Moran, Davis Win; N. Va. Bucks State & National Trend With 64% fo Kerry

Bucking the trend both in Virginia and nationwide, Northern Virginia voters favored Democrat John Kerry over President Bush by almost a two-to-one margin Tuesday while re-electing incumbent Congressmen Jim Moran, Tom Davis and Frank Wolf. But Bush won Virginia by a 10 percentage point margin, and the national election by a margin of over three and a half million votes.

Northern Virginia voters reflected the national trend for urban areas, joining the Washington, D.C., region that went overwhelmingly for Kerry. The District of Columbia was 91% for Kerry and Maryland solidly in his corner, as well. All larger urban centers in Virginia, with the exception of Virginia Beach, went for Kerry, including Richmond, Charlottesville, Roanoke, Norfolk and Newport News.

Following a general trend nationwide, incumbents seeking re-election on the Congressional election fared very well in Northern Virginia. Rep. Moran, who represents the 8th District of Virginia that includes the City of Falls Church, won an eighth term handily with 59% of the vote in a three-way race. Rep. Davis carried his 11th District with 62% of the total, and Wolf won the 10th District with 66% of the votes cast.

The City of Falls Church once again distinguished itself with the highest voter turnout of any jurisdiction in the state as 80.7% of its registered voters went to the polls in the City’s five wards. The voter turnout was 68% statewide and 65% in the 8th District. Speaking at a lively victory celebration at the Hilton Hotel in Alexandria Tuesday night, Rep. Moran thanked a vigorous effort by his supporters, noting that the fight for the values they supported should not limited to any one campaign or election result. His remarks came at 9:30 p.m. while the outcome of the national presidential campaign was still undetermined, but as the signs did not look good for Kerry.

Moran came through a tough election year, including a fight to win his party’s primary in May and Tuesday’s general election against two active opponents. Both times he was faced with adverse coverage in the Washington Post, which each time declared him “unfit to serve” in editorials, but was buoyed by endorsements from the Falls Church News-Press. His margin of victory Tuesday matched those of his seven earlier elections.

The strongest showing for a non-incumbent congressional challenger in the region came from Democrat Ken Longmyer, a foreign service specialist running against Davis. He garnered 52,402 votes for 38% in his first-ever bid for public office. He said he ran because he was incensed that Davis previously ran unopposed.

Moran’s challengers Lisa Marie Cheney and James Hurysz got 35% and 6%, respectively, and Wolf’s challenger James Socas got 34%. While a vigorous joint-campaign effort run out of an office in Merrifield produced strong results for Democrats in Northern Virginia, a hoped-for closer outcome for the Bush-Kerry race statewide failed to materialize. A last-minute infusion of cash into Virginia by the Kerry camp led to hopes that the state had become “in play.” Still, all five Northern Virginia jurisdictions were in the Kerry column. Arlington went 67% for Kerry, followed by Alexandria at 66%, the City of Falls Church at 64.7% and Fairfax County at 52% and the City of Fairfax at 51.7%. Overall in the 8th Congressional District, the vote for Kerry was 63.8%.

Moran’s margin in the City of Falls Church was slightly higher than his district-wide result at 61%. His strongest support came in Alexandria, where he was once mayor, at 62.1% while his lowest margin came in the Fairfax County portion of his district at 56.1%.

In two hotly contested congressional races elsewhere in Virginia, Democrat Bobby Scott won handily in the 3rd District (Richmond, Norfolk) and long-time incumbent Democrat-turned-Republican Virgil Goode held onto his seat in the 5th District (Albemarle), defeating Al Weed. Republican incumbents Eric Cantor and Jo Ann Davis faced no Democratic opposition in the 7th (Chesterfield) and 1st (Stafford, Spotsylvania) Districts, respectively, while Thelma Drake, a last-minute GOP replacement for incumbent Ed Shrock, who resigned suddenly in September, edged Democrat David Ashe, 55% to 45% in the 2nd District (Virginia Beach).