Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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A Big Day for Tom Davis

Wednesday, June 20, 2001

Republican Randy Forbes won the special election for the vacant seat in Virginia's 4th District yesterday. The GOP advantage in the House how stands at 222-210 with two independents and one remaining vacancy.

There are three national political committees on each side of the aisle: The National Committees - the Republican National Committee and the DNC - are the best known.

The Republicans and Democrats in the House, and the Republicans and Democrats in the Senate each have political committees which are specifically responsible for winning House or Senate seats respectively.

The chairman of the House Republican campaign committee which is known as the National Republican Congressional Committee - the NRCC - is Tom Davis, a Congressman from Virginia's 11th District.

The 11th is largely made up of Fairfax County, a suburb of Washington, DC and a county with one of the highest median incomes in the country.

Davis was the Chairman of the Fairfax County board of Supervisors before he was elected to the Congress, so he is well-schooled in the manner of Virginia politics. All politics being local, it is helpful to have the man with his hand on the tiller having come out of local politics.

The election yesterday in Virginia was necessary to fill the vacancy created by the death of Democrat Norm Sisisky. The 4th District is in the southern portion of Virginia - as different in voting behavior from Northern Virginia as San Diego is from San Francisco.

When Mr. Sisisky died in March, Rep. Davis set about to find a candidate who could compete as a Republican in a district which is 39% African American.

He found Randy Forbes. Forbes is a former state GOP Chairman, a current State Senator and, as a result of the election yesterday, the newest member of the United States House of Representatives.

Forbes won.

Special elections are like all-star games. Each side wants to find its best candidate and support that candidate with the best media people, the best direct mail people, the best political people, the best press people.

So it was in Virginia 4. Neither side took this election lightly. They poured in the talent and they poured in the money. A prodigious amount of money. Estimates last night were running to ten million dollars spent by both sides to win this race.

Davis, along with this chief lieutenants, executive director John Hishta and political director Mike McElwain, called on the experience of war horses Sam Dawson and Terry Nelson to put it all on the line.

The White House wanted a win, to get off the Jeffords schneid. The Republican National Committee wanted a win because Chairman Jim Gilmore is STILL the Governor of Virginia. The Speaker of the House wanted a win because it gives Dennis Hastert another important vote in his razor-thin majority.

Davis and his team were hanging it all out and they did the job.

Forbes won.

In the past quarter century there have been some 70 special elections for the U.S. House of Representatives. Of those 70 races only 19 resulted in a change of party.

Of the 19 which resulted in the winner being of a different party from the incumbent, only three times has that change been TOWARD the party of the President.

Last night, because Forbes won, that total increased to four.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee known as the "D-Triple-C" ran a campaign specifically designed to divide along racial lines. One mail piece, according to the Associated Press "pictured a black child on the cover and declared that '12 million of us will be left behind' by President Bush's budget."

According to the AP's Larry O'Dell, "The campaign's hottest issue was Social Security. Forbes supported allowing younger workers to invest a small percentage of their Social Security taxes in stocks. Democrat Louise Lucas portrayed the proposal as a reckless gamble that could lead to reduced benefits or a higher retirement age."

Forbes won.

Tom Davis knows how to recruit and he has been recruiting hard since the beginning of the year for candidates to run in 2002. This victory will cause reluctant Republicans to take a good, hard look at making the race next year.

The resounding loss for the Democrats will make a significant number of their fence-sitters look � somewhere else.

Forbes won. The President, the Speaker, and the RNC Chairman get the benefit.

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