Virginia’s mix of voters ensures a politically competitive environment. | REUTERS The state both parties want

The verdict is in: Barack Obama’s 2008 victory in Virginia was not a fluke. For the once reliably Republican state, competitive presidential elections are the new normal.

Just look at the candidates’ schedules. President Obama will make Richmond the site of his kickoff campaign rally this Saturday and, as he often does, will motorcade across the Potomac on Friday for an official event in Northern Virginia, this one devoted to student loans at an Arlington high school. Mitt Romney has two stops in Virginia lined up this week, Wednesday in Northern Virginia and Thursday in Hampton Roads, and he will also be in Lynchburg to speak to graduates of Liberty University next week.


Both campaigns are also moving swiftly to build their organizations. Romney recently brought his Iowa state director, Sara Craig, to helm Virginia and his team hopes to open at least a dozen field offices in the next month. Obama has had a Richmond-based staff in place for months and just opened up his 13th field office last month. The action on the ground is mirrored on the air – Obama’s campaign and Romney’s super PAC are already broadcasting commercials in the state.

The demographic forces that propelled Democrats to capture two consecutive gubernatorial and Senate races and enabled Obama’s 7-point win in Virginia, the first for a Democrat since LBJ’s 1964 landslide, make the Old Dominion a prime target for the president. The reelection campaign eyes with delight any state with a significant percentage of voters who are young, minorities and transplants — and Virginia has all three.

( Also on POLITICO: Top Senate races: Va., Mass. lead list)

But Virginia hasn’t become a southern version of Vermont overnight. Voters there still retain a business-friendly climate and a tendency to reward political moderation and competence. Democrats got a reminder of the state’s slightly right-of-center leanings in the two years after Obama’s triumph, when Republicans recaptured the governorship and then took three House seats from Democrats.

“I think the last decade of elections have shown that Virginia is dominated by independent-minded, thinking people,” said Gov. Bob McDonnell, citing the 25-point swing between Obama’s victory in 2008 and his own landslide a year later. “They will swing wildly from one election to another."

Virginia Republicans all say publicly that they believe Romney will put the state back in the GOP column, but many will concede privately that the general election begins with Obama a few points ahead. Both sides believe that Obama’s advantage is something less than the 8 points a Public Policy Polling survey had him ahead by this week. Republicans acknowledge that they’ve got work to do following an ugly primary season and Democrats are feeling more upbeat thanks to a resurgent economy in the state, the gender-related controversies that arose during the legislative session this winter and the distance from the Washington-spurred 2009 and 2010 backlash.

But top officials in both parties are cautious in their assessments.

“I do think things look a lot better for the president than they did a year ago or even six months ago,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.). “There was a perception of overreach from the White House up through 2010.”

“I’ve seen a bunch of polling suggesting it’s much more of a dead heat than it is the president way ahead at this point,” Warner said.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a darling of national conservatives who is running for the GOP nomination for governor next year, argued that Republicans still have an edge in the state but acknowledged: “It’s definitely in play.”

“I do think we’re beyond the years where Republicans could presume that we’re going to automatically win Virginia,” Cuccinelli added.

So neither party is likely to give up any time soon this year on the “Mother of Presidents”– nor can they in future White House races. Virginia’s composition of voters ensures a politically competitive environment that will make it pivotal for Democrats who rely on centrists to win the White House and Republicans who must compensate for cultural weaknesses in the Northeast and West by holding the South intact. It’s no behemoth like Florida, but Virginia is becoming the consummate swing state for the same reasons that have made the Sunshine State so crucial for decades.

“Over the next decade, I am sure that Virginia will be one of the key swing states in the country,” said Obama campaign manager Jim Messina. “It’s just demographics.”

State Del. Jennifer McClellan, a Democratic rising star from Richmond, noted that “Virginia is a lot more diverse than it used to be. It’s a microcosm of the country in a way it hadn’t been in [the] past.”

Much of this is because of both immigration and migration — the state has a growing population of Hispanics and Asians and, thanks to its technology and government contracting industry, significant numbers of what the natives call “come-heres” from other states.

As of the 2010 census, just over half of Virginia residents were born in the state. Over 37 percent were born in a different state and more than 10 percent were born outside the country.

Indeed, the Byrd Organization, former Sen. Harry F. Byrd’s 20th-century conservative Democratic machine, would surely mean as little to the typical Virginia suburbanite as Tammany Hall would to the stroller-pushers in Park Slope.

The common assumption is that the story of Virginia’s political evolution can be explained by the explosive growth in the suburbs and exurbs of Washington, D.C. And the many independent voters who’ve descended on Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William counties have nudged those traditionally Republican-leaning counties to the left.

Cuccinelli, himself a son of Northern Virginia, pinned much of the blame for the shift on Washington politicians who have grown the size of the government — bringing an influx of new federal workers “who have settled in Northern Virginia.” The result is a state, he said, that Obama could realistically win in November.

“They imported a lot of people from all over the country who think working in government is great. … Those are people who haven’t lived in Virginia very long and have a real D.C. focus, not a Richmond focus,” he said. “Our move into the swing-state column has really been caused by the growth of the federal government.”

But the new Virginia isn’t only a result of new arrivals north of the Rappahannock River. It’s the entire “urban crescent,” the population hubs around Washington, down to Richmond and then east to Tidewater, that is behind the shift.

“It’s not just a Northern Virginia thing,” said Warner, singling out the newly competitive Henrico County outside of Richmond. “That was [House Majority Leader] Eric Cantor, [former Gov.] Jim Gilmore, [former Rep.] Tom Bliley country — the heart of the old-line Republican establishment.”

A look at Obama’s 2008 map makes it clear. He not only carried the most populous counties of northern Virginia, but also places like Henrico and Chesapeake, in Hampton Roads, while only losing Virginia Beach by a single point.

While those places remain competitive, Republicans believe they can win back the suburbs by running against an incumbent who has been defined and has an established record. The GOP strategy is to leave aside the culture wars they used for decades against national Democrats and focus entirely on painting Obama as an adversary to pocketbook-minded voters.

“In Virginia, what is a constant is our very pro-business mentality,” Cantor said. “Candidates of either party have always run on a message that we’re open for business. And this election is about rejecting an administration that has been hostile to small business.”

Democrats, while making the case for a revived economy in a state where unemployment is down to under 6 percent, also have their eye on a gender gap that is as pronounced in Virginia as it is in other competitive states.

“Just look at the rhetoric from the Republican primary, the discussion about these divisive social issues, on top of that what they did in Richmond [with ultrasound and personhood legislation],” said Terry McAuliffe, an all-but-certain 2013 gubernatorial candidate. “You couldn’t put together a more toxic mix to voters in Northern Virginia and the suburbs.”

Democrats say that for Obama to hang on to the state, he must reclaim the independents he won in 2008 but who took flight from the Democratic Party in the two subsequent elections. Such voters especially abound in the just-developed housing communities far beyond the Beltway.

“That’s where this battle will be won or lost,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), who represents parts of such outer suburbs in Northern Virginia. “He’s got to physically get to Loudoun and Prince William County. Those counties are filled with swing voters who are not necessarily hostile to President Obama or his agenda. They have to be wooed.”

If anything is sure, though, it’s that Virginians are going to be wooed for the next six months.

“We’re back as a swing state, no doubt,” said former Attorney General Jerry Kilgore. “I think a lot of us had hoped it was a sign of that year and the economic trouble in 2008, but it’s not. Here we are back again.”