By Greg Giroux, CQ Staff

VIRGINIA BEACH — The residents of Virginia’s most populous city are in the middle of a storm of political activity. John McCain and Sarah Palin will be here Monday to rally support for the Republican presidential ticket, which is struggling to keep Virginia in the GOP column against the surging Democratic ticket of Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Virginia Beach is also the epicenter of a highly competitive House race. Republican Rep. Thelma Drake is opposed in her bid for a third term by Democrat Glenn Nye, who has worked in Iraq, Afghanistan and other global hot spots for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Drake was nearly defeated in 2006 — when the Democrats made a net gain of 30 House seats nationwide — by Democrat Phil Kellam, a politically experienced local officeholder in Virginia Beach. This year, Democrats are going in a different direction with Nye, who is seeking political office for the first time.

CQ Politics gives Drake the edge but foresees a close race, which is why we are changing the race rating to the more competitive Leans Republican from the mildly competitive Republican Favored.

Nye is seeking to overcome the historic Republican orientation of the 2nd District, which has a large military influence. Along with all of Virginia Beach, the district takes in part of Norfolk, a Democratic-leaning area adjacent to Virginia Beach that is the hometown of both candidates; part of Hampton, which is located on the southeastern end of the Virginia Peninsula; and the two counties that form Virginia’s Eastern Shore. About 70 percent of the vote comes out of Virginia Beach. President Bush took 58 percent of the district vote in the 2004 election, when Drake was first elected with 55 percent of the vote.

Though he’s a Democrat, Nye often plays down his party affiliation and emphasizes bipartisan-minded solutions to the nation’s problems.

“People are looking for results-driven, bipartisan leadership, which is why my candidacy resonates so well,” Nye said during a breakfast interview. “Focus on practical problem-solving and completely taking the emphasis off of party politics and party allegiances.”

From time to time, Nye invokes the name of Mark Warner, a popular former Virginia governor who is a shoo-in to win a Senate seat on Nov. 4, when he and Nye will be sharing a ballot. Warner worked with some members of a Republican-run legislature to close a budget gap in Virginia, and he still has strong approval ratings nearly three years after he left the governorship in January 2006.

Nye contrasts his style to what he says is excessive partisanship shown by Drake, whom he says votes too frequently with the positions of the Bush administration. According to CQ’s annual studies of congressional voting, Drake voted in agreement with the administration’s public position 89 percent of the time in 2005, 95 percent in 2006 and 79 percent in 2007. In 2008, that number dropped to 64 percent, one of the lowest of all House Republicans.

Voters in the 2nd District “want a representative who will stand up for the needs of the district, and not necessarily do what the president wants,” Nye said.

Drake’s campaign says she has been more politically independent than Nye indicates. Her campaign provided a list of votes this summer on which she opposed the Bush administration’s position, including some on housing and intelligence measures. Most notably, Drake opposed the financial market bailout proposal that Bush signed into law last week. Nye also opposed the measure.

Drake also voted against the initial version of that legislation, which the Bush administration also supported but the House rejected. Speaking with CQ Politics on Sept. 30, one day after the vote, Drake said the criticism that she’s a Bush rubber-stamp was unfounded: “Look at yesterday — I did not vote with George Bush yesterday. So that’s a bogus idea,” she said.

Drake also said she has emphasized bipartisanship in Congress and previously in the state House, where she served nearly nine years. “I’m the only one that has worked in a bipartisan manner, both in the Virginia General Assembly and in Washington, D.C.,” she said, noting her work to fashion a compromise on energy legislation as one example.