Virginia's Rumbling Rebels (Page 5)

In the heart of George Allen's "real world of Virginia," this year's fish fry mostly turned into a rally for Jim Webb. Southwest Virginia generates about one-third of the state's votes, and cutting into the Republicans' normally large margins of victory here was key to this decade's elections of successive Democratic governors, Mark Warner and Kaine. Webb just might do the same. While Allen has his wedge issues, he can't match the depth of Webb's connection to these folks--or his understanding of the reasons that many of them have strayed from the Democratic fold.

Like practically every 60-year-old white person with roots in southwest Virginia, Webb was born into a blue-collar clan of ardent Democrats. As he came to political consciousness in the 1960s, Webb grew offended by the attitude civil rights activists--"liberal Yankees," in particular--took toward working-class whites in the South. "The fight over ending legal racial segregation," he writes in Born Fighting, "ended up demonizing people who had shared the same social and economic dilemma as the blacks themselves." The venom should have been directed, Webb believes, at the small class of wealthy Southern (and Northern) whites who had always controlled Dixie's economy and insured the continuation of Jim Crow. When he came back from Vietnam, Webb was equally dismayed by the cold shoulder returning soldiers received from those who opposed the war. It was enough to send him scurrying, along with a growing number of white Southern Democrats, into the waiting arms of the GOP.

"I was generally comfortable with the Republicans, until the neoconservatives took over," Webb says. "But the one issue that always bothered me was economic fairness."

In Castlewood Webb heeds his own advice to Democrats: Respect the voters you're addressing. His speech is virtually identical to the one he gave in "liberal" northern Virginia--right down to the Marx and Engels references--and carries precisely the same message: Bush and Allen's war is a disaster, and working Americans are getting shafted while corporations and CEOs rake in record profits. One thing's different here, though: Webb's laconic delivery, far from a liability, testifies in shorthand that he's no slick politician. Which makes him a far cry from his opponent, says Sam Church, UMW local's political coordinator. "Allen doesn't relate to working people--has he ever had a job?"

Perched in a lawn chair nearby and clutching his cane, Robert Ervin--who left the mines in 1979 after thirty-eight years--doesn't mince words. "George Allen? He's the nearest nothing ever been in this country. He's a big old fake, that's all." If enough Virginians end up agreeing with that assessment, Allen will be in a heap of trouble on November 7. And for all his lack of political panache--in fact, partly because of it--Webb will have pulled off something few thought possible: making the Republican in a Southern race look like the one who's unreal, elitist and out of touch with regular folks.

For a lot of Virginians, it's been looking like that ever since Labor Day. The holiday doubles as the state's annual kickoff for election seasons, and it's long been obligatory for politicians running statewide to appear in the big Laborfest Parade in Buena Vista, not far from the Blue Ridge Parkway. This year was a little different. Jimmy Webb was about to ship out to Iraq and his dad, the antiwar candidate, decided to skip the biggest political day of the year to say goodbye.

"Everybody had heard where Webb was that day, and why," recalls Charley Conrad. "So people are standing there watching the parade, and what do they see coming down the street but George Felix Allen, in a big white ten-gallon hat and those fancy boots he always wears, grinning and waving from atop a brown-and-white horse called--I'm not kidding--Bubba. And all I could think was, I sure hope people are paying attention."

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