Collegiate Times

It

’s all we can do to ask busy college kids to care enough about politics to participate in the (very important) congressional election going on here in the 9th District this November.

Finding someone interested enough to pay attention to what’s going on in the rest of the state is very rare, even though many of our students are Virginia natives. While this is completely understandable, some students might be interested to know about another very exciting race going on right around the corner, in the 5th District. The outcome of this race will make a definitive statement about the political climate and the nature of politics these days, a statement relevant to us all.

Virginia’s 5th District is the largest in the state. It includes Charlottesville and several other decently sized cities. The current representative for the district is Democrat Tom Perriello, who is being challenged by Republican Robert Hurt.

The latest polls show Perriello trailing, as he has been all along, but for the most part by less and less. There is, as always with polls, some discrepancy as to exactly how close the race is, but most on either side would say it’s definitely still a race, much like the race between Democrat Rick Boucher and Republican Morgan Griffith in the 9th District.

The races in the both districts are comparable in some significant ways. Both feature incumbent Democrats facing some serious opposition from challenging Republicans. Both races are relatively close. But the incumbents themselves are fairly different kinds of Democrats, which is what makes comparing the two races interesting: Seeing which one (if either) prevails over his opponent will make a statement about what works and what doesn’t in the current political climate.

Boucher seems to be pushing, as one of his greatest assets, that he doesn’t just vote the Democratic Party line. He claims to put the interests of his district first and his party second, which is part of the reason he voted against one of the most important pieces of Democratic legislation of the Obama presidency, the health care reform bill. 

There have been other major things his party has pursued that he opposed, such as the repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” and the financial reform bill. Clearly, though he does undeniably vote with the Democrats and Obama the majority of the time, he isn’t doing so blindly or without reservations on some issues, particularly those which might harm his constituents. He has always been a moderate Democrat, as he must be to be successful in a more conservative district such as this. 

However, by voting against some major Democratic legislation, such as health care reform, Boucher has managed to alienate some of the people that should be his core base. Democrats are unhappy with him, and some of them are deciding they just won’t vote at all rather than have to vote for someone they see as “the lesser of two evils.”

Though I myself rarely condone deciding to sit out an election, many in the 9th District are seeing it as the only way to express their displeasure. 

They might just end up with an even more conservative representative as a result, but that’s not enough to motivate them to support Boucher at this point. Boucher may also be suffering from a lack of enthusiasm in the campaign-volunteer department. Many of those die-hard Dems who’ve decided to swallow his no-vote on health care and DADT and go ahead and support him anyway are unlikely to take it a step further and volunteer for a guy they just don’t feel that enthusiastic about. 

The most loyal Democrats, not the moderates or swing voters, are the ones to be depended on for support in the form of time volunteered and money donated, and they’re the ones that Boucher has turned off with his more conservative stances on big issues.

Is it worth it to vote against your party to achieve broader appeal in a more conservative district? That remains to be seen.

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A version of this article appeared in the Oct 28 issue of the Collegiate Times.