Rep. Thomas M. Davis III yesterday said he will not run for Senate next year, adding that Republicans missed an opportunity to broaden their base in Northern Virginia when they decided to select their nominee through a convention rather than an open primary.
“This is just probably not the right time for me to make any advance and run for the Senate,” the Fairfax Republican told reporters yesterday morning during an invitation-only briefing at the Sofitel Hotel near the White House. “I don’t think our party understands what a difficult undertaking it is and how the demographics of the state and the issue matrix has changed markedly over the last decade.”
Mr. Davis said the prospect of a tough nomination fight weighed heavily on his decision.
“If you are tied up in the convention, you can”t do the kind of grass roots you ordinarily would do running a campaign in the traditional sense against the Democrat,” he said. “Once you tear off the scab of the Republican moderates against conservatives, it”s hard to put it back together again.”
Mr. Davis, who is campaigning to get his wife, Jeannemarie Devolites Davis, re-elected to the Virginia Senate, ruled out the possibility he would re-enter the Senate race at a later date. He would not rule out running again for his House seat.
“The rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated,” he said.
The announcement came about two weeks after Virginia’s Republican State Central Committee voted 47-37 to pick its nominee at a convention. The decision was widely considered a victory for former Gov. James S. Gilmore III, who has not officially announced his candidacy but is expected to run and is thought to have a greater appeal among the thousands of grass-roots conservatives who attend conventions.
“I think that was the wise thing for [Mr. Davis] to do because as everyone recognized a convention nomination process would exclude Democrats from coming over to our nomination process and Gilmore … will win a convention more handily,” said Morton C. Blackwell, Virginia’s Republican National Committee member.
Mr. Blackwell said Mr. Gilmore represents the party’s best bet of holding the seat being vacated by Sen. John W. Warner, who is retiring.
But David Avella, chairman of the 8th Congressional District Republican Committee, disagreed.
“For Republicans who want to get 51 percent next year we need to start looking for a candidate,” he said. “For Republicans who want 39 percent of the vote, Jim Gilmore is their guy.”
Whoever wins the Republican nomination will fight an uphill battle against Mark Warner, a Democrat and popular former governor whose candidacy has his party optimistic about its chances of holding both of Virginia’s Senate seats for the first time since 1970.
Early polls give Mr. Warner a 2-1 edge over Mr. Gilmore. Some have questioned whether Mr. Gilmore can draw independent and moderate voters in the Democratic-trending Northern Virginia suburbs — a region that former Sen. George Allen, a Republican, lost by 120,000 votes last year to Sen. Jim Webb.
“There is nothing like a couple of sobering defeats to have you revaluate,” Mr. Davis said. “I think this will eventually happen to Republicans in Virginia. I hope we don’t have to take more beatings to get there, but [they need] to understand you have a third of the state that is really more Northeastern in its orientation.”’
Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat, agreed.
“To me the evidence seemed pretty clear the party that does the best job of getting independent and moderate votes has been successful,” Mr. Kaine said in an interview yesterday. “But it hasn’t seemed like the Republican Party wants to embrace that notion.”
Mr. Gilmore shrugged off the remarks.
“I have run twice statewide and won twice statewide and won Northern Virginia twice statewide,” he said. “The party is looking for someone who offers a contrast to the Democrat, and I think that is why they made the decision they made.”
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