Palin makes first Northern Virginia solo appearance

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will make her first solo appearance in Northern Virginia today, heading to Leesburg for a rally that Republicans hope will mobilize conservative supporters in the region's outer suburbs.

The GOP vice presidential nominee will visit J.R.'s Festival Lakes - just a few miles from where Obama drew a crowd of thousands at Ida Lee Park last week - before she heads to Fredericksburg and Salem.

The rally will be held at 9 a.m. at J.R.'s Festival Lakes at 42830 Ft. Evans Rd.

It is Palin's first appearance in Northern Virginia since a rally last month with Sen. John McCain in Fairfax City, where the crowd's enthusiasm for her threatened to outshine that shown for the Arizona senator.

With Obama maintaining a consistent lead in polls among Old Dominion voters, Republicans hope Palin will reinvigorate a constituency that has maintained strongholds of conservative lawmakers in areas such as Loudoun and Prince William counties.

The Leesburg rally will be a test of her ability to turn out that group in Northern Virginia without the help of her running mate.

Virginia Republican Party Chairman Del. Jeff Frederick, R-Woodbridge, argues she will be successful, pointing to the difference in attendance this month between McCain's solo appearance in Prince William, which drew about 8,000 people, and Palin's rally in Richmond, which gathered more than 20,000, according to the campaign.

"I think both [the Leesburg and Fredericksburg rallies] are going to have a huge turnout," Frederick said. As an emissary from the "moderate McCain Republicans to the more conservative Republicans," Palin appeals to supporters of archconservative lawmakers such as Frederick and Ken Cuccinelli, R-Fairfax, better than McCain, said George Mason University political science professor Stephen Farnsworth.

After Leesburg, Palin then heads to Fredericksburg for a noon rally at Hurkamp Park at 500 William St. and later to Salem, Va.

"A lot of those outer-ring county legislative districts are represented by Republicans, and those Republicans are more conservative than the [11th District Rep.] Tom Davis Republicans you would talk about in Fairfax," Farnsworth said. "The Cuccinelli votes are out there, and those are the people that Sarah Palin can reach."

Democrats counterpunched by organizing neighborhood canvasses for Obama on Sunday in Roanoke, Arlington and South Hill.

(Copyright 2008 by The Examiner. All Rights Reserved.)