This weekend is Labor Day weekend, which traditionally marks the end of summer — and, for politicians, the beginning of the fall campaigns.
The operative word there is “traditionally.”
In truth, of course, the campaigns began a long time ago — for some candidates, years ago. The two major party candidates for governor, Democrat Ralph Northam and Republican Ed Gillespie, have already held one-third of their scheduled debates. Virginia is a state that reveres its traditions, sometimes a little too much so in some cases. Year by year, however, we’re seeing some of our traditions slip away. One of those traditions can be summed up in just two words, or one place name: Buena Vista.
Since the 1960s and the advent of a competitive two-party system in Virginia, candidates from both parties have converged on Buena Vista on Labor Day weekend for a time-honored series of events. Each party holds a separate breakfast where its candidates speak. Then all the candidates parade through the town — Republican George Allen was famous for riding on horseback. Then they all gather under a picnic shelter at Glen Maury Park and both sides give a series of speeches to a combined crowd.
These weren’t debates, but they did seem close to the outdoor spectacle of the Lincoln-Douglas debates of another time. It’s also a communal exercise, in which Democrats listened to Republicans, Republicans listened to Democrats, and everybody seemed pretty respectful. Bad-mouthing your opponent? “It’s not the way it is at Buena Vista,” Allen said in 2012. “This is Labor Day.” Candidates will fill the airwaves with dire warnings about their opponents later, but Labor Day in Buena Vista always has meant facing the voters directly in an old-fashioned kind of way.
As Virginia changed, and the weight of the population shifted further and further east, spending so much time west of the Blue Ridge made less and less sense. Still, the quaint little tradition of the Buena Vista Labor Day parade was one that candidates always honored — and often extolled in the way that politicians do. Showing up in Buena Vista, walking the parade route, and giving a speech in the park was simply a requirement of Virginia politics.
This year, though, marks a break from that long-standing tradition. The three Democratic candidates seeking statewide office will be in Buena Vista for their party’s breakfast — then will fly off to Hampton for another event at 11 a.m. Ralph Northam, Justin Fairfax and Mark Herring will not walk the parade route shaking hands. They will not give speeches in the park.
From the cold logic of political mathematics, this makes sense. Democrats will find a lot more votes in Hampton than in Buena Vista. That’s always been true, but is especially true now that Buena Vista, like many other communities in rural Virginia, has voted increasingly Republican over the past decade. (Buena Vista last went Democratic in a governor’s race in 2005.)
Still, this seems sad — the diminishment of a local tradition. If only one party is speaking in the park, it’s not really a community event any more; it’s just another partisan event.
It’s also a missed opportunity for Democrats, in spite of the math that counts about 30 times more voters in Hampton than Buena Vista. Rightly or wrongly, this sends yet another signal that Democrats don’t really care about anything outside the urban crescent.
That’s too bad because Northam has actually put some effort into talking about the rural economy. He’s proposed waiving certain taxes on businesses that open in rural areas. He’s pushed rural broadband (to be fair, so has Gillespie). He wants to expand the University of Virginia’s College at Wise, which doesn’t help Buena Vista but does show Northam understands the state isn’t limited to the Interstate-95 corridor. These are all things he could talk about — if he actually put himself in front of some actual rural voters. Here’s a ready crowd waiting (in Buena Vista’s 125th anniversary year, no less), and instead he jets off to the big city. It’s a small thing, but people also notice things like that. You can’t spare just a few hours?
For some time now, many Democrats have effectively written off rural voters. It’s hard to argue with that strategy from a numerical point of view. Virginia Democrats have won every statewide election since 2012 simply by running up their margins in the urban crescent. Indeed, some Democrats blamed U.S. Sen. Mark Warner’s close call in the 2014 election on him spending what they felt was too much time in rural Virginia.
Donald Trump’s election prompted some soul-searching among Democrats (though probably not enough). Trump ran up historic margins in rural areas, enough to tip the balance in some states, such as North Carolina and Florida. If Hillary Clinton had run only slightly better among rural voters, she’d be president today. There’s another practical question for Virginia Democrats: They can win statewide elections without rural voters, but they can’t win back the General Assembly without flipping at least a few rural districts here or there. It’s hard to do that, though, if you don’t put some effort into it.
Earlier this year, former U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher of Abingdon wrote an article in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas in which he made the case that Democrats could run better in rural areas if they did one simple thing: Show up. Right now, they don’t. “Rural voters notice the exclusion,” Boucher wrote. “Republicans by contrast structure their messaging around popular rural themes. They show up at county fairs and festivals, and voters respond . . . The reason they dominate elections is that they’re highly visible and constantly communicate that ‘we’re on your side and the Democrats are not.’ They win the argument by default because Democrats aren’t around to offer a rebuttal.”
Boucher went on to advise: “You don’t have to become a Republican in order to have rural appeal. It’s only important that you show, that you care about local concerns, and that you are working for solutions. There’s nothing very complicated about connecting with rural voters. Success starts with simply showing up and demonstrating a genuine desire to learn. But the twice-in-an-election-cycle, 90-minute parachute drop to tour a factory, visit a farm, or hold a press conference will be seen as the political ploy that it is.