“By the time he ran for governor in 2005, Kaine had his model and it made sense for a Richmond mayor to run this way: He ran as a polished, well-educated suburban/urban candidate,” said Larry Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. Sabato moderated a televised debate between Kaine and Kilgore and remembers being “stunned” at the contrast in styles. “Kilgore was the favorite and he was supposed to win,” Sabato recalled. “But he came across as the southwest Virginian he had once been. He had the southwest Virginia twang; he was not particularly polished. Kaine was so dominant it was almost embarrassing at times; I felt as the moderator I almost had to stop [the fight].”

After his single term as governor, Kaine faced off in 2012 for a U.S. Senate seat against George Allen, the former Republican governor and Senator. Compared to 2005, Kaine edged toward a more liberal definition on cultural issues: After the Virginia Tech mass shooting in 2007 he had aggressively pushed for instant background checks at gun shows in the state. And despite his personal opposition to abortion, Kaine attacked Allen over his support of a “personhood” amendment that defined life as beginning at conception, while also denouncing state legislation that would have required women to undergo an invasive ultrasound exam before obtaining an abortion.

Once again, Kaine struggled in the state’s rural regions. But, boosted by the presidential year turnout, he amassed even bigger margins in the state’s urban and suburban centers than in 2005. Kaine carried Fairfax, Alexandria, Arlington, Loudon, Henrico, and Richmond city with bigger vote margins than he did in his gubernatorial race—and, for that matter, larger margins than Obama did on ballot above him. (In Prince William County, with its large minority population, Kaine exceeded his 2005 showing but not Obama’s in 2012.) In Fairfax County alone, Kaine routed Allen by over 118,000 votes. And as in 2005, Kaine also ran well in the urbanized Hampton Roads region. “In the suburbs and exurbs, Kaine piled up enormous margins,” said Sabato.

The Democratic shift toward an urban focus in Virginia solidified the next year, when Terry McAuliffe won the governorship in 2013. Running against Republican Ken Cuc­cinelli, a hard-core conservative culture warrior, McAuliffe advanced a much more socially liberal agenda than either Warner or Kaine offered in their governor’s races. McAuliffe, as I wrote at the time, endorsed “gay marriage; universal background checks for gun purchases; an assault-weapons ban; a pathway to citizenship for immigrants here illegally; a mandate on employers health insurane to include free contraception coverage; and limits on carbon emissions from new coal-fired power plants.” Only a few years earlier, any of those positions—much less all of them—might have been considered politically fatal in Virginia. Yet lifted by the state’s biggest population centers, McAuliffe squeezed past Cuccinelli to a narrow victory.