Once a reliably red state, this year will Virginia go blue?

DENVER

Wile E. Coyote doesn't catch the Road Runner. The Chicago Cubs don't win the World Series. Virginia doesn't vote Democratic in presidential elections.

So say the laws of the universe, it seems. The last time we saw the coyote, he was a shrinking dot falling from a cliff.

But the Cubs, who haven't won a World Series since 1908, are in first place this summer. And Virginia, which has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1964, is being considered a crucial swing state in this fall's race and feeling the winds of a White House campaign.

Could this be the year of change?

As the Democratic Party faithful gather for their national convention beginning in the Pepsi Center here today, their presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, thinks Virginia's time has come.

His campaign has opened 34 offices across Virginia, including one in tiny Castlewood - population, 2,036 - in the state's southwest corner. Volunteers are storming inner cities, towns with high unemployment and college campuses in hopes of registering 151,000 new voters likely to support Obama.

Obama's last campaign tour before the convention was a two-day visit to Virginia that ended Thursday with a rally in Chesapeake.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine is a national co-chairman of the campaign and is going all out to deliver Virginia's 13 electoral votes to Democrats. Kaine created an in-state stir this summer as one of a handful of politicians Obama closely considered to be his running mate before selecting Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware.

Not to be outdone, Republican John McCain is reportedly still giving close consideration to a Virginian for his running mate: Rep. Eric Cantor of Henrico County.

Like Obama, McCain has kept a steady flow of campaign ads on state airwaves this summer - an avoidable expense in the past for Republican presidential candidates in reliably Republican Virginia.

This year, election maps marking Democratic states in blue and Republican states in red have Virginia colored purple - a mark shared by traditional bellwethers Florida and Ohio. That suggests that Obama and McCain may be visiting the Old Dominion often, many strategists and political scientists say.

"I think it will be the first time in decades that we'll see a full-scale presidential campaign in the state," said Robert Holsworth, a political scientist at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Holsworth and others stop short of predicting an Obama victory in Virginia, where Republicans have won 10 straight presidential elections and - with the exception of Lyndon Johnson 44 years ago - 13 of the last 14.

Republicans are confident the streak will go on.

"Anything can happen, sure," said Del. Chris Saxman of Staunton, a co-chairman of McCain's Virginia campaign. "But is Obama likely to win Virginia, I don't think so. He's too liberal."

Many Obama staffers view Virginia as a Mount Everest. "We all know it's an uphill fight," said Kevin Griffis, spokesman for the state campaign.

But the uniqueness of the candidate and the times, combined with ever growing Democratic influence on state elections, just might make ascent possible, they add. The campaign is hoping to catch political gusts that have lifted Democrats to a string of victories for statewide office and the General Assembly in recent years.

Virginia Republicans started the decade in control of the state's two U.S. Senate seats, the governorship and both chambers of the General Assembly.

Democrats, however, have won the last two gubernatorial elections. They gained one seat in the U.S. Senate in 2006 when Jim Webb upset GOP incumbent George Allen and are widely favored to seize the other seat this fall, long occupied by John Warner, who is not seeking re-election. Democrat Mark Warner - no relation to the senator - and Republican Jim Gilmore are vying to replace him.

Last fall, Democrats gained five seats in the state Senate to take a 22-18 majority. Although Republicans still control the House of Delegates, they have lost 11 seats since 2001. The chamber now has 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats and two independents.

The shift has been driven by voters in Northern Virginia, the state's most populous region. Once unpredictable, the fast-growing Washington suburbs have voted increasingly Democratic this decade. Webb and Kaine, were it not for the 60 percent vote they received in Northern Virginia, would have lost their statewide races. Seven of the 11 House of Delegates seats that have shifted to Democrats are from Northern Virginia, as are three of the five state Senate seats.

Voters from the region are affluent and well educated. Many came to Virginia for careers related to the federal government or were drawn by the region's high-tech boom. They have changed the state's political landscape.

"This is not your grandfather's Virginia anymore," said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist. "It's a mid-Atlantic state, not a Southern state. There's been an amazing growth of voters with no connection to the Civil War or the Mason-Dixon Line. "

"They want results, not ideology," said Quentin Kidd, a political scientist at Christopher Newport University.

State Democratic candidates have played to those demands this decade, portraying themselves as bipartisan problem-solvers and supporting tax increases to improve education and roads. Republican statewide candidates have been strongly anti-tax and, in the words of Holsworth, "narrowly tailored" to conservative style.

Obama will need a strong showing in Northern Virginia if he is to have any chance of carrying the state, observers say.

He'll have Kaine and Webb stumping for him, and he may find that Mark Warner, who hails from Alexandria, leaves coattails from his Senate campaign. Warner has been asked to deliver the convention's keynote speech Tuesday.

A huge turnout of black voters is also considered essential for an Obama victory. Blacks make up about 20 percent of the state's population and typically cast about 14 percent of the votes in statewide elections. A record 17 percent voted in 1989 to help Democrat Doug Wilder to a historic, razor-thin victory as the nation's first elected black governor. The Obama camp is hoping to break the record, and Wilder - often reticent when it comes to helping other candidates - is promising to go all out for Obama.

The state campaign is being run by Mitch Stewart, a South Dakotan who directed Obama's victory in the crucial Iowa caucuses in January. He is focusing this summer on trying to organize in each of the state's 2,600 precincts and registering voters in areas that show high Democratic potential, including economically strapped Southside Virginia, which has been pounded by the decline in manufacturing.

Obama made the case himself last week during an appearance in Martinsville.

"People aren't sure that the essential part of the American dream - if we work hard and sacrifice, we'll ultimately benefit - is true," he told supporters there.

Despite all the rosy scenarios for Obama, a lot of people just don't think he can win in Virginia.

They point to August 2004, when Democrat John Kerry stopped in Norfolk and held a huge rally in front of the Wisconsin before departing to Boston to accept the Democratic presidential nomination.

Kerry vowed to campaign vigorously here and assigned two full-time organizers to the state. By October, they were both gone. A month later, Bush convincingly carried Virginia.

Bob Dole, perhaps the least popular Republican presidential candidate of the past 40 years, won here in 1996 against incumbent Democrat Bill Clinton. In 1976, Virginia was the only Southern state to favor Republican Gerald Ford over Democrat Jimmy Carter of Georgia.

Saxman and other McCain supporters say their candidate is a natural fit for Virginia. His status as a war hero and his support for the surge of U.S. troops in Iraq, they say, should put him on strong footing with military voters and veterans in Hampton Roads. And if Virginia voters are rejecting deeply ideological Republicans, they say that's not a concern for McCain.

"He has a reputation for being pretty independent," Saxman said.

GOP leaders say they are not taking this year's campaign lightly and are quietly assembling a huge get-out-the vote effort.

"I feel good that anywhere in the state you go south of Richmond will back McCain," said Jerry Kilgore, an unsuccessful Republican nominee for governor in 2005 who is also a co-chairman of McCain's state campaign.

For all the fanfare now, some believe Virginia will play little role in determining the next president.

"Virginia really doesn't matter," said Ed Matricardi, former executive director of the state GOP. "If Virginia goes blue, Obama is going to win in a nationwide landslide. I think it's going to be a close race and Virginia will go red."

Warren Fiske, (804) 697-1565, warren.fiske@pilotonline.com