the two Virginias
Washington Post - November 16, 2006
So Close, Yet So Far Apart
Once Solidly Part of the South, the Old Dominion Now Encompasses a
Widening Cultural Chasm
By Brigid Schulte and Chris L. Jenkins Washington Post Staff Writers
Alexandria still has its Jefferson Davis Highway and Springfield its
Robert E. Lee High School, but if last week’s election showed
anything, it’s that Northern Virginia is not only different than the
rest of the state, it is a different state. And it’s no longer in the
South.
That line now starts at the Rappahannock River, where things change
– the accents, the attitudes, the pace and a comfort with the way
things are. It’s what some historians call the new “grits line.” To
them, it’s no surprise that the state’s northernmost welcome center
on Interstate 95 is in Fredericksburg.
State politics in Richmond is still controlled by leaders south of
the Rappahannock. But as Northern Virginia continues to grow, both in
population and influence, the profound difference between the two
Virginias is likely to become not just an uneasy alliance but a full-
blown identity crisis.
Already, the fault line runs deep.
Last Tuesday, Republican George Allen won by wide margins in 92 of
the state’s 134 localities but lost the race because Democrat James
Webb swept the densely populated Washington suburbs. At the same
time, Northern Virginians voted against the amendment to define
marriage as only between a man and a woman, but the measure passed
largely because people south of the Rappahannock voted overwhelmingly
for it.
At Allen’s concession speech, two supporters turned to each other in
disgust. “That’s it,” said one. “I’m moving to South Carolina.”
In interviews with dozens of Virginians on both sides of the divide,
each saw the other part of the state almost as a foreign country,
with an alien culture. “How come they have the bad accents and we
talk fine?” asked Casey Childress, a waitress at the Pigs R Us Bar-B-
Que in Collinsville, a small town near Martinsville and the North
Carolina border.
That’s something Dick Reed can’t answer. Although Reed, an economist
for the federal government has lived in Fairfax County for 40 years,
he has never ventured across the border of Northern Virginia. Except
once or twice to see Luray Caverns.
And neither side really “gets” the other.
“We don’t have a lot of tolerance for people up there. But I think
we’ve got more tolerance of y’all than y’all do of us,” said Dave
“Mudcat” Saunders, a Roanoke-based Democratic consultant who helped
Mark R. Warner, Timothy M. Kaine and now Webb get what he calls “the
Bubba vote.” “There’s a certain air of intellectual superiority up
there that comes with stereotyping us as being hillbillies.”
Frank Dodson, 67, a retired plumber from Page County in the bucolic
Shenandoah Valley, was in Goochland Courthouse last week tending to
some business. He has lived all his life in what he and Allen call
the “real world of Virginia,” a place he fears is slipping away
because of the influence of the “newcomers” up north.
“They came for contracting or D.C. jobs,” he said. “Many of us down
here stayed farming, or stayed with our daddy’s business, and we
drink the same water as we always have.”
Dodson said he isn’t really angry about the changing state. Except
for one thing. The way he thinks Northern Virginia folks
misunderstand its complicated history. He is a Virginian who said he
argued with his “daddy” about the state’s policy of “massive
resistance” to school integration. But he also admired the fiscal
discipline of those same political leaders who got the state out of
debt for the first time since the Civil War.
“So I see all of our history, and I like some of it and I don’t like
other parts. But those folks up in Northern Virginia probably think
that I’m just some old redneck,” he said. “Now some of us, yeah, we
love our history. But those of us that might not like it, we accept
it as part of who we are. That’s the difference to me. You all up
there hate it; we just accept it and try to move on.”
Other states have rural-urban splits or regional differences: Upstate
New York and cosmopolitan Manhattan, granola Northern California and
airbrushed SoCal, Chicago and the rest of Illinois.
But in Virginia, the divide is more profound. The nation’s major
fault line between North and South, and all the uneasy history and
ugly stereotyping that go along with that, runs right through it.
“It’s as if you grafted South Carolina onto the suburbs of New
Jersey,” said Robert Lang, a demographer and director of the
Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech. “This is a cultural divide
that’s on a national scale.”
And many in Northern Virginia say they don’t want any part of the
other side of the divide. With only 20 percent of residents actually
born there, many said they don’t want to take on the burden of
history that comes with identifying themselves as Virginians. And
that extends to some natives.
Paige Grainger, a fundraiser for nonprofit groups, was born in
Alexandria. Her mother was from Charlottesville. But, she explained
to a group of working-mother friends gathered for a glass of red wine
last week, she doesn’t think of herself as a Virginian. The
conservative bent of state politics is embarrassing, she said. And
the recent passage of the ban on same-sex marriage makes her angry,
especially because it passed on the day two gay friends bought a
house on her street.
“I struggle a lot,” she said. “When talking to people who don’t know
how different NoVa is, I don’t say I’m from Virginia because I don’t
want them to think I’m in the South. That carries such baggage.
That’s not a part of me.” In election years, especially, she finds
herself saying, “I can’t believe I live in a red state.”
Wendy Moniz, an advertising executive who has lived with her husband
and children in Alexandria for nine years, knows that feeling. “I
don’t live in the South. That makes me think of debutantes and gun
racks,” she said. “I grew up north of the Mason-Dixon line. I’m a
Northerner. I can’t be a Southerner. This can’t be the South. No
way.” When people ask her where she’s from, she never says Virginia.
“I say I’m from the D.C. area.”
The North-South divide is apparent in state politics. Conservatives
from the southern part of the state control the General Assembly and
show more disdain than empathy when they hear Northern Virginia’s
pleas for money to ease traffic congestion. Northern Virginia
legislators complain about all the tax dollars the area sends to
Richmond, never to be seen again.
“When I brought some downstate lawmakers to help me campaign last
year, they couldn’t believe what they saw: the traffic, $650,000
townhomes in my district,” said Del. David B. Albo (R-Fairfax). “They
just had no clue about what it’s like to live up here.”
The differences are visceral. Municipalities such as Alexandria have
tried to pass gun-control laws or other measures and are reined in by
the General Assembly, which maintains supreme authority.
Northern Virginia parents resent the notion that state universities
will take only so many of their children to save spots for downstate
students whose academic achievements might not be as high. And
downstate folks who love the land and the lifestyle hate to see their
children forced to move north to find jobs.
Over the years, some have proposed, tongue-in-cheek, to partition the
state at the Rappahannock.
“They can go back across the Potomac and live in D.C. if they don’t
want to call themselves a Virginian,” said Terrence Henry, a
construction site manager eating lunch at Johnny Appleseed in New
Market. “But I guess it goes the same way for us. We want to have the
benefit of the jobs and some of the schools. But then we turn around
and say . . . ‘Oh, them liberals up in Northern Virginia, they just
vote for everything Democrat.’ And we shake our head. So I guess we
both are kind of hypocrites.”
Staff writers Fredrick Kunkle and Alec MacGillis and staff researcher
Meg Smith contributed to this report.