GOP's McDonnell Working To Claim Obama Legacy In VA

Forget the talk of policy platforms, of job creation and clean energy, perhaps a particularly telling piece of Republican Bob McDonnell's strategy for winning the Virginia governor's race comes in his hiring of a firm called Distributive Networks. What is Distributive Networks? It's the company that helped a one-term Illinois senator build the text message apparatus to attract millions of new voters, many of them young, to his bid for the White House.

McDonnell said he's "not going to write off any votes, any demographics."

"Every election really is determined by the independent voter," McDonnell said during a recent interview with Hotline editors. Of Virginia, he added: "It's a competitive state. It's certainly not a blue state."

McDonnell, who resigned as state attorney general in February to run fulltime, is a darling of the national GOP, whose headliners have descended to raise money for his campaign. Sen. John McCain, Gov. Bobby Jindal, former governor Mike Huckabee and Sen. Mitch McConnell have already turned out for McDonnell, and FOX News' Sean Hannity and former senator Fred Thompson are expected in coming weeks, according to the candidate.

Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic National Committee chairman and one of three men seeking his party's nomination, has said Republicans need a win in Virginia like they need oxygen. GOP officials are hopeful that McDonnell, the only candidate in the race to have won a statewide election, will start the party on the path to political rebirth this fall; there are two gubernatorial races in play in this off year, Virginia and New Jersey.

In more ways than one, McDonnell, who is ardently pro life, is looking to the Democratic president for guidance about how to win in this formerly reliable red state. Obama defeated Hillary Clinton in Virginia by 29 points before beating Sen. John McCain in the general election; Obama was the first Democrat to win Virginia since Lyndon B. Johnson claimed the Commonwealth in 1964. Beyond his use of text messaging - something McAuliffe has employed more noticeably that his Democratic rivals, state Sen. Creigh Deeds and former delegate Brian Moran - McDonnell said he will emphasize a message of economic growth and prosperity that largely deemphasizes his position on potentially polarizing social issues, such as abortion or stem cell research. Deeds, who ran against McDonnell in the 2005 attorney general race, highlighted McDonnell's opposition to both issues during that general election contest, an effort to paint him as too extreme for the state's moderate voters, especially those in vote-rich Northern Virginia.

So McDonnell is embracing a key element of Obama's technology strategy as well as the centrist, economy-focused message that the former White House candidate advocated during the 2008 contest. The key tenets of the McDonnell platform - jobs, education, transportation and infrastructure, technology to bridge the digital divide between rural and urban America - sound familiar, too.

"To win an election you've got to address the problems people care about, and right now they want to see the economy turned around," said McDonnell, who brought wife, Maureen, to the Watergate for the interview.

McDonnell is a graduate of Notre Dame, which he attended on an ROTC scholarship, and of Regent University School of Law, the Christian outlet founded by evangelist Pat Robertson. Whoever wins the Democratic nomination will pitch the Republican as too extreme for Virginia. But McDonnell, in turn, plans to disavow the public of the notion that the party's eventual nominee is heir apparent to the legacies of the two most recent Democratic governors, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, now a U.S. senator.

"This group of candidates is not the Mark Warner party anymore," he said, noting they each support for the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for unions to organize. He said McAuliffe, Deeds and Moran would move the party - and the state - to the left.

McDonnell said he'll pitch himself as the candidate who can move legislation in oft-gridlocked Richmond, where the GOP leads the General Assembly and the governor is constitutionally restricted to one term, limiting his ability to push preferred projects.

"I'm also a problem solver, and I think that's what people want," he said.

And McDonnell suggested that Virginia voters will see a Democrat in the White House and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D) running the House and Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) in control of the Senate and vote for political balance in Richmond.

Assessing the broader national landscape, McDonnell said he sees echoes this year of 1993, when Republicans George Allen and Christie Todd Whitman won in Virginia and New Jersey respectively right after Bill Clinton seized the White House from Republicans.

McDonnell, who has the luxury of raising money and quietly strategizing while the Democrats campaign until the June 9 primary, said Republicans need to do better overall in Northern Virginia to win statewide. He said the region offers 34 percent of the state's vote and makes up 42 percent of its tax base. Obama last year won Prince William, Fairfax and Loudon counties, key high turnout jurisdictions in the northern portion of the state. Wins in those counties are critical for the gubernatorial candidates.

But saving all that, McDonnell, a father of five, has another card up his sleeve. One that even Obama can't boast.

"My wife was a Redskinette," he said.

(JENNIFER SKALKA)