In the Right

Virginia's 5th District -- first represented in Congress by James Madison -- runs from Greene County and Charlottesville in the north all the way south to Danville and the North Carolina border, from Martinsville and Bedford on the west to Brunswick and Cumberland Counties on the east. At 9,054 square miles, it is larger than the state of New Jersey, and its 18 counties are spread across four different media markets. On Charlie Cook's Partisan Voting Index, it is ranked R+5, down from R+8 as recently as 2002. Virginia Republican Governor-Elect Bob McDonnell carried the district with 61.4 percent of the vote in last month's gubernatorial election.

It has historically been considered conservative Democrat territory -- while Richard Nixon was carrying Virginia in 1968 (beginning a 40-year GOP presidential winning streak in Virginia that wasn't broken until the arrival of Barack Obama in 2008), the 5th District was electing for the first time Dan Daniel, the last remnant of the old Byrd Machine. Daniel held the seat from his installation in 1969 until his death in office in January 1988. Daniel was replaced in Congress by L.F. Payne, Jr., who had developed the Wintergreen ski resort, and who employed roughly half the population of Nelson County; Payne, a more liberal Democrat than Daniel (but more conservative than most Democrats in the House at the time) was even able to carry the district in the Republican tidal wave year of 1994, by a comfortable 53-47 percent margin. But before the next election -- and, likely, fearing a tougher race in a presidential year -- Payne decided to retire from the House to make a run for Lt. Governor in 1997; in the 1996 open seat election that resulted from his retirement, then-Democrat Virgil Goode carried the district easily.

Goode, first elected as a 27-year-old to the state senate fresh out of the University of Virginia Law School in 1973, had challenged his UVA Law School classmate, incumbent Democratic Sen. Chuck Robb in a party primary in 1994; though he lost by 58-34 percent, he showed strength in his geographic base. The following year, he held on to his seat in the state senate, and with it, maintained Democratic control of the body. But Goode became increasingly disenchanted with the national Democratic Party; in 1998 he voted to impeach Bill Clinton, and by 2000 had decided he would no longer caucus with the Democrats -- he announced that he would be an Independent who caucused with the GOP. Following his 2000 reelection campaign -- and, quite possibly because of a fear that newly-empowered Republican redistricting map drawers in Richmond might redraw his Franklin County home into the neighboring 9th Congressional District, which would have forced him to go head-to-head with longtime incumbent Democrat Rick Boucher -- Goode officially became a Republican.

For his first several cycles, he won comfortably -- with 61 percent in 1996, unopposed in 1998, with 67 percent in 2000, and then 63 percent in his newly-drawn district in 2002, and 64 percent in the presidential year of 2004.

But by 2006, Goode's campaign operation was showing signs of wear -- in the lower turnout off-year election, running against the same opponent as in 2004, he pulled almost 50,000 votes fewer, while the Democrat only gave up 14,000. For the first time ever, Goode carried less than 60 percent of his district.

Enter Democrat Tom Perriello. Perriello won the seat in 2008 largely as a result of two factors -- first, the work done by Obama's campaign in Virginia to register thousands more Southside black voters, and the consequent swell in turnout (turnout at the presidential level in the 5th District jumped from 281,000 votes in 2004 to 322,000 votes in 2008, a 15 percent increase; in the congressional race, turnout went up from 271,000 in 2004 to 318,000 in 2008, an even larger 17 percent jump) -- and, second, Goode's apparent conviction that he couldn't lose. Though Perriello showed signs of financial strength early (and eventually spent $1.8 million to Goode's $1.9 million), Goode didn't take him seriously until it was too late. Perriello won, 158,810 - 158,083, a 727-vote margin.

So it's not at all surprising that Perriello is high on the NRCC target list. The operatives who run the organization know that VA-5 is one of their best chances to defeat an incumbent Democrat and recapture a seat that should be theirs; consequently, they've been active in recruiting a candidate, and believe they've found the right man for the job: state Sen. Robert Hurt.

Hurt has represented a portion of the 5th District as a Delegate and state senator since his election in 2001. He has an "A" rating from the National Rifle Association, and a 100 percent voting record with the Virginia Society for Human Life, the Commonwealth's premier pro-life organization. He has signed the Americans for Tax Reform Taxpayer Protection Pledge, and says he is a strong fiscal conservative.

But Hurt has cast two votes during his tenure in the Virginia General Assembly that are causing him serious trouble with local and national conservatives -- he voted for then-Gov. Mark Warner's infamous $1.4 billion tax hike in 2004, the largest tax increase in state history, and he later voted to allow for the creation of regional taxing authorities.

These two votes aren't merely baggage, they're virtual steamer trunks.

To many conservatives in the district, these two votes disqualify Hurt as a potential nominee -- how can he run effectively against Perriello in a general election, they argue, when he has these two votes to defend. "Odd that you suggest I'm a tax-raiser, Sen. Hurt," they imagine Perriello saying in a debate, "when, after all, you're the guy who voted for the biggest tax increase in the state's history."

In Hurt's defense, he now says he "hates that vote," and indicates that had he known then what he knew later, he would have voted against the tax hike.

And it it true that since he cast the vote for the tax hike, he has been elected twice more, by healthy margins.

And here's where it gets very interesting -- because several of the other, non-NRCC-recruited candidates for the GOP nomination are now trying to make the case that VA-5 is, in effect, NY-23 with a Southern accent.

For instance, this RedState post by Albemarle County businessman and Hurt nomination rival Laurence Verga argues that "The Republican establishment did not learn their lesson from the absolute debacle that we witnessed this past fall in upstate New York," before going on to criticize the NRCC for "endorsing" Hurt.

Except that the NRCC has not endorsed Sen. Hurt.

Asked for evidence that the NRCC had endorsed Hurt, the Verga campaign offered this memo from the NRCC, which touts NRCC prospects in Virginia, and lists "State Sen. Robert Hurt" next to the words "GOP opponent," before going on to say, "Most troubling for [Perriello], however, is the emergence of a top Republican recruit: state Sen. Robert Hurt. As a senator and delegate, Hurt has represented over 30% of the congressional district as a popular state legislator. Hurt's geographic advantage and ideological harmony with the area's voters will make him very tough to beat."

From the point of view of the Verga campaign (and the other non-Hurt GOP candidates), this is proof that the NRCC has endorsed Hurt.

Call me a stickler for language, but I happen to be old school on this -- "endorsements" come when someone actually says "I endorse you," and they usually come with campaign cash, none of which has been moved from the NRCC to the Hurt campaign.

Nowhere in the NRCC memo is the word "endorse," or any of its variations, used, and nothing that was written there is demonstrably untrue, because it's a matter of opinion as to whether or not "Hurt's geographic advantage and ideological harmony with the area's voters will make him very tough to beat."

So, note to candidate Verga -- say the NRCC is touting one of your GOP rivals for the nomination, say the NRCC is pimping for him, say the NRCC is "meddling," if you wish ... but do not say the NRCC "has endorsed" Hurt, or anyone else, in this race. All you do by continuing to insist that the NRCC has "endorsed" Hurt is demonstrate your own willingness to say anything necessary to win -- one of the very things most conservative activists find so objectionable about the more "moderate" and "pragmatic" candidates often supported by the national party committees.

More importantly, on the larger point, I don't think there's room to quibble -- Verga's main thrust is just plain wrong. Clearly, the NRCC has learned a lesson from the debacle in NY-23 -- else it would have used the word "endorsed" in describing its clear preference for Hurt as the nominee in VA-5.

But there's a much larger difference, of course, between the two contests, a difference that totally demolishes the argument that VA-5 is NY-23 with a Southern accent, and that is this: What made NY-23 so objectionable was that the decision to nominate the liberal Quisling Dede Scozzafava as the Republican candidate was made by 11 GOP County Chairmen in that upstate New York congressional district, without the involvement of any larger group of Republican voters. There was no primary, merely a meeting of 11 guys in the modern day equivalent of a smoke-filled back room.

In VA-5, by contrast, there are no fewer than seven candidates competing for the GOP nomination, and it's going to take a lot more than support from 11 guys meeting in a back room to win the nomination.

And here's where it gets even more interesting -- because if you follow Verga's line of thinking, which seems to indicate a belief that the most important principle in guiding the nomination process should be the involvement of the largest number of GOP primary voters (to take such important decisions out of the hands of the "party insiders"), well, then the proper answer to the question of "By what means shall we choose our nominee?" is simple -- by means of an open primary, of course, which will involve far more 5th District Republicans than will any of the other forms of nomination.

So Verga and the other five non-Hurt candidates are demanding an open primary, right?

Wrong.

Verga and the other non-Hurt GOP rivals for the nomination are not insisting on an open primary at all. In fact, they're urging GOP leaders to choose a convention instead.

A primary involves many, many more voters than will a convention, which will actually be limited by Virginia GOP rules to somewhere around 1200 delegates -- under the rules of the Republican Party of Virginia, each party unit (either county or city) at a congressional district convention is entitled to one delegate for every 100-500 votes cast by its residents for the GOP candidate for President in 2008 and Governor in 2009. That decision, along with the timing of the selection, will be made Saturday.

One other problem with a convention -- it doesn't allow for the votes of members of the armed forces on active duty, because they can't be excused from their missions to attend a convention. Open primaries, on the other hand, allow for full participation, via absentee ballot. Given the large number of military voters in the 5th District -- and, especially, given Tea Party activists' strong support for the military -- this potential disenfranchisement of military voters could come back to bite the GOP on the rear end in the general election -- about which, more below.

For its part, Hurt's campaign says it has no preference, and will contest the nomination no matter which means of selection is chosen. Says Hurt strategist Chris LaCivita, "We support whatever the party leadership chooses ... We find it kind of amusing that some of the other candidates who claim to represent the grassroots are trying to push on the party leaders a specific method. Robert ... is ready to go with whatever method the party leadership -- the unit chairmen -- decide to go with."

The public argument the six non-Hurt candidates make is that because Virginia does not register voters by party, primary elections -- which are run by the state, and are paid for by state taxpayers -- are open to all voters, including people who think of themselves as Independents and Democrats. Because Perriello likely will not be challenged for renomination on the Democratic side, they argue, there will be no Democratic primary election, and that will free all those Democrats to take advantage of the opportunity to come into a GOP primary and wreak havoc -- a 2010 version of Rush Limbaugh's 2008 Democratic presidential primary "Operation Chaos," in reverse.

Of course, that's just so much poppycock. They're not worried about Democrats coming into the GOP primary; that's just cover.

They're worried that in a primary -- where the nomination goes to the candidate who gets the most votes cast, regardless of whether it's an outright majority or not -- Hurt could take the nomination with as little as 20 percent of the vote. And, given his stronger name identification and perceived fundraising ability, that's not a bad bet.

So the non-Hurt candidates instead urge a convention, where no candidate can win the nomination without a majority vote. They presume that Hurt will lead on early ballots, but that as more and more of the non-Hurt candidates are dropped from succeeding ballots in a convention, eventually the anti-Hurt votes will all be cast for just one candidate, who will defeat Hurt for the nomination.

But if one of the larger goals of conservative activists and Republican leaders is to find ways to ensure that Tea Party supporters don't work at cross purposes against GOP candidates, it would seem that a nomination process that's as open as possible, with no hint of traditional vote-swapping and deal-making, offers the best chance for success.

Oh, and did I mention that there's actually a Tea Party candidate who began running for the GOP nomination in the spring, but recently announced his decision to withdraw so he could run instead in the general election, as the candidate of the Virginia Conservative Party?

Here's what Brad Rees said six weeks ago, in announcing his decision: "Starting in January, I intend to begin laying the groundwork and getting my support structure in place to run on the Virginia Conservative Party platform. It may amount to only drawing enough votes from the Republican candidate to ensure Tom Perriello a second term. If so, so be it. Maybe then, the party will understand that we are trying to save the GOP from its worst enemy: not the Democrats, but themselves."

Read those second and third sentences again -- "It may amount to only drawing enough votes from the Republican candidate to ensure Tom Perriello a second term. If so, so be it."

The GOP has a tremendous opportunity to recapture Virginia's 5th District. But it will only be able to do that with a united front in the fall campaign, where all factions of the GOP, and the conservative movement, and the Tea Party supporters, are working together. That ability to work together, it seems clear, will be at least partly a function of how open the nomination process is -- the more open, the more likely to assuage the concerns of local Tea Party activists, and, therefore, the more likely to lead to a united front in the fall.

And that means Saturday's meeting in Appomattox is crucial. Stay tuned.

DISCLAIMER: CQPolitics says that when I write about the politicians in my past, I have to turn the cards face up. I volunteered in the special election in 1988 against L.F. Payne, Jr.

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