring that, in a comparison between 2001 and 2005, we had an election in 2003 as well. In 2003 we drove up the number of republican delegates to 60 from a much smaller number, and in 2005 we only lost 1. So we have more republican delegates now than we did after the 2001 election. Some had real opponents and won by a lot less votes, but they all still won.
We lost a couple of RINO republicans we bumped out in the primary. We picked up a couple seats, and lost one more than we picked up. I have to check if the number of "conservative" republicans has increased, but I'm afraid it has not.
Thanks for the explaination. I'm only somewhat familiar with those two counties politically, and haven't been past Farifax county in my travels.
That said, I know all about exurbs (which is why I was surprised) having lived in one back when it was "country".
Picking up Lt. Gov. and losing 1 House of Delegate member = a very slight net pick-up in Virginia.
The 2001 election brought us up to 64-34-2 in the House of Delegates. It was the first post-redistricting election, but we still did really well all over the state.
In 2003, a few Democrats won three seats in northern Virginia from Republicans. J. Chapman Peterson was one of them, his set was considered fairly Republican. That took us to 61-37-2.
After Thelma Drake went to Congress, Paula Miller won her seat in Hampton Roads in a special election. One more Democrat.
This time, it looks like Democrats took three more seats in northern Virginia while Republicans took two seats in the rural south. I don't remember how the independents played out.
However, 2001 was definitely a high-water mark for Republicans in the Virginia House of Delegates, because we finally got the countryside on the same page as the suburbanites. Then the suburbanites started to get worried and have been bleeding out of the party in NoVa. That's the trend I see.
"Sean Connaughton. He ran for Attorney General in the primary, and was opposed by a majority of the republicans in the county committee."
He ran for Lt. Governor vs Bill Bolling and lost.
Connaughton was widely regarded as a RINO. I tend to be wary of these code-words, such as "mainstream", which usually means they are anything but Conservative. The media attempted to even apply that to Russ (Crack) Potts, and by any stretch, the guy was not only not mainstream or moderate, he was a Weldite RINO (to the left of even a lot of average VA 'Rats). I was sorry to see Crack Potts not take more votes from Kaine.