John Milliken and Mark Rozell: The Elections That Shaped Virginia
This week, Michael is joined by Professors John Milliken and Mark Rozell of George Mason University, editors of The New Dominion: The Twentieth-Century Elections That Shaped Modern Virginia. They discuss six statewide elections that shaped Virginia politics, how they shaped (and were shaped by) the state's culture, economy, and demographics, and what lessons we might be able to learn from those transformative moments. The New Dominion - UVA Press (virginia.edu
Episode Transcript
Michael Pope
I'm Michael Pope. And this is Pod Virginia, a podcast that is really pleased to welcome today the Editors of a new book from the University of Virginia Press. The book is titled The New Dominion, the 20th-century elections that shaped modern Virginia, by John Milliken and Mark Rozell. Thanks for joining us.
John Milliken
Happy to be here.
Mark Rozell
Thank you.
Michael Pope
This is very exciting. Spoiler alert. I love the book. So, if you're listening to this podcast, go out and buy it. It's built around a handful of really key elections that totally changed Virginia and shaped modern Virginia there: 1993 When George Allen was elected governor; 1989, When Doug Wilder was elected governor; 1981, When Chuck Robb was elected governor; 1973, When Mills Godwin turned from a Bryd Democrat to a Nixon Republican, and 1966 When Bill Spong was elected to the United States Senate. So, explain how did these elections shape Virginia's history? Why did you choose this handful of elections as the key turning points?
John Milliken
This is John Milliken. Let me take a first crack at that. I think the short answer is we wanted elections that were serious contests. Most of the elections in Virginia's recent 50-year history or 75-year history really weren't serious. There wasn't serious opposition to the then-dominant Bryd machine. Throughout the period, say 1924 through the mid-60s. So first, the challenge is to pick elections that were contested by serious candidates. And then the question the book tries to answer is what drove the changes in Virginia politics in the last half of the 20th century. And there are two things that drove the change. One was an enormous demographic shift, growth in population in the areas where the prevailing machine did not do well, i.e., in Northern Virginia, particularly. And second, the expansion of the electorate, the coming into the franchise, after years of struggle by African Americans, and then more recently, by individuals born in other parts of the world that have dramatically shifted the Virginia politics of 50 years ago into the Virginia politics that we see today. So, these elections were chosen as a way of illustrating that shift.
Michael Pope
Mark Rozell, any thoughts on why this particular handful of elections are so significant that you would build an entire book around them?
Mark Rozell
So, we started talking about this book before Glenn Youngkin was elected governor in 2021. There were many analyses at that time looking at the tremendous streak of victory statewide by Democrats that suggested that Virginia was a blue state and permanently would be so because of the vast demographic changes that took place here. And John Milliken has explained that very well. But we thought, well, these analyses don't really tell the whole picture because all of the conditions that led to the eventual transformation of Virginia from What was once called an oligarchy completely controlled by a political machine into a two-party competitive state and one in which Democrats had had great fortunes in the 2000s, and 2010s. All had antecedents in the 20th-century elections that we looked at, ones in which we believed some profound changes were taking place that these were, in some ways, transformational events in Virginia politics. So what we're saying is that what eventually led to the rise of a predominantly blue Virginia had its antecedents and elections in the 20th century; it wasn't just a result of sudden demographic changes that just happened almost overnight. And yet, our analyses show through these several elections that we've really had these ebbs and flows between the two political parties and periods of time when people said Virginia is Republican-dominated, the 1970s or 1990s. Then periods of time when people said statewide Democrats are dominated 1980's, 2000's, 2010's. And then look at what we have now. A resurgent Republican Party, after so many analysts had said, Virginia has been colored permanently blue.
Michael Pope
Yeah, I'm glad you brought up the election of Glenn Youngkin. The two of you write in your introduction about its significance in terms of this idea, cracking this idea that Virginia is a blue state. And you actually provide a lot of context to that. I mean, coming out of the Byrd machine era, the Republicans were so powerful in Virginia that you actually call them the winningest party ever. And then, of course, the Democrats have a statewide dominance for a long time before Glenn Youngkin takes over and flips the state in 2021. So, what is the current state of the new dominion?
Mark Rozell
Let me just give a quick answer. And then defer to John. I think it's a very key point; everybody needs to hear that the votes of the suburbs and excerpts are gettable by either major political party. I think too many people had assumed before the election of Glenn Youngkin that the demographic shifts the rise of the African American vote, the migrants coming into Virginia, the rising minority votes, Latino and Asian American. The coalition of minorities that supported the Democratic Party meant that the Democratic Party was the permanent majority in Virginia. And we have found by looking at these elections from the 20th century, and then, of course, more recent history, that if a gubernatorial or other statewide candidate can put together the right message that appeals to the gettable voters, Virginia elections can turn either way. In that sense, we're a purple, not blue state.
John Milliken
Yeah, if you are a statewide Democratic candidate, you can win in the urban corridor. You can win the votes that you need out of the stretch of territory, starting in Northern Virginia, running through Richmond, and into Hampton Roads. If you're a Republican candidate, you need strong support in the rural areas, the Shenandoah Valley, South Side, Southwest Virginia, just as both Bob McDonnell and Glenn Youngkin got. But you also need to address the needs of the suburban communities that dominate the urban corridor. So Glenn Youngkin can be talking about education, Bob McDonald talking about Bob's for jobs. Those were the issues that people were talking about in their suburban barbecues and cocktail parties during the course of the election season, and the Republican candidates could win by adding those votes to their traditional Republican base.
Michael Pope
All right, so, as I said earlier, this book is built around a handful of key elections. But before we even get to the analysis of George Allen and Doug Wilder and Chuck, Rob and Mills Godwin and Bill Spong. We've got a chapter about a very important part of Virginia history, which is the Bryd machine. You've got an excellent chapter from Ron Hyneman that lays out the history and significance of the Bryd machine. John Milliken, why was it important to start with this chapter?
John Milliken
Well, you have to understand where you've been before you can have some sense of where you're going. So where we had been from the mid-20s, actually from before that, to the mid-60s was a strong, centrally organized political operation run first by Thomas Martin and succeeding him, for many years, by Harry Byrd. Which relied on two things. It relied on a very small electorate, tightly controlled, and it relied on a base of support in the rural courthouses all across agricultural and rural Virginia. And those strengths were enough to keep the Bryd organization in power for 40-plus years. And it was not until demographics began to undermine them that that changed.
Michael Pope
One of the most interesting parts of this chapter on the bird machine is the story about how much Harry Byrd hated Harry Truman; I mean, he really hated Harry Truman, going so far as to push through what was known as the anti-Truman bill that would have had the state party instruct electors rather than voters. It's a move that obviously raised alarm bells, especially considering what's going on with the prosecution of fake electors. So Hyneman points out in this chapter that the bird machine actually called for an investigation of Richmond newspapers for quietus editorials. So, Mark Rozell, what does this episode say about how Virginia politics worked in the first half of the 20th century?
Mark Rozell
Well, a famous scholar of southern politics referred to Virginia as a political museum piece, a wonderfully quotable line that has been brought back many, many times and works of scholarship on the politics of the American South. And he said that Virginia was ruled by an oligarchy. It was total control, restricted the vote as much as possible, and one party-controlled nomination by one political party was tantamount to an election. It was, in fact, the least competitive state in the entire union. And the leadership of the Bryd machine at that time felt so emboldened, so powerful that it could even attack the free press. Obviously, we're in a very different place now, which is what our book tells the story of.
John Milliken
The other less attractive reason behind Bird's action was that Harry Truman had integrated the armed forces. And that was the ultimate betrayal. And Bryd had a lot of reasons to disagree with Harry Truman, but for his constituency in the rural parts of Virginia, that was the singularly most important one.
Mark Rozell
The Democratic Party of the old South in that era was finding itself increasingly at odds with the trending progressivism, relatively speaking, of course, at that time in the National Democratic Party. So there was a big disconnect between state parties in the South in the National Democratic Party on a number of issues, but race more than any.
Michael Pope
Alright, while turning our attention to 1966 John Milliken, this is your chapter about this pivotal election, the only chapter of this book that is not about the race for governor; this is a US Senate primary. That obviously revealed a lot about the changing nature of Virginia politics in the late 60s. So, the incumbent senator at that time was a Bryd machine. Governor Absalom Willis Robertson. Now you may recognize that last name Robertson; he is the father of famous televangelist Pat Robertson. So, John Milliken, you point out in your chapter that Robertson took a really old-fashioned approach to campaigning, favoring things like strolling around the courthouse. While Bill Sprong was engaged in handshaking and retail politics. Explain why 1966 was such a pivotal election and why that sort of showed the changing nature of Virginia politics.
John Milliken
Well, it's pivotal for a couple of reasons. One, you had the oddity of both US Senate seats being on the ballot at the same time. That doesn't happen very often. It only happened because Harry Byrd senior, the former governor and longtime head of the organization, was beginning to fail in his health and stepped down, and his son Harry Byrd, Jr. was appointed to fill the remainder of his term, but state law said that when you get appointed like that, you have to stand for the remainder of the term at the next general election. So he was on the ballot sort of out of order, if you will, while at the same time, Willis Robertson's seat was up just in the ordinary course; his six-year term had expired. So, for those parts of the Democratic Party that were opposing the Bryd organization, this was an opportunity to take a shot at Harry Byrd Jr., a newly appointed member of the State Senate who can best be characterized as a creature out of the 18th century. Robertson was an exceptional person, a great outdoorsman, a man of great physical health, despite his age, but he was a throwback; he had never had to seriously campaign. And I was struck, for example, by a letter in his papers, which I read, which was sent to his campaign chairman. And you did everything by the letter. In those days, there was no email, of course, a letter sent to his campaign chairman and his campaign scheduler saying, I see you have me scheduled to shake hands at the Sperry Rand plant outside of Charlottesville; I see no reason to do this. Why would I want to stand in the hot sun, greeting individual people, when I could just go to the board room at Sperry Rand to tell them what I needed and have them tell their people.
Mark Rozell
That's a great story.
John Milliken
He was accustomed to campaigning the way he had campaigned when he was first elected to the State Senate in 1918. So, for him, politics had not changed. What was happening, however, was that a new generation of Virginians who had come back from World War II were dissatisfied with what was going on in their own state. And Bill Spong, a State Senator from Portsmouth, Virginia, sort of epitomized that generation. He fought in Europe, and he came back and was elected to the House of Delegates and then to the State Senate. Became a leader in what was called the Young Turks in the State Senate and was convinced that he could take on the organization because, frankly, he was like people in his generation, that perhaps had the organization been a little more moderate, particularly on race issues. He might have been an organization candidate. He was a traditional politician in Virginia terms and appealed to a younger set of people who might otherwise be supporters of the organization. And he won by a very narrow margin of 617 votes. And those votes came from a sliver of the population across the state that split its ballot between voting for Harry Byrd Jr. and voting for Bill Spong to pair with him.
Michael Pope
You also point out that late in the campaign, there were all kinds of other accusations with a kind of a racial undertone, and then also the politics of labor got involved. So Robertson's campaign manager was a guy by the name of Ed Willie, who went on to be a very influential person in his own right. And a talk about the end of that campaign, when the Robertson campaign team, including Ed Willie, is playing the race card in terms of making accusations about black people being involved in the Sprong campaign.
John Milliken
Yeah, this was it was fairly crude on their part. The Sprong campaign quickly understood that they ought to publicize it because the emerging Virginia that they needed to come out to vote would find that to be old-time politics that they didn't agree with. And, in fact, it turned out correctly. Sprong got very strong support in the African-American community and strong support from younger professional people in cities and towns across Virginia. The young lawyer at the courthouse wasn't quite a member of the local Courthouse Clique yet but felt like he could split with the local establishment and support a younger person to go to the Senate.
Michael Pope
Alright, so in another chapter of the book, Frank Atkinson writes about the so-called Armageddon election of 1973. When Bryd machine stalwart Mills Godwin abandons the Democratic Party, the Bryd machine that he used to be a part of. He's now leaving it in 1973. So this was a time when lots of people in the Democratic Party were just abandoning the party in droves, and not just Godwin conservatives and progressives were becoming independent candidates, people like Harry Byrd, Jr., in 1970, and Henry Howell in 1971. Meanwhile, Republican power is increasing thanks to the efforts of Richard Obenshain. At one point, President Nixon had a secret Oval Office meeting with two dozen Democrats from the Virginia General Assembly at the high watermark for the realignment of Virginia. So perhaps this is a trick question. But is this a moment when the Bryd machine totally falls apart?
John Milliken
My answer to that is, no, it didn't fall apart; it just moved down the hall. A significant part of the Bryd machine, if you will, was made up of the professional leadership in courthouses across the state, whether it was the elected leadership like the sheriff and the Commonwealth attorney and the Commissioner of Revenue or the prominent local lawyer or banker in the town. That group, which was conservative by nature, found a new home in the Republican Party, at least for a while, but they went on to be influential in almost every election in Virginia up through 2001. Mark Warner had a group of supporters when he ran, obviously, as a progressive, modern Democrat. He had a group of supporters called Independents for Warner, who were made up of that same set of conservative professional people who had supported mostly Republican but sometimes Democratic candidates for the preceding 20 years.
Michael Pope
Yeah, the thing I find really interesting about this era, the early 70s, is that the Democratic Party is being hollowed out. So, the right wing of the party people, like Harry Byrd Jr., are leaving the Democratic Party simultaneously; the left wing of the Democratic Party is also leaving with Henry Howell running as an independent in 1971. Meanwhile, you've got Richard Obenshain, father to Mark Obenshain, creating this Republican Party that would later go on to dominate Virginia politics for a very long period of time. In fact, I think in your conclusion, you talk about the shift from Bryd Democrats to Obenshain Republicans. So, like Mark Rozell, is this a key fulcrum here in Virginia in the history of Virginia politics?
Mark Rozell
I think so. But let me talk a little bit about the national context in the 1970s. That's so much framed what was going on in Virginia and influenced the elections here. You had the McGovern lead, liberal anti-war takeover of the National Democratic Party, perceived by many in Virginia, not surprisingly, at that time, as entirely too far left, and turned a number of people who otherwise may have turned to a Democratic Party away. And then, even though you had this Armageddon election, that has such profound importance, as your question suggests, to the future of Virginia politics. Nonetheless, it suggests that there was a kind of bottled-up Republican realignment because of Watergate. Given the fact that in 1974, there were many candidates nationwide with an R next to their name, and that was the only reason people voted against them. The building Republican realignment that supposedly was happening at the national level with President Nixon's landslide election. And Virginia, starting to go Republican, simply did not pan out the way that it could have. And then, of course, fast forward to the 1980s, which was the Reagan-Bush heyday of the Republican Party nationally and in Virginia, in 1981, '85, and '89. The Democrats won all three statewide offices in all three elections. The Republicans of Virginia, supposedly a conservative-leaning state, were completely shut out. And statewide elections during the Reagan-Bush era of the 1980s.
Michael Pope
Yeah, giving credit where credit is due. It's important to point out that the phrase Armageddon election is the Richmond Times Dispatch columnist Charles McDowell who came up with that expression. Atkinson used it as the title of his chapter and credits McDowell in terms of coming up with it. This shift, in retrospect, seems obvious. But Mark Rozell, you just pointed out that Watergate actually slowed this realignment very considerably because this was at the time when Democrats were jumping ship. Southern conservative Democrats were jumping ship. Simultaneously, the National Republican Party was falling apart. And the last thing you wanted to do was have any kind of association with Richard Nixon.
Mark Rozell
Yeah.
Michael Pope
So that really did slow down this realignment pretty substantially. And perhaps even in the long run, Republicans made things better if it had been sudden. Perhaps it might not have been thought through as carefully. I think you could also make the case that the delayed nature of that realignment probably made that Republican organization much stronger, thanks to Richard Obenshain working behind the scenes.
Mark Rozell
Right, and also, I think it opened up an opportunity, on the other hand, for the Democratic Party to reshape itself. And the chapter on the Chuck Robb campaign in 1981 makes the case very well that Chuck Robb was able to run as a progressive on social and civil rights issues but as a fiscal conservative, and in so doing, he aligned himself with the overriding mainstream of the Virginia electorate in the 1980s, while the Republican Party started running farther and farther to the political right. And so during an era of Republican dominance at the national level, in presidential elections, at least in Virginia, Republicans simply had moved outside the mainstream in Virginia, and Democrats were able to capitalize on that and have a succession of successful statewide races in the 1980s,
Michael Pope
John Milliken everything in either.
John Milliken
No, I think Mark is right; Robb was able to keep a policy foot in both camps to the northern Virginians and the African American community and the progressives in various corners of the state. He was one of them. In boardrooms and the business offices of professionals around the state, he understood the importance of fiscal integrity. One of his early supporters was a man named Roy Smith, who was the senior Democrat in the House of Delegates on the Appropriations Committee and sort of the epitome of the legacy of the old bird fiscal conservatism. And when he came out for Robb, after Robb had courted him successfully, when he came out for Robb, it was clear to a whole group of businesses and business people across the state that Robb would be okay.
Mark Rozell
I think Robb doesn't often get credit for what a transformational figure he was in his time in Virginia politics, and I think the chapter in the book makes the case quite well. He positioned himself philosophically in a way that built the Democratic Party so strong that it set the stage for those elections in 1985. And what many considered the unlikely one in 1989, Douglas Wilder, of course, none of that could have happened without the leadership of Chuck Robb in establishing the Democratic Party solidly in the mainstream of Virginia politics and government at the time.
John Milliken
It was not lost on people who followed Virginia politics closely that Robb had come into office four years earlier by winning a Democratic primary in 1977, defeating two more liberal candidates, sort of establishing his moderate democratic credentials.
Michael Pope
That chapter on the election of Chuck Robb in 1981 was written by three people In front of the podcast, including Stephen Farnsworth, who has appeared on Pod Virginia many times. As well as Steven Hannah and Sally Berkeley. So, the chapter portrays Robb as successful because he distanced himself from the liberals. So they explained that Robb was kind of the blueprint for the more conservative version of the Democratic Party. Things like supporting the death penalty, national defense, and fiscal prudence. It also didn't hurt that Chuck Robb was married to the daughter of Lyndon Johnson. So there was some star power going on there. As you point out, the election of Chuck Robb here is really important because it unveiled a kind of new version of the Democratic Party. I mean, this is a party that had been kind of floundering since the end of the Bryd machine was trying to figure out what its new direction was going to be. And I think Chuck is pretty clear from this chapter. Chuck Robb created the new face of the Democratic Party for the 1980s.
John Milliken
No question about it.
Mark Rozell
Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And it was brilliant in its time. He captured the political center, and the Republicans moved right. And the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, well, where do they go? Running a third candidate was simply a result of the election of a Republican. So, he was able to hold the center and, of course, hold the progressive wing of the party. And he did appeal to the progressive wing of the party on some key social issues, for example, issues pertaining to Race and Justice. So, he was not completely outside of the progressive side of the political spectrum, but he just wasn't there on all their issues.
Michael Pope
Well, he was able to like to reject massive resistance in a way that Mills Godwin could never do. So you mentioned Doug Wilder a little bit earlier. So, the chapter on the election of Doug Wilder is worth talking about. Julian Hayter writes this chapter about the 1989 election. The chapter traces Doug Wilder's history to Richmond politics and city politics in Richmond. One of the strategies of Doug Wilder is discussed in this chapter. I think it's really interesting that he avoided the discussion of race. So here's this guy, running to be the first Black governor in the country. And yet he's avoiding any discussion, public discussion about race. How does this election portray the changing nature of Virginia politics?
John Milliken
Well, I'll take the first crack at that as somebody who spent four very interesting and pleasurable years serving in the Wilder administration. Doug is a unique figure in Virginia history. And on the national stage. He very consciously did not run as an African-American candidate; he ran as a citizen who happened to be African-American or Black. But, for example, the most prominent Black organization politically in Richmond has always been, or was in those days, the Richmond Crusade for Voters. Doug was never affiliated with the Crusade. He often got its support when he ran for office. But he was very careful not to portray himself as coming out of Black city politics. He represented the Richmond or a portion of Richmond, where he happened to have grown up on Churchill. So when he ran, having established credibility as a State Senator for a number of years when, he ran statewide first in 1985 and then in 1989. Was he African-American? Absolutely. Did he get strong African-American support? Devoted African American support? Absolutely. But he didn't campaign that way at all because that wasn't who he was. And he was as comfortable in the local town store, the grocery store in Southside, Virginia, and South Boston as he was on the streets of Richmond. And in that way, he was and is a unique figure in Virginia history.
Mark Rozell
Yeah, that's very well said, John. Thank you. Again, this is another transformational election. I remember following that campaign very closely at that time. And the three national news magazines ran cover stories about the election of Doug Wilder after his victory. One of the national magazines that title was The End of the Civil War. Quite striking, right? So, people attributed a great deal of both symbolic and substantive importance to having the nation's first elected Black governor. But as John pointed out, Doug Wilder wasn't running, focusing on race; he was running on issues and letting the voters focus on the appeals of the two candidates in that campaign and making their decision he won. I believe it was the closest statewide election in Virginia, with about a 4,700-vote victory after a recount. So it was a very, very close election. Maybe I'm going out on a limb here, but a possible analogy to Barack Obama and what happened after his two terms in office is the resurgence of the Republicans in a landslide election in 1993. The subject of another chapter in the book, after the election of Doug Wilder. Julian Hayter points out that this is part of a trend, oftentimes in American politics, that you have the success of an African-American candidate. And then, sometimes, there is the rise of white resistance. And you kind of wash away the symbolic importance of what had just happened because of the unwillingness of voters to continue down a particular path. Now, whether there is an analogy there to the rise of Donald Trump after the two terms of Barack Obama, I'll let others argue whether that's the case, but it's certainly historically very interesting that you had this sequence of Democratic Party victories and three statewide elections, followed by a massive landslide by the Republicans in 1993, at a time when the polls at the beginning of the campaign in that election cycle had suggested that the Democrats were on the path to an easy fourth consecutive gubernatorial election.
Michael Pope
While you've set up my next question perfectly. So, the last election I want to talk about is 1993. The chapter from some very familiar names to our listeners, Warren Fisk, and Bob Holdsworth write this chapter about the 1993 election of George Allen as governor. Which was essentially like a rejection of the Clinton wave election; it really began the resurgence of the Virginia Republican Party. The name of the chapter is The Rise of a Competitive Republican Party. What was the significance of this election? And how did it shape Virginia politics for the next decade,
Mark Rozell
George Allen turned out to be a much stronger candidate than many Analysts had expected. He had a certain charisma and almost a Reagan-esque quality to him that people attributed to him after he won the election, of course, that people initially had thought he had no chance of winning. And he staked out some strongly conservative positions, but he had a way of presenting them. That appealed to a very large segment of the voting populace in Virginia. And this ushered in a period of strong Republican dominance, even stronger than the 1970s. George Allen had a certain charisma and a certain political appeal that was transferable to other candidates. His election was followed by another gubernatorial election in 1997. He, I think, also was a key figure, and fundamental changes that have taken place in Virginia politics that underlay the thesis of the book that there is just not a continuous or straight line in partisanship in the evolution of Virginia politics and governments due to all the demographic and social and cultural changes that have taken place over the years. If you have the right candidate who can appeal to the swing voters in the state, which we believe remains a generally purple state. The votes are gettable by either Democrats or Republicans. And George Allen certainly proved that the Democratic Party dominance of the 1980s in Virginia was not permanent. In fact, he was able to usher in a significant period of complete Republican dominance throughout the state.
John Milliken
What you began to see, however, in the Allen election by looking at the returns closely is that the base of the traditional Republican Party or the base of the conservative coalition, however it may be made up found in the rural areas, was shrinking. A significant share of the counties that the Conservative candidate, whoever that person might be Democrat in the Bryd years Republican since then they were losing population. So, to be a successful Republican candidate, one had to begin to look to the Loudons and Prince William's and outer parts of Fairfax, Virginia Beach, Chesterfield, and Henrico counties. The suburban counties, coupled with the Rural vote, were giving the Republicans the majority and did decidedly, in Allen's case, and again in the next election.
Mark Rozell
Yeah, the conventional wisdom, by the way, in the 1990s was that the Republican Party would remain dominant because of the growing populations of the exurbs, places like Loudoun and Prince William, that were, at the time, overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly Republican, vastly growing in population. But some people weren't looking exactly at where that growing population was coming from and what it represented. These have become some of the most fast-growing and diverse parts of Virginia and even the country by some measures that ultimately led, later, to projections suggesting that the Democratic Party would become the dominant majority party of Virginia.
Michael Pope
Yeah, that's really interesting, actually, the way you framed the conventional wisdom for the 1990s because it's actually kind of the same conventional wisdom about the Democrats having a permanent blue state, but just upside down, right?
Mark Rozell
Exactly, right?
John Milliken
One of the most interesting, quick statistics to look at, which tells you a lot about the changing Virginia, is what proportion of the people living in Virginia were born in Virginia, you go all the way back to 1900. That number is 8. 92% of the people living in Virginia were born in Virginia, and only 8% were born somewhere else. By 1930, it was only 15% by 1950. It was 25% by 1960. It was 30%. It's now over half over half of the people living in Virginia in 2020. We're born someplace else.
Michael Pope
Well, on the topic of mind-blowing statistics, I want to end the discussion with some figures from your conclusion, which has some really interesting and thought-provoking statistics here in terms of the population increase. So, the story that we've been talking about for this entire podcast is sort of the changing demographics of Virginia and how it influences elections. So some numbers to think about between 1940 and 1960. So that's, obviously, a very short period of time; the population increased by 48% between 1940 and 1960. So that obviously led to basically the death of the Byrd machine eventually. And then you get another really interesting story here. It's a little bit more of a long-term story between 1950 and 2000. So, in other words, in the last half of the 20th century, the population of Virginia doubled. So I mean, are we really what we're seeing here and these handful of elections that we've been looking at is the changing nature of demographics in Virginia and how they have influenced Virginia politics.
John Milliken
I think, along with the rise of the African American and non-native born ethnic community vote, the overall population, not only in sheer numbers but where it was located. This doubling of population wasn't evenly spread out across the state. It was concentrated in the urban corridor and particularly concentrated in Northern Virginia. And these were people who moved to the Washington Metropolitan Area to be in and around government. They worked for a government that worked for government contractors. They had some affiliation with the government, or their next-door neighbor did, and so they were comfortable with the government and a political party or a politician that ran against a government that didn't fall on receptive ears. In most political communities in Northern Virginia, so larger and larger numbers of people in Northern Virginia simply tuned out those kinds of pronouncements and started listening to whether you were talking about things that mattered to their kids or whether you were talking about their commute to and from work. Those were the issues that began to dominate the politics of Metropolitan Washington and some of the other urban and suburban areas across the urban corridor. Completely different than what the Bryd organization and its Republican successors had become used to using as their standard fare.
Mark Rozell
Yeah, I think that's very well said; the demographic changes in Virginia have been profound. Nonetheless, many point out that the Democratic Party largely has benefited from these changes, particularly the rising number of minority voters. On the other hand, as I said before, the votes of people in the suburbs and exurbs are gettable by both political parties. It is not certain that the votes of minority populations are static and will forever stand primarily with the Democratic Party. Some Republican candidates in Virginia and nationally have done extremely well with minority voters. There were two exit polls in 2021. Regarding different voting populations, that came to very different results, unfortunately, so we don't know which one got it right. But one exit poll suggested that Glenn Youngkin actually won the Hispanic vote. In Virginia, I'm not sure that one is accurate, another said that Terry McAuliffe did. But it still points out the fact that a number of voting groups that had long been presumed to be in the Democratic Party column permanently are gettable votes, and the Democratic Party has to take that very seriously to recapture its position of dominance that it had prior to the election of Glendale income.
Michael Pope
Before we end our discussion, I want to focus on the changing nature of the urban coroner; John Milliken was just talking about the significance of the urban quarter. In the conclusion, you point out that Tim Kaine, in 2005, was the first status quo candidate to rely wholly on the urban corridor. So you could sort of see that as a demarcation point, a fulcrum, where the urban corridor takes on a new significance, and the old Bryd era of relying on rural voters is, you know, old news. However, I think the caution that we would want to look at that with is the election of Glenn Youngkin. Who did okay in the urban quarter? It's not like he failed in the urban quarter. But the reason that he got elected was this overwhelming turnout and rural Virginia. So I mean, the urban, so can we conclude from that the urban corridor is obviously very important. The story of this book actually tells us the significance of the changing nature of demographics and the importance of the urban corridor. However, isn't it also true that you need rural Virginia in order to win?
John Milliken
If you're a Republican, you've got to have both. You've got to be able to maintain your margins in the rural areas, but you've got to have enough credibility in the suburban and urban corridor in order to cut into the democratic percentages. A Democrat arguably can win just in the urban corridor.
Mark Rozell
Yeah, that's where most of the votes are. That's absolutely right. Yeah. So Republicans drive up the vote in the rural areas, hold down your losses in the urban corridor. That's the key to victory. And Glenn Youngkin did that. And it surprised a lot of people that it was a close election in 2021.
John Milliken
I mean, it was an exceptionally perceptive political effort on their part in order to keep the rural base satisfied and get the kind of margins and the level of turnout that they got in the rural communities and, at the same time, have enough of a suburban appeal. That is because you were talking about issues that the suburbs cared about, that you could cut into their proportions. Terry McAuliffe, in his run against Youngkin, got the vote he expected. But Glenn Youngkin couldn't get more than the McAuliffe people thought he would be elevating his appeal in the suburban areas.
Mark Rozell
Yeah, that's absolutely right. If you told Terry McAuliffe weeks before Election Day that the number of votes that he actually did get was going to be what he was going to get. He would have said it's over; I win. He got a phenomenal number of votes. Unfortunately, it was less than Glenn Youngkin got, but he turned out the Democratic base and got far many more votes than Ralph Northam received when he won the governorship in the previous election.
John Milliken
So, if you're an aspiring Republican statewide candidate, you have to position yourself in some fashion that you can speak to the urban corridor with credibility while maintaining your rural constituency, in whatever fashion you have to do it.
Michael Pope
All right. The title of the book is The New Dominion: The 20th Century Elections that Shaped Modern Virginia, edited by the dynamic duo that's been joining us today, John Milliken and Mark Rozell. Thanks for joining us.
Mark Rozell
Thank you.
John Milliken
Thank you, it’s been fun.
