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Davis expresses doubt on Va. Senate race as Warner gains |
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By Aaron Blake
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Posted: 10/17/07 07:37 PM [ET] |
Rep. Tom Davis (R) hinted Tuesday that he might not run in Virginia’s Senate race.
In recent days, it has become clear that he faces an increasingly tough path to his party’s nomination and thereafter to winning a seat in the upper chamber.
Popular former Gov. Mark Warner (D) revealed on Monday that he raised more than a million dollars in less than three weeks after entering the race in mid-September. And over the weekend, Davis’s state party opted for a nominating convention that appears to hamper his chances in a potential primary against more conservative former Gov. Jim Gilmore (R).
Since Sen. John Warner (R) announced his retirement last month and even before, Davis has been expected to enter the race to replace him.
But Davis said at a breakfast at the National Press Club on Tuesday that both recent developments factor into his decision and suggested that he might instead run for freshman Sen. Jim Webb’s (D-Va.) seat in 2012, or not run for Senate at all.
Davis is also a strong candidate on K Street and could be drawn to a lobbying job.
“There are other races; this isn’t the only shot,” Davis said. “You’ve got a very vulnerable guy sitting there in the other Senate seat right now who may or may not run in four years. And you know what? If you don’t go to the Senate, so what? I’ve been a committee chairman in the House. I’ve got my portrait hanging on a wall. I’ve been pretty productive legislatively.”
There have been rumblings of late that Davis is having second thoughts about running, but he insists his mind was never made up.
The centrist former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee said he thinks he can win a convention dominated by conservative party activists, but he said he would have no name ID coming out of it in June, with just five months till the general election.
A Washington Post poll last week showed 54 percent of Virginia voters have no opinion of Davis. It also showed both Davis and Gilmore trailing Warner by at least 30 points.
“Our calculation has been that, if you can get everything in line, it’s a doable race,” Davis said. “But if I have to spend eight months slogging through a party convention, talking to 15,000 Republicans around the state where they’re going to ask you how conservative you are, that does not set you up very well for a general election.”
He said the No. 1 roadblock right now, however, is the continually toxic environment that Republicans face. At the same time, he stressed that a lot can change in a year or even when a new GOP presidential candidate is chosen in early 2008.
Davis has said he will make a decision about the race in November, following Virginia’s state legislative elections. And he reiterated that promise Tuesday.
“A good environment and a strong campaign — I’ll take that any day,” he said. “Mark is certainly not bulletproof, but he has a good reputation and he’s riding high” because he left office popular in 2006 and hasn’t had to take issue positions since then.
He said Warner didn’t do much his first three years in office but came through in his fourth year by acting as a referee between state House and Senate Republicans.
Warner’s campaign declined to comment.
Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said Davis appears to be the better general election candidate for Republicans, but that the confluence of circumstances has built up against him.
“It certainly seemed before that he was quite anxious and quite willing to come into the race,” Tobias said. “Maybe he just feels like his fortunes have turned or the difficulty of winning both the primary and the general against Warner seems too much.”
Davis saw his fundraising drop off significantly in the third quarter, bringing in $220,000 after raising $1 million the previous two quarters combined.
Warner, meanwhile, raised $1.1 million in the last half of September and has about the same cash on hand — $1 million — as Davis.
“I’m reluctant to take people’s money for a Senate race that I’m not going to run,” Davis said. “There are a lot of factors that we’ve got to weigh before it’s done, and we don’t make stupid decisions.”
National Republican Senatorial Committee spokeswoman Rebecca Fisher said the GOP will compete in the state regardless of Davis’s decision.
“We are confident Republicans will have a strong candidate in the race for the Virginia seat who will defeat Mark Warner next November,” Fisher said. |
