Battle for Virginia

RICHMOND, VA.-It was a bad day for a campaign rally: rainy and cold. But then polls show it's a bad year to be campaigning as a Republican.

Several hundred small business owners, with Joe the Plumber (a.k.a. Joe Wurzelbacher) as their hero and "no higher taxes on small business" as their rallying cry, gathered Saturday in a warehouse near Richmond, Va., for a John McCain rally.

Leaders at Saturday's rally discounted Barack Obama's lead over McCain in national polls just 10 days before Election Day.

"We don't elect people on polls," said Rudy Giuliani, who was stumping for McCain. "All those samples can be wrong."

The rally took place in a state that hasn't needed much Republican campaigning to go red in the past. But Virginia, which has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1964, may go blue this year. Obama drew about 12,000 to a rally in Richmond last week. While the shift has many roots, one is demographic. The northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., which are overwhelmingly Democratic, have grown considerably in recent years.

"We win here, and we win the presidency," Democratic vice-presidential hopeful Joe Biden said Saturday at a rally in Suffolk, Va.

But the Democrats' threat to the red fortress didn't deter Republicans in Richmond on Saturday.

"These are wonderful times to be a Republican in Virginia," said Jerry Kilgore, the state's former attorney general.

Small business owners talking before the rally sense the desperation of the campaign but are confident that Virginia at its core is a conservative state, which is how they approach conversations with undecided neighbors and friends. The Republican Party, many said, understands hard-working Virginians. Rally-goers called themselves "Joe the Plumber," and they nicknamed Roddy Davoud, who owns the warehouse that hosted the rally, "Roddy the Contractor."

The business owners' reasons for voting for McCain? They ranged from personal to political.

"I wouldn't vote for a terrorist," said one man who didn't want to be identified.

"I believe in lower taxes and smaller government," said Jan Uyar, a small business owner.

Giuliani and fellow McCain backer Steve Forbes hit on taxes and getting the government "off people's backs." Since McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, were in other parts of the country, the former mayor of New York and the Forbes top executive stumped for the candidate, talking up Obama's inexperience and far-left record. Though Giuliani avoided the label, other speakers continued to refer to Obama's policies as "socialist," eliciting loud "boos" from the crowd.

But the rally wasn't against Obama and his policies as much as it was against the media, and what speakers referred to as "the potentates of pessimism."

"The media is scaring people on the economy to get Democrats [elected]," said Scott St. John, a small business owner.

The intense scrutiny of Joe the Plumber under the lens of the "mainstream media" prompted frustration among the McCain supporters. Several refused to give WORLD their names for this article because they said they didn't want to be attacked in the press like Joe has been. Eyes rolled and heads wagged slowly in disapproval in response to questions about "the media."

"It's pathetic the way they go after Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber and do nothing to look into the background of Joe Biden and Barack Obama," said Hugh Truesdale. "They won't do the job they're supposed to do."

Forbes said press coverage of Joe Biden's gaffes was so thin it showed a "double standard" and that serious issues have not been covered.

"This is America not the Soviet Union last time I checked," Forbes told the roomful of supporters.

When Giuliani spoke, he read a quote from The Wall Street Journal, and reassured the crowd: "This is not from The New York Times."

The media attacks kept rolling.

"Joe the Plumber should be the permanent anchor of 'Meet the Press,'" said Giuliani. "He got Barack Obama to answer a question."

"The liberal elite would like you to believe this race is over. Just turn off NBC News, CNN," Kilgore told the crowd.

When the former New York mayor criticized Obama's inexperience, he added a postscript.

"I know the press will get mad about this," Giuliani said.

On the issue of voter fraud and ACORN, Giuliani went after the press again, saying that news media have assumed that voter-registration fraud is not cause for concern.

"Let me tell you, genius reporter, how it works," he said, arguing that voter-registration fraud does indeed lead to voter fraud.

Christy Swanson, who was a supporter of Obama and a Democrat who spoke in support of McCain at the Republican National Convention in September, spoke again for him on Saturday in Richmond. She told WORLD that subtle messages in national media coverage sucked her into supporting Obama, but when she did her own research she decided to support McCain because of his policies toward small businesses like her family-owned biodiesel company.

A few of the people at the rally, though, believe that the McCain campaign may be partly at fault for not communicating its message effectively enough to the media.

The Republican fight for more positive coverage in the media will continue, just as McCain's fight for Virginia continues. Palin came to Virginia Monday to campaign. Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee hopes to keep Virginia red by attracting independent voters in the northern part of the state.