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Virginia's Vice Presidential Moment

August 15, 2008 — Virginia Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine for vice president?

Don’t laugh. He is said to be on Barack Obama’s short list. The announcement could come any day.

Supporters say Obama is close to choosing a running mate and the first person to find out could be you.

In an e-mail to supporters, Obama’s campaign manager said voters can sign up to receive an e-mail or a text message “the moment” he makes his decision.

Surveys indicate a Democratic presidential candidate could win Virginia for the first time in 40 years and perhaps win the presidency itself.

But why Virginia and why Kaine for vice president.?

This presidential election, like the two before it, is going to be extremely tight.

“The change from Republican to Democratic in just one or two tiny states could propel Obama into the White House,” said Charles Dunn, a political science professor at Regent University in Virginia Beach.

“And that’s where Virginia’s 13 electoral votes and Gov. Tim Kaine’s vice presidential candidacy come in,” he said.

The South is the key that unlocks the White House door. Since 1976, the candidate who won the general election carried a substantial portion of Dixie.

In the razor thin contests of 2000 and 2004, Al Gore and Johnn Kerry would have won their White House bids if they had not written off the South.

All they needed was to carry just one southern state. They carried none.

So, if history is the best predictor of the future, Obama needs to capture a foothold in the South.

More than any other southern state, Virginia offers the greatest promise for Democrats success. Republicans have lost Virginia’s last two gubernatorial elections and the most recent senatorial contest. In no other southern state has the Democratic Party done as well in recovering from GOP domination.

A recent Rasmussen Poll in Virginia showed Obama and Republican presidential candidate John McCain in a dead heat at 44 percent each.

Encouraged by those findings, the Obama campaign has shifted substantial personnel and resources to the state. The last Democratic presidential candidate to take Virginia seriously was Lyndon B. Johnson. And he won in the 1960s.

Virginia’s changing demographics tend to benefit the Democrats. The rapidly growing electorate in Northern Virginia serves as home for many government workers, who tend to lean Democratic.

Kaine is a popular Democratic governor in a Republican state.

Dunn said he could not only help Obama “seal the deal” in Virginia but also could help him elsewhere, especially among Roman Catholics, one of the Democrats more important constituencies.

Obama is a Protestant.

Having someone like Kaine, a Catholic, as a running mate, could also help Obama outside the South in such battleground states as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio.