Mark Warner at a rally, originally uploaded by Mark Warner.

Six years ago when I was looking for a place to live in the Washington, D.C., area, a family member from Northern Virginia gave me some advice: “Maryland is where Democrats live; Virginia is for Republicans.”

Sure enough, I picked Northern Virginia as my new home. That was six years ago — about the time the GOP’s heyday was coming to an end. I just didn’t know it at the time. A conservative named Jim Gilmore occupied the governor’s mansion and Republicans controlled the Senate and House of Delegates.

On Election Day that November, however, a moderate Democrat was elected governor. The tide had already begun to turn. Mark Warner, who is currently the leading candidate for U.S. Senate next year, defeated Republican Mark Earley. Even though President Bush was at peak popularity just two months after 9/11, it did Earley no good. He ran an uninspiring campaign and failed to unite a fractured party.

Fast forward six years to this year’s Election Day. I saw several Mark Earleys and a few Jerry Kilgores (the losing Republican gubernatorial candidate in 2005 against then-Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine). Republican candidates across Northern Virginia were uninspiring (including hard-core conservatives like Sen. Ken Cuccinelli) and they paid the price. In many districts throughout the region, the GOP failed to even field a candidate. Sen. Patsy Ticer and Del. Mark Sickles ran unopposed in my district.

Fellow Northern Virginia resident Patrick Ruffini is even angrier than me about what transpired on Tuesday:

First: It’s time to fire the consultants who ran the same ImmigrationTaxesImmigrationTaxes cookie cutter race in every district, using the same message that killed Jerry Kilgore in Northern Virginia two years ago. So Ken Cuccinelli survived… by 90 votes… against a laughable opponent the Washington Post wouldn’t even endorse.

Second: Cutting and running from the GOP is even worse. Jeannemarie Devolites Davis’ anti-gun ad flopped, leading to the most lopsided unseating of the night. Didn’t 2006 teach us that there is no refuge for the Chafees and DeWines of the world when the GOP fails to advance an aggressive agenda?

Third: The days of Tom Davis giving us lectures about how to win elections in NoVa are over. See #2. (Yes, that was his wife.)

It’s time to say what needs to be said. Whether they were running to the right (Cuccinelli) or to the left (Devolites Davis), Republican Senate incumbents were running campaigns out of touch with the Northern Virginia electorate, whose bugaboos right now are traffic congestion and education.

Ruffini places the blame on consultants. I couldn’t agree more, although I’m sure I’ll inspire the wrath of Matt Lewis for saying so publicly. Newt Gingrich was right when he called these people “very stupid.” But I’d also take it one step further and attribute some of the blame to the Republican Party of Virginia, which promised a new direction after last November’s embarrassing defeat of U.S. Sen. George Allen. It failed to deliver.

What’s sad is that the pieces of the puzzle were in place — that is until party chairman Ed Gillespie left a job he didn’t finish. Granted, Gillespie moved on to bigger and better things as counselor to President Bush. He’s doing outstanding work at the White House, adding energy and enthusiasm at a critical time, and most importantly, putting a greater emphasis on messaging. Unfortunately for Virginia Republicans, Bush’s gain was their loss. At the very moment when Virginia Republicans needed Gillespie’s leadership, they didn’t have it.

A commenter on Ruffini’s blog summed it up this way:

I would argue that some of the largest issues facing Virginia Republicans is organization and coordination. Message is not a problem, it’s that there was no message until four weeks before election day. The Republican Party has no single avenue of leadership: each campaign keeps its own workings close, but then you have three organizations and their various splits all trying to do their own operations, never mind local committees and the like. Dems have a better top down organization right now and whether this will serve as a wake-up call that the Republicans need to get their act together or just allow them to continue business as usual is something they’re going to have to decide very quick.

Gillespie was the man who should have been organizing and coordinating. When he left for the White House in June after just seven months at the helm of the party, this election was over.

Virginia is by no means a lost cause for Republicans, but uninspiring candidacies by Earley and Kilgore, followed by flops like Devolites Davis and Cuccinelli this year, reveal a major crack in the foundation. It might take Gillespie’s returning on Jan. 21, 2009, to fix it.