A culture clash over Obama in Virginia
(CBS News) APPOMATTOX, Va. - Life moves slowly in Appomattox, a small Southern town two hours west of Richmond that's best known as the place where the Civil War came to an end 147 years ago. The biggest changes over the past 40 years or so have been an increase from zero traffic lights to five - the old timers have taken to complaining about the traffic - the closure of a furniture manufacturing plant that took with it 1,000 jobs, and the arrival of a branch of the Museum of the Confederacy.
"The town is pretty much, save for some cosmetics here and there, pretty much the same," said Ronald Spiggle, a big man with a strong southern drawl who served as mayor for 28 years and seems to know just about everyone in town.
But Virginia - to the consternation of many here - is not the same. Indeed, this crucial swing state is going through something of an identity crisis, one driven by a population explosion in Northern Virginia's Washington, D.C., suburbs, which helped turn Virginia blue four years ago for the first time since 1964. "There's a culture clash between this area and Northern Virginia," said Marvin Hamlett, the editor of the local paper here, the Times-Virginian. "They're a different culture, and sometimes they clash with the cultures down here."
Two-thirds of the voters in Appomattox County backed John McCain in 2008, and there's little doubt that President Obama won't win the county this time around, either. William Slagle, a Vietnam veteran who retired from a job in the paper industry, is incredulous over what he says is a lack of understanding among people who back the president about the harm caused by overregulation. He points to those in Northern Virginia who work for the federal government.
"I feel like so many people who work in government have no idea how wealth is generated," he said. Slagle acknowledges that Mitt Romney, with his private equity background and northeastern roots, isn't an obvious cultural match with Appomattox, but he said that doesn't matter.
"Given the choice," he said, "there is no cultural issue."
Still, Romney's lack of an obvious connection to this community has created an opening for a certain type of candidate - and, to the frustration of the Republican Party, that very type of candidate is on the ballot in Virginia. His name is Virgil Goode, and he represented the 5th Congressional District, where Appomattox is located, as a Republican from 1997 through 2009. After losing his re-election bid in 2008, Goode is now running for president as a member of the Constitution Party, and he's on the ballot in Virginia despite the best efforts of Republicans to keep him off.
Rural voters here like Goode because of his "southern hospitality," said Hamlett, the newspaper editor, who says they appreciate the fact that just about anyone can call Goode's office and the candidate will pick up the phone and start chatting in his deep southern drawl. Hamlett predicts that Goode could get up to 5 percent of the vote statewide, with most of the votes coming here in the 5th district; a recent Washington Post poll showed Goode with 2 percent support statewide. In a tight race, that could be enough to throw the state to the president. And winning Virginia could well win Mr. Obama the presidency.
CBS News estimatesthat the president has 237 electoral votes at least leaning his way out of the 270 he needs. If he wins Florida, with its 29 electoral votes, and Virginia, with its 13 electoral votes, he could lose every other battleground and still take the presidency. A combination of Virginia and Ohio would put the president within two electoral votes of the presidency, requiring him to win only one other battleground state even if he loses Florida.
A Quinnipiac University/CBS News/New York Times surveyreleased last week showed Mr. Obama leading by four points in Virginia. Underscoring the importance of the state, both the president and GOP vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan have campaigned here in the past week, and Vice President Joe Biden will be in Chesterfield, outside of Richmond, on Tuesday.
The New Virginia
The H Mart Asian grocery store in the Northern Virginia town of Falls Church, where Korean words appear in neon in the window, may only be about a three-and-a-half hour drive north from Appomattox. But it feels like an entirely different world.
Asian-Americans now account for more than 5 percent of Virginia's population, and the voting bloc is growing in size and influence. That's especially true in Northern Virginia, where a group of Asian-American leaders have formed a group to increase Asian-American engagement in politics, which has been low compared to whites and African-Americans. (On Friday, they held a pan-Asian candidates forum for Virginia House and Senate candidates.) In Fairfax County, outside of Washington, more than 17 percent of the population is Asian.
Asian-Americans lean Democratic overall, though the population, which includes people from China, Korea, Vietnam, India and the Philippines, is diverse. (According to Dong Xiang of New Tang Dynasty Television, who moderated Friday's forum, the Vietnamese are the most Republican-leaning Asian population.) The candidates are starting to recognize the importance of the Asian-American population: Earlier this month, Romney invited three Asian-American women to speak at a rally in Fairfax.
In the H Mart parking lot in Falls Church, amid a low-level roar from nearby construction work, Yunyan Sheng of Fairfax said she planned to back the president. "I can feel that he cares about the citizens," she said. But a woman named Sun, who would give only her first name, said she had yet to decide.
"It sounds like he's always saying things are getting better," she says of the president, "but real life - I still see a lot of my friends, business is not going well. Real life, you really don't see that much change, you know?"
Roughly one third of Virginia's population is here in the northern part of the state, which powered Mr. Obama's seven-point victory statewide four years ago. (He won Fairfax County by 22 percentage points.) The area is something of a nightmare for Romney: There has been an increase in both the Asian and Hispanic population as well as new residents who have settled here from Washington, D.C., and other urban areas. And because many residents here work for the federal government, Romney's calls to shrink the government land with a thud.
"The Virginia economy is so linked to the federal government," said one Virginia Democratic operative. "When you look at the other side and their approach, which is all cuts, who gets hit? We do."
African-Americans, women and the military vote
Mr. Obama's victory four years ago would not have happened without strong turnout from African-American voters, who make up about one-fifth of the Virginia population. (Just asked Creigh Deeds, the 2009 Democratic gubernatorial candidate who lost the race to Republican Bob McDonnell in part because he couldn't mobilize the African-American vote.) Many of the state's African-American voters are clustered in Richmond and in the Norfolk/Hampton/Virginia Beach area on the state's southeastern seaboard, where the Obama campaign has been focused on engaging voters and ensuring they are registered to vote.
The southeastern seaboard is also home to a significant military presence - Norfolk boasts the biggest Navy base in the world, and there are Air Force, Marine and Army bases in the region as well - and there Romney sees an opening. Romney, who introduced his running mate to the world in front of a battleship in Norfolk back in August, has been tying the president to "sequestration," the planned $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts, half from the defense budget, set to kick in at the end of the year if Congress can't agree to an alternative.
The plan passed with support from Congressional Republicans - and was a response to a Republican-driven budget standoff - but Romney nonetheless lays it at the feet of the president, pointing to reporting from Bob Woodward that the idea originated in the White House. While Mr. Obama is seeking to reduce the defense budget, Romney wants to expand it, a message that plays well with defense contractors in Norfolk and elsewhere in the state.
"I will not cut our military. I will maintain our military commitment," Romney said during a campaign stop in Virginia Beach earlier this month. He said sequestration is "unthinkable to Virginia, to our employment needs, but it's also unthinkable to the ability and the commitment of America to maintain our liberty." George Allen, the Republican Senate candidate in Virginia, has also embraced this message.
For Romney, the path to a Virginia victory involves winning military voters and those with ties to the defense industry, blowing the president out in the 20 percent of the state that is rural (he's hoping to drive turnout in southwestern Virginia by attacking Mr. Obama for what Republicans call the Obama administration's "war on coal"), and trying to keep Mr. Obama from too big a win among Northern Virginia and minority voters. But even that might not be enough if he can't close the gap among women: The most recent CBS News poll showed Mr. Obama with a 14-point advantage among women in Virginia, which goes a long way toward explaining why all four of the introductory speakers at a Romney campaign stop in Northern Virginia two weeks ago were women.
As part of an effort to maintain its edge among women, Mr. Obama's campaign earlier this month dispatched first lady Michelle Obama to talk to campaign workers in Prince William County, a swing area that is home to many of the Washington, D.C., "exerbs" that could decide the election.
"What Democrats have to do is drive up the vote in the urban areas, but where it's going to be won or lost is in those exurban counties," said the Democratic operative in Virginia, who is an adviser to Democratic Senate candidate Tim Kaine. "Exurban women decide this election in Virginia at the end of the day." The operative said the Democratic edge among women in the state is due in part to a Republican proposal that would have required a transvaginal ultrasound prior to an abortion, which was ultimately watered down.
Also working against Romney is the fact that Virginia has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation, at 5.9 percent. "If Obama can't win Virginia, I don't think he's going to win reelection," said University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato, pointing to that figure. "He's got to be able to sell it."
The big question for the president - one that may decide the election - is whether he can sell it well enough that his supporters at least come close to the unprecedented turnout of four years ago. Back in Appomattox, said newspaper editor Marvin Hamlett, the enthusiasm is certainly there on the other side.
"The disdain and damn near hatred for Obama," he said, "is going to motivate a lot of people to go to the polls."
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the location of Appomattox, Va., which is west of Richmond.