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Democrats line up challengers for House of Delegates seats
One of Prince William County Democratic Committee chairman Peter Frisbie's primary responsibilities is recruiting candidates for this year's House of Delegate races. This is the last local election cycle before redistricting following the 2010 census.
Like in 2007, Frisbie expects Democrats will be running in every race. However, there are two major changes from last time: incumbency in the 51st District and potential primaries elsewhere.
In the 13th District, which covers most of western Prince William County, South Riding resident John Bell is taking on 17-year incumbent Republican Bob Marshall. Marshall has been a target of Democrats for years as he is among the most socially and fiscally conservative members of the House.
Marshall co-authored the constitutional amendment ratified by voters in 2006 that banned same-sex marriage and civil unions and he waged a successful state Supreme Court challenge to the 2007 transportation bill that authorized a regional transportation group to raise and levy taxes in Northern Virginia.
The delegate raised his profile even higher last year when he challenged former Gov. Jim Gilmore (R) for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. Gilmore won by only a handful of votes at a convention few expected Marshall to win.
Bell is a retired Air Force finance officer and was a canvassing captain for Barack Obama last year, according to his official Web site.
"We probably have more folks in western Prince William County who are ... willing to work harder than any other legislative district in the county" to defeat Marshall, said Frisbie.
To the east of the 13th sits the 50th District, based in the cities of Manassas and Manassas Park as well as a few county precincts. Republican incumbent Jackson Miller first won the seat by five points over Democrat Jeanette Rishell in a 2006 special election following the death of long-time delegate and former Manassas Mayor Harry Parrish (R). He followed up by winning a full two-year term in 2007 when he beat Rishell again, this time by a more resounding 21-point margin.
Rishell officially declared her candidacy earlier this month to challenge Miller yet again. However, Frisbie does not expect her to run unopposed for the nomination like she did in the last two election cycles. Though he declined to name Rishell's potential primary opponent, he did mention that talks between local Democrats and a would-be candidate have turned "serious" in recent weeks.
There is one confirmed primary battle brewing among PWC Democrats; the 2007 party nominee Chris Brown and the Rev. Dr. Luke Torian have both thrown their hats into the political ring as they vie for the right to take on Del. Jeff Frederick (R) in the 52nd District.
Frederick, who Frisbie joked was the "Democrat of the Year" after the way he ran the Republican Party of Virginia as chairman during the 2008 election cycle, has previously announced he would step down from the House in order to focus on his job as Republican chairman. But he has sent signals since last year that he might stick around anyway and he has not officially vacated the seat as of press time.
Like Brown and Rishell, another 2007 Democratic challenger is contemplating another run for the House: Bill Day. The then-56-year-old lost to Republican incumbent Scott Lingamfelter by 11 points in the 31st district two years ago and last year unsuccessfully challenged Republican Rep. Rob Wittman in the 1st Congressional District. Day carried the congressional district's Prince William precincts but did not win that crucial voting bloc in 2007.
Frisbie acknowledged a Democrat's path to victory against Lingamfelter must include a substantial margin of victory in Prince William in order to make up for the more Republican-friendly precincts of the 31st in neighboring Fauquier County.
"If we can run out the numbers in Neabsco, then we can cancel out Fauquier," he said.
Day has not officially announced his candidacy, but Frisbie did confirm that Day, a self-employed professional counselor, has seriously considered another bid.
Perhaps the most important change for local Democrats this year from the rest of this decade is they actually have one of their own representing a House seat: Paul Nichols in the 51st District.
Nichols's 2007 win in the seat vacated by Republican Michele McQuigg could be attributed as much to the circumstances around the election as to the candidate.
"That's a prime example of us there attracting moderates to run for office," said Frisbie.
First, Nichols managed to avoid a primary when local Democrats convinced Jeff Dion, who lost a bid to fill the Occoquan District vacancy on the Board of County Supervisors in 2007, to drop out of the race.
Second, the Republican nominating convention turned out to be a fiasco, resulting in attorney Faisal Gill defeating Neabsco School Board member Julie Lucas in a disputed contest for the right to oppose Nichols. The more conservative Lucas supporters refused to embrace Gill and conservative Internet bloggers actively opposed his candidacy.
But poll numbers closed between the favored Nichols and the upstart Gill after local media accused Nichols of lying about Gill's stance on illegal immigration. Nichols ultimately won the election 52-48 percent and has since crafted an image as someone tough on illegal immigration which, oddly enough, has been in line with the views of the Lucas supporters who were against Gill.
"He is a regular guy and that's why he's been so successful not only politically, but professionally too," said Frisbie of the attorney Nichols.
As last week, no Republican had officially filed to challenge Nichols.
One of the most important lessons Frisbie said he has learned since his days working on then-Vice President Al Gore's (D) bid for president in 2000 is how voter contact directly responds to candidate success.
Frisbie recently highlighted excerpts from the book “How Obama Won,” by Chuck Todd and Sheldon Gawiser of NBC News. In the section about Virginia, Frisbie called attention to a paragraph that explained exactly why he concentrates so highly on voter contact.
"Half of all Virginia voters, 51 [percent], were contacted by the Obama campaign, while less than four in ten, 37 [percent], said the McCain campaign reached them." wrote Todd and Gawiser. "This advantage in campaign contact was important since six in ten voters contacted by the Obama campaign voted for the Democrat, 61 [percent], and six in ten of those contacted by the McCain campaign voted Republican, 63 [percent]."
"What we did throughout the campaign was one of the best coordinated campaigns people had seen" in Prince William County, said Frisbie.
Particularly new for PWC Dems was a concentrated effort on the Republican-friendly western side of the county to raise Democratic turnout so the Republicans' margin of victory in the west would be lower. This included a focus on contacting those who lived along the Linton Hall Corridor in Bristow and on opening a campaign office in Gainesville, which was later countered by the Republicans opening one too.
"We've hit every house pretty much in our target probably two or three times," said Frisbie.
He laughed when asked about the shape of the Democratic committee when he took over the chairmanship in 2007.
"No comment," he said repeatedly with a smile.
The committee had been filled with so much infighting that three of its members, including former chairman Vic Bras, quit in protest.
At the time, non-incumbent Democrats simply could not win in Prince William County. Winning changes the dynamic quite a bit, however, as victories by Nichols and now-state Sen. George Barker (D-39th) helped the Democrats retake the state Senate and close the gap in the House of Delegates.
Volunteer numbers have shot up from being in the hundreds to now being in the thousands, said Frisbie.
The candidate model Frisbie stresses this year is that of people who have been active in their community for a long time, especially as volunteers. For example, Bell is a tennis coach at Freedom High School in South Riding and Torian is a pastor at First Mount Zion Baptist Church in Dumfries.
"Folks seeing folks around: that makes a difference," said Frisbie.
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