Virginia for the Win is a series examining Virginia’s crucial role in the 2016 presidential race.
Does Hillary Clinton have a serious 2016 image problem?
So we give the latest Quinnipiac University swing state poll numbers the required skepticism. Yet they do highlight a potentially worrisome image trend that first appeared in the spring. Should it prove unchangeable, Clinton would likely lose Virginia, along with the presidency, to former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida or Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker — the only four who currently qualify as credible GOP presidential candidates.
Why these four? Like New Yorker Clinton, each can reasonably claim to satisfy the iron law of presidential politics: no candidate has won the White House while losing the state launching his career in elected office.
The penultimate example is then-Vice President Al Gore. He represented Tennessee in Congress for 16 years. Had he carried the Volunteer State’s 11 electoral votes, the term “hanging chad” might be remembered as the title of a Netflix original series set in the Old West, rather than fighting words in the South Florida recount chaos.
Either of the GOP’s Florida candidates — Bush or Rubio – can win the Sunshine state. Kasich swamped Clinton in the last Ohio poll. Walker faces a tougher hurdle. The Badger State last went Republican in the 1984 presidential contest, although George W. Bush barely lost in 2000 and 2004. Since Walker has repeatedly won fiercely competitive statewide elections, he stays on the list for now.
The home-state rule is especially critical to the GOP in 2016. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney carried Texas and 23 other states with 206 electoral votes in 2012 (while losing the Bay State). He won 20 by double-digits margins. Of the four others – Arizona, Georgia, Missouri, and North Carolina – he won the first three handily. North Carolina initially resisted. But it finally went to the GOP by a mere 2 percent.
All these states seem winnable next year by any number of GOP presidential hopefuls. But can he or she win the 270 needed for an Electoral College majority? President Obama carried 26 states and the District of Columbia in 2012, all by comfortable majorities except the three largest swing states: Florida (29 electoral votes), Ohio (18) and Virginia (13). His margins were 0.9 percent, 3 percent and 3.9 percent respectively.
But Quinnipiac shows Ms. Clinton with a poor image in supposedly Democratic-leaning Iowa (6 electoral votes) and in an especially weak position in Colorado (9 electoral votes) where Centennial State voters give her a nearly 2-1 negative rating on being honest and trustworthy. She is seen by large majorities to not care about their needs and problems. A recent New Hampshire (4 electoral votes) poll found her image on these parameters deeply underwater in a state Democrats won in five of the last six presidential elections.
Adding either of the three to Romney’s 2012 total means GOP victories in Florida (29), Ohio (18) and Virginia (13) gives the White House back to the Republicans. As we previously pointed out, if Virginia swings Republican, the two larger swing states are likely to as well.
What happens if Ms. Clinton’s image problems persist?
Enter Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s 2013 campaign playbook. Team McAuliffe waged a brutally effective no-holds-barred attack campaign against opponent Ken Cuccinelli, then the attorney general, backed up by the state’s leading newspapers. McAuliffe’s strategy destroyed Cuccinelli’s image with key swing voters.
According to Quinnipiac, these swing voters rate Clinton as unfavorably now as they did Cuccinelli then. Is this permanent? This much we do know: Her current campaign chief, Robby Mook, ran McAuliffe’s gubernatorial bid. Eschewing the positive about McAuliffe to focus on relentlessly negative character attacks on Cuccinelli made perfect strategic sense. It hurt McAuliffe’s image too, but proved a price worth paying. The badly outspent Cuccinelli still only narrowly lost.
“Events are in the saddle and they ride mankind,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. If her image problems remain into the winter, don’t be surprised to see the price of Terry’s McAuliffe’s 2013 playbook rising.
Norman Leahy is an editor of bearingdrift.com and producer of the Score radio show. Paul Goldman is a former senior adviser to governors Doug Wilder and Mark Warner.
