Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/obama-looks-to-turn-virginia-into-blue-state Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript With Sen. Barack Obama's focus concentrated on Virginia early in the general election, many wonder if 2008 will be a year of new battleground states. Kwame Holman reports on the effort to get Virginia to back a Democrat for president for the first time in 44 years. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. KWAME HOLMAN: Barack Obama could have kicked off his general election campaign in the typically pivotal states of Ohio, Pennsylvania or Florida, but instead he chose Virginia, a point not lost on the commonwealth's Democratic governor Tim Kaine.GOV. TIM KAINE (D), Va.: Who would have thought that this? The opening day of the general election campaign in 2008, and the Democratic presidential nominee starts the campaign in the commonwealth of Virginia. KWAME HOLMAN: That's because the last time Virginia supported a Democratic presidential nominee was 1964, when it went for Lyndon Baines Johnson. Since then, the commonwealth has backed the Republican standard-bearer, often by wide margins.In recent years, Virginia's demographics have shifted, especially in the fast-growing northern suburbs, becoming wealthier, more diverse and younger. That, combined with the state's significant African-American population, has helped to elect three Democrats to statewide office since 2001.One of those is Kaine, who became governor in 2005. At last night's rally in Prince William County, he said change hasn't come easy to Virginia. GOV. TIM KAINE: It was tough. It was a reliably red state. Presidential candidates wouldn't come here. The Republicans didn't need to, and the Democrats said, "Why bother?" But we've been making some change in Virginia, folks.