A recent poll found 56 percent of Virginians now favor gay marriage. | Matt Wuerker New gay-rights battleground: Virginia

Welcome to the gay rights battleground of Virginia.

Yes, you read that right. In the 2013 off-year elections, a state that once leaned solidly to the center-right has become the newest focal point in the national debate over same-sex relationships. A gubernatorial race already defined partly along culture-war lines has grown even more contentious since last weekend, when Virginia Republicans nominated as their lieutenant governor candidate a firebrand minister who has called gays “very sick people psychologically” and suggested a connection between homosexuality and pedophilia.


Remarkably, in a New South battleground where Democrats have traditionally won by carving out independent, non-partisan reputations, it’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe who’s most eager to keep gay rights on the political front burner.

( PHOTOS: Terry McAuliffe’s career)

When McAuliffe first ran for governor in 2009, he ran a conventionally cautious Democratic campaign, endorsing civil unions for gay couples but warning that Virginia would be unlikely to accept gay marriage. After all, it was only a few years earlier – in 2000 – that Republican George Allen ridiculed then-Democratic Sen. Chuck Robb for representing “Vermont values,” after his vote against the Defense of Marriage Act.

This year, McAuliffe fully supports same-sex marriage. After Republicans nominated Rev. E.W. Jackson for lieutenant governor at their state convention last weekend, the Virginia Democratic Party held a conference call – led by openly gay state Sen. Adam Ebbin – to accuse the GOP ticket of representing “the biases of the past.” McAuliffe’s campaign issued a statement Wednesday charging that the gay-rights views of Jackson and GOP gubernatorial nominee Ken Cuccinelli were “divisive,” “dangerous” and bad for business.

Gone, in other words, is the conventional Southern Democratic playbook of running away from the national party on culture. Encouraged by last year’s joint victories by Sen. Tim Kaine and President Barack Obama, Democrats argue this is simply The Way We Live Now in Virginia.

( PHOTOS: Ken Cuccinelli’s career)

Democratic strategist Mo Elleithee said the fundamentals of Virginia’s cultural politics have changed so sharply that it makes sense for the party to trumpet cultural views that appeal to the state’s increasingly urban and diverse population.

“We are not in a defensive posture on cultural issues. Because of how much the state has changed, we can absolutely be in an offensive posture,” said Elleithee, who advised Kaine in his 2012 campaign and McAuliffe in 2009. “I don’t think the other side understands how much Virginia has changed, or they just don’t care.”

The McAuliffe campaign’s research backs up that assessment, according to multiple operatives involved in the race, who see Cuccinelli and Jackson’s culture-warrior history as a valuable tool for motivating low-turnout Democrats in the off-cycle campaign.

Democratic polls and focus groups have consistently found that voters react with horror to a 2008 statement by Cuccinelli that the “homosexual agenda” brings about “nothing but self-destruction, not only physically but of their soul,” as well as to Cuccinelli’s opposition to public universities including gay-rights protections in their anti-discrimination policies.

One private Democratic poll taken last month showed that 81 percent of targeted young voters – aged 18 to 29 – called that information a “very strong reason to vote against” Cuccinelli. A March focus group of middle-class, Democratic-leaning women in Virginia Beach found Cuccinelli’s quote about the “homosexual agenda” similarly powerful.

Public polling reinforces that picture: a Washington Post poll published earlier this month found 56 percent of Virginians now favor gay marriage, including a majority of political independents.

That’s a stark shift since 2006, when Virginia voters approved an amendment to the state constitution banning same-sex marriage with a 57-percent majority.

University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato said that “twenty years have made a world of difference” in Virginia politics, as far as which side of the cultural divide is safer for statewide candidates.

“The gay rights issue here is emblematic. In the Old Dominion, a party associated with gay rights would be headed for a tumble. Now, it’s exactly the opposite. A sizeable majority in Purple Virginia do not consider the anti-gay views of Cuccinelli and Jackson to be acceptable,” Sabato said. “It’s old versus new. If the Democrats had a nominee like Tim Kaine, this contest would be over.”

As Republicans are quick to point out, McAuliffe is not, in fact, a candidate like Kaine, a genial moderate with a long history of involvement in Virginia politics.

If Republicans are sensitive to Cuccinelli’s vulnerability on the cultural front – not only gay rights, but also abortion and gender-related issues – they are just as acutely aware of McAuliffe’s personal vulnerabilities, centered on his spotty record in business and background as a colorful Democratic Party boss.

So even Republicans who view debates over gay rights and gay marriage as losers for the GOP are confident their gubernatorial candidate has a clear path to victory. They are less sanguine about Jackson, who will face the voters apart from Cuccinelli in a separate election for the lieutenant governor job.

Cuccinelli adviser Chris LaCivita said he was unconcerned about Democrats’ ability to motivate their core voters with social issues. When McAuliffe and his allies focus on topics such as gay rights and abortion, he said, conservative voters hear that message, too, and react against it.

“The only way they can motivate their electorate is to demonize Republicans on God, guns and gays in reverse. That is a true definition of a double-edged sword,” LaCivita said. “If the Democrats want to make the election about gay marriage and we want to make the election about jobs and the economy, we’ll take that match-up any day of the week.”

Still, the reaction of the state’s most powerful Republicans to the Jackson nomination underscores just how cautiously the GOP establishment hopes to tread on gay-rights issues. Where Democrats might once have winced at a candidate’s statement unapologetically calling for gay marriage, Republicans have responded to the emergence of Jackson with reactions that range from cautious to downright critical.

As Jackson’s history of incendiary comments came to light earlier this week, a top aide to sitting Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell called for “civility” and “respect for all.” Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, a frequent Cuccinelli critic, called Jackson’s past remarks “indefensible.”

Former Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore, who was the GOP nominee for governor in 2005, expressed skepticism that voters would cast their gubernatorial ballots based on anything beyond core “economic issues.” But he acknowledged that conservative cultural stances aren’t necessarily the asset they might once have been.

“I just think the state isn’t voting social issues on either side like it used to,” Kilgore said. “In the past, you could have gotten more right-of-center voters voting social issues more heavily. I just don’t think there are that many single-issue voters anymore, in Virginia especially.”

Republicans say – mostly in private – that the addition of Jackson to the GOP ticket complicates Cuccinelli’s strategy of steering far away from his past record and statements on issues such as abortion and gay marriage. For several months now, Cuccinelli’s campaign has answered culturally-themed attacks from McAuliffe with statements accusing Democrats of seeking to distract from voters’ real concerns: jobs and the economy.

On the Democratic side, too, there’s a recognition that the social-issue message will only be effective if voters believe it’s tied directly to their daily lives. Some voters may turn out simply to send a message to a politician they view as bigoted. But more will turn out and vote if McAuliffe and the rest of the Democratic ticket successfully argue that right-wing cultural views – embodied most vividly by Jackson – will cost Virginia jobs.

Rick Boucher, the conservative Democrat who represented the southwestern part of the state for 14 terms in Congress, said he views Virginia as a “moderate state on social issues, as it is on most matters.

“Terry McAuliffe has actually talked about economic development as his leading issue,” Boucher said. “The Republicans have actually carved out social issues as the leading wedge of their campaign.”

Cuccinelli has worked hard to blunt that impression, and his allies say there’s no intention of letting Jackson compromise all that. His first television ad of the campaign featured his wife, Teiro Cuccinelli, describing his career of “standing up for the vulnerable and those in need.”

In all likelihood, Cuccinelli will give his ticket-mate a wide berth on the campaign trail, seeking to distinguish himself from the flamboyant ideologue.

It’s an approach that has worked for Virginia politicians in the past, when their parties have selected down-ballot candidates far from the political center. When George Allen ran for governor in 1993, he kept his distance from lieutenant governor candidate Mike Farris, an outspoken Christian conservative and home-schooling advocate.

In 2001, then-gubernatorial candidate Mark Warner explicitly rejected Democratic attorney general candidate Don McEachin’s views on gun control.

Two decades later, Farris said he still believes there’s a majority coalition for traditional “Virginia values,” even as both the state and the country have evolved on gay rights.

“Society has changed its views on this. I think it has shifted far less than the polls would indicate,” Farris said. “Ken Cuccinelli’s gonna campaign on limited government and saving the taxpayers money and standing up for traditional Virginia values. But I think he’s going to have the right balance on the value issues.”