Is Walz Vanishing in Virginia?
Last weekend my wife and I enjoyed a nice motorcycle ride along the backroads of our northern Virginia county. We’re fortunate to live in a border zone. The eastern half of the county is very much part of the Washington, D.C. suburbs — filled with federal employees and government contractors. The west remains rural, dotted by small towns and villages, a plethora of wineries, and numerous horse and cattle farms. And it is beautiful, most of the year. But maybe less so during this election season when every yard and pasture is peppered with political advertisements.
The yard signs came late this year. It’s only in the last several weeks that they’ve thoroughly cluttered the landscape. In a county carried decisively by Trump in both 2016 and 2020, the signs are once again evenly divided, blue and red, in a pattern that speaks to the “shy Trump voter,” which seems characteristic of our area. But, as we rode from the suburban side to the rural side, I noticed a striking change in the Democrat signage. Up until last week, the typical sign displayed “Harris–Walz” on the top line, Sen. Tim Kaine on the second line, and state Sen. Suhas Subramanyam, the U.S. congressional candidate, on the third. Yesterday, however, the latest signs — and there were many new ones — all read “Harris,” then “Kaine,” and then “Suhas.” No Walz, not even tucked away in small letters.
This is surely significant. Someone, after all, pays for the signs and for their distribution, and that someone reflects the interests of the Harris campaign. It seems clear that, in this area, the campaign has concluded that Walz is more of a liability than an asset. A further indication can be found in the increasing number of stand-alone “Kaine” signs. Kaine has been a fixture in Virginia politics for a very long time, as governor and then senator (and an almost forgotten excursion as Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential running mate in 2016). For all his weaknesses, he knows what sells with Virginia voters.
I fully understand that yard signs are no substitute for carefully conducted polls, and I also understand that what I’m seeing locally in no way captures the larger picture in Virginia. If one looks at the county-by-county electoral maps for 2016 and 2020, the state of Virginia offers a sea of red, with large blue splotches covering the inner Washington, D.C., suburbs, the Richmond area, the swath of counties around Norfolk and Virginia Beach, and smaller splotches for counties dominated by state universities. Clinton and Biden both carried the state because these blue splotches represent a huge concentration of voters.
If current statewide polling is any indication, this pattern will likely repeat itself for the statewide races. The most recent FiveThirtyEight aggregate polling has Harris with a decisive lead over Trump and Kaine with an even more decisive lead over his challenger, retired Navy Capt. Hung Cao. With less than one week left before the election, it’s hard to see either candidate closing the gap, and, at least in the case of Trump, there may be little value in expending resources pursuing a lost cause. On the other hand, the most popular Republicans in Virginia — Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, and Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares — have only recently begun to make their influence felt, and they could be difference makers.
One can’t help suspect that the change in yard signs suggests a growing anxiety on the part of the Democrats. The key to carrying the Norfolk and Virginia Beach area is turning out the Black vote in large numbers — large enough to overcome the weight of the more conservative military personnel and retirees who also live in the area. There appears to be a similar lack of enthusiasm within the ranks of Washington, D.C., suburbanites. This may be one of those rare occasions when the Democrats actually need to pull in voters from other parts of the state, areas such as the county where I live. A further indicator of this anxiety may be the recent push by Biden’s Department of Justice to have self-identified illegal aliens restored to Virginia voting rolls after they were removed pursuant to a Virginia law signed, ironically, by then-Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine.
And one also can’t help but suspect that Walz is now seen as an electoral liability. He can’t be dropped, but there’s no benefit in featuring him. He was never going to appeal to conservatives, and his “good ole boy, Minnesota nice” appeal to moderates wore out very quickly. For that matter, the increasing display of stand-alone Kaine signs suggests that the senator may see both Harris and Walz as a drag on his candidacy. He enjoys all the advantages of incumbency, money, and name recognition, but Cao has proven to be an effective retail candidate with a compelling personal story as a refugee from Vietnam and decorated Navy combat veteran. There is, after all, a very large Asian-American population in those Washington, D.C., suburban counties. Areas where the Democrats have traditionally been strong. And Cao’s owning the “Navy” and “veteran” appellation has an obvious appeal in the Norfolk and Virginia Beach area.
The odds remain stacked against the Republicans flipping Virginia, particularly as the race winds down to its final days. Still, the Democrats seemingly have realized that the Virginia voter can’t be taken for granted. There are a lot of shy Trump voters and there seems to be a broader lack of enthusiasm among the traditional Democrat constituencies. Hiding Walz may be the first sign of a larger shift. For the Republicans to flip Virginia, they will have to win the voter turnout battle, which means stoking the enthusiasm of their base and hoping that Democrat support for Harris — and Walz — is waning. It will be interesting to watch the next round of yard signs.
James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a national security and counter-terrorism professional, working primarily in the nuclear security field. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. His recent novel, Letter of Reprisal is available on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback format.
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