THAT surprises - and scares the hell out of me.
Ping - Interesting fact from Barone's article is Kaine taking exurban Loudoun and Prince William.
I did not expect that at all.
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.
Kaine was mayor of Richmond (and a very talented and successful one, and I think that helped him in this race statewide), so that may explain the suburban county vote there (Henrico and Chesterfield), but the Northern Virginia and Norfolk area result I think is in part because Kilgore came across as a hick, and those areas don't do hicks. The swing in Prince William by the way was only around the statewide swing based on the Bush 2004 numbers, so Kilgore was not particularly weak in the North Virginia exurbs. The swing was much bigger in suburban Richmond, the Hampton Roads region, and Fairfax County. I think another factor is that those areas are anti Bush, and part of this is an anti Bush vote - in NJ, Virginia and California. It may not make any sense, but there you have it anyway.
Kaine won because Kilgore ran an extremely NEGATIVE campaign right out of the gate...he did not set an agenda and or contrast himself from Kaine, instead his media message was ominous and nasty IMO this cost him...don't read alot in this about the GOP in VA as it looks like the LT Gov is GOP and too the AG...