Hints of Red in Deep Blue Fairfax
Well, the verdict is in, and Pat Herrity fell just short in Fairfax in his bid to become Fairfax County’s new chairman. The margin was heartbreakingly close–at 1.1%, it was just outside of the area for a recount (which as discussed before doesn’t mean much in Virginia, but still). Just as he did a few weeks ago with the result in the 46th, US News and World Report’s Michael Barone sees good signs for the GOP in the outcome:
Barack Obama carried Fairfax County, Va., 60 percent to 39 percent . In a special election yesterday for chairman of the County Board of Supervisors to replace Gerald Connolly, who was elected to Congress in November, Democrat Sharon Bulova beat Republican Pat Herrity by only 51 percent to 49 percent. Turnout was 107,713, far below the 516,254 last November. Another example of how Democratic turnout seems to drop off more than Republican turnout in special elections.
A few observations below the fold.
Before I get into the political ramifications of the
First, as I observed last week with the results of the RNC chairman’s race, Twitter is a custom made tool for election results and analysis, particularly amongst political professionals. There was a constant dialogue amongst technologists and activists on both sides of the battle, and it became very clear that, at least for a small subset of hardcore trend watchers, that this was THE story of the day.
Secondly, the State Board of Elections website sucks. There, I said it. The interface is extremely clunky, difficult to view, and hard to track things. One thing that really irks me: they are very inconsistent about keeping track of turnout by precinct. Sometimes you can see it, sometimes not, and as far as I’m able to tell, never after the fact. It may not have looked cool, but I yearn for the days of just simple text. This also says nothing about the terribly slow nature of results. I’ve found several times that it’s really just better to send someone down to the Electoral Board and have the results phoned in. But who wants to do that? *sigh*
Seriously, though, what does last night’s race have to say about this fall? Well, first off, we’re not dead yet in Northern Virginia, particularly if we keep our message of fiscal responsibility and transparency. This was the perfect test, as a Board Chairman race was never going to be about social issues to begin with. The big question is can we maintain the message discipline that is going to be necessary to prevail with decent margins in Northern Virginia and a resounding victory in the rest of the state? Remember, as George Allen showed us, what we say in ROVA WILL be heard in NOVA, as long as there is YouTube.
Secondly, all may not be lost in legislative districts in Northern Virginia. It was all but assumed that Fairfax would go entirely blue with its Delegation. However, according to Not Larry Sabato, Herrity not only carried all of the legislative districts currently held by Republicans (one Senate seat and three House seats), but he also carried six seats held by Democrats (three Senate seats and three House seats). Again, these seats will ultimately be decided by local issues (particularly in the case of Dave Albo, who was the architect of the abuser fees fiasco in 2007), but there is some hope for us in Fairfax.
Third, and perhaps the most important aspect for the fall campaign, the RPV is starting to get its act together on social networking and coordinated efforts. Those who were on RPV email lists and who belong to the RPVNetwork were barraged with messages urging them to get involved in GOTV efforts. However, there was one major problem here–while a clear message was here, the tools for involvement were rather limited. For me out here in the Valley, if I wanted to help out, I had to drive all the way to Fairfax to make calls. If we had a true social network that provided those tools, then who knows what we could have accomplished? We’re beginning to get the point that online activists are consumers–now all RPV needs is the tools. The big issue is that RPVNetwork is based off of Ning, which, while able to give us a quick start, is essentially a cookie cutter platform that does not cater at all to political needs. Chairman Frederick needs to start a concerted effort to build our Web 2.o efforts. We MUST build our own system–there are models out there, and the Ning is a good placeholder, but we can’t rely on it forever. The system must be activist driven and provide tools that we can use.
Finally, it appears once again that the network built up by Barrack Obama is simply not translating to other elections. As you can see by this map, Herrity was able to carry plenty of areas by large margins in those areas he was “supposed” to carry while making important inroads in those areas that fueled Obama’s massive victory in the county, and in turn, the state for the first time since 1964.
It’s difficult to draw too many conclusions from a special election, but the momentum seems to be on our side. It’s only a matter of maintaining that momentum and making sure the balance is maintained to see that we prevail in the fall.
