At a time when Democrat Mark Warner holds a thirty-point lead in one poll for the seat of retiring Republican Sen. John Warner (no relation), the almost-certain Republican candidate steadfastly maintains he will overcome the candidate national Democrats dub their likeliest “net gainer” of a Senate seat anywhere in the nation in 2008.
In an exclusive interview with me less than 24 hours after officially becoming a candidate for the Senate, former Republican Gov. Jim Gilmore spelled out the issues and strategy he will deploy to defeat “the Democratic Warner,” who succeeded him as governor of the Old Dominion in 2001.
“I left the governorship six years ago, and he left it two years ago, and he’s personally worth $200 million, so he has some early advantages,” Gilmore said of Warner, but quickly added: “I’m undaunted.”
Regarding the Washington Post survey showing Warner with a thirty-point advantage over him, the 58-year-old Gilmore noted that the poll was not of registered voters, that in both the Rasmussen and USA America polls of registered voters only, Warner’s statewide lead over him is cut in half.
“And, if the Democratic ticket is headed by Hillary Clinton, he either has to run with her - which is going to hurt here in Virginia - or run away from her, which is going to invite a lot of press criticism,” observed Gilmore. He dismissed newspaper speculation that the front-running Democratic candidate could carry Virginia because, in his words, “that would mean her moving to the middle and not taking the positions she feels she needs to take to carry Connecticut, California, and Massachusetts.”
The former governor and onetime Republican National Chairman also spelled out some of the issues he will underscore to illustrate the differences between himself and Warner: terrorism (“I am a U.S. Army veteran and he did not serve in the military, and I have studied terrorism”), law and order (Gilmore is a former state’s attorney and state attorney general), and cutting taxes. He recalled how he roared to a landslide election to the governorship on a vow to end the state’s hefty car tax; Gov. Gilmore managed to get two thirds of the car tax eliminated and fell short of it killing it outright because of a pack of moderate GOP legislators “who later tried to help my successor [Warner] raise taxes.”
Gilmore’s campaign manager will be his longtime political “consigliore” Dick Leggett and consultants will be longtime Richmond operative Boyd Marcus and Kieran Mahoney, who helped orchestrate the winning campaigns of former New York Gov. George Pataki and Sen. Al D’Amato.
With Gilmore a near-cinch to be nominated without opposition at the state party convention next summer, any discussion of a race against Warner inevitably gets back to how the Republican hopeful can carry populous Northern Virginia after its sharp trend toward Democrats in recent years. Rep. Tom Davis, himself a Northern Virginia Republican, pointed out at a recent press breakfast (where he said he would not run for the Senate) that former Republican Sen. George Allen, in losing a photo finish re-election campaign in ’06, lost Northern Virginia to Democrat Jim Webb by a margin of more than 120,000 votes. Among those expected to be key Gilmore fund-raisers are former Secretary of the Treasury and venture capitalist John Snow and Circuit City tycoon Rick Sharp.
Sources close to Gilmore, however, dismiss Davis’s analysis, noting that the Allen-Webb race was not about issues but rather the incumbent’s use of the term “macaca” in public. The same sources pointed out that while Davis’s wife, State Sen. Jeanne Marie Devolites-Davis, sought re-election as a self-styled “RINO” (Republican in Name Only) and even brought liberal Republican-turned-Independent Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York to campaign for her. She lost badly, they note, but GOP colleague Ken Cuccinelli did not run from his record as the most conservative member of the state senate and won (albeit by 92 votes) and that both Prince William County Board Chairman Cory Stewart and Supervisor John Stirrup - the midwife and father of the county’s tough anti-illegal immigration laws - were landslide winners. Along with Gilmore’s own record of winning the offices of state attorney general and governor in 1993 and ’97 respectively - both over Northern Virginia Democrats - his campaign team believes running on conservative issues is a winning formula for Northern Virginia.
