It's easy to see why rural voters fell for Mark Warner. He was all over them last summer, a rich guy in rolled-up shirtsleeves. He talked constantly about spreading the wealth and even had a corny bluegrass campaign song that dubbed him the man from technology-rich "NOVA-ville." Again and again he told country folk, "Virginia will never fully prosper as long as all the good jobs are in Northern Virginia." He backed up the talk with money invested through a handful of venture-capital funds he helped launch in places like South Boston and Blacksburg.

It was all part of a strategy to woo GOP-leaning rural voters with his business savvy, and it worked. But now that Warner is governor, the hard truth is there isn't much he can do. A recession and the $1.3 billion hole in this year's state budget - produced in part by high state spending and his predecessor's tax cuts - has tied Warner's hands. Gone is the campaign talk about how a Warner administration would spread Virginia's prosperity. "The reality is there's going to be a lot of pain," Warner says. "The state has serious financial problems. I'm committed to maintaining the safety net, but everything else is going to be on the table."

That's tough news for those hit hard by the recession and other layoffs driven by the North American Free Trade Agreement. The demise of the state's manufacturing sectors, especially apparel and textiles, has crippled the economies of some communities, which missed out on the economic good times of the late 1990s because they were hitched to dying industries. Layoffs abound, from the clothes plants of Henry County to the Volvo truck factory in Pulaski County to an aluminum wheel facility in Russell County. There, Alcoa Wheels announced in November that it would close the plant by August and lay off 200 people. The plant will be sorely missed: When it opened in 1996 more than 4,000 people applied for jobs.
One cruel irony is that Warner and rural business leaders and legislators generally agree on strategies. Small businesses need access to capital, workers need new skills and everybody needs broadband telecommunications capability.

But the budget mess "dominates everything," Warner says, and the timing couldn't be worse for people in the hardscrabble regions of Southside and Southwest. Take the two-year-old Rural Virginia Prosperity Commission. The 18-member panel of rural-area legislators and business leaders unveiled a 98-page study in December that it hoped would be a blueprint for a state strategy. Instead, it's dead on arrival. Warner has already rejected one of its six recommendations - a state Cabinet post for agriculture - as too expensive for now. And other commission recommendations such as tax breaks for economically distressed areas are getting a chilly reception from the new governor. "I am very reluctant at this point to look at new tax breaks," Warner says. The state gave more than 50 in the past six years, he says, costing the state $600 million a year. Combined with double-digit state spending and the car-tax phase out, he says, "That's why we've got right now a budget crisis."

Still, the commission's chairman, Del. Steve Landes, R-Weyers Cave, clings to hope that something can be done this session. "We have the data that we think we can make a case to the legislature" in support of its recommendations. A big worry, he says, is the shrinking power of rural areas in the General Assembly. Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads control about half the seats.

While Warner may not follow the commission's lead, he says he does have some tools to help struggling rural regions. First, a little arm-twisting: Warner says he'll work his connections to get Northern Virginia companies to consider expanding. "I've got personal relationships with a number of these CEOs," he says. "Nothing beats a governor's personal involvement." And he'll create the "Economic Crisis Strike Force" that he described during the campaign. It won't be a new agency but a collection of staffers from existing agencies who will emerge when an economic crisis hits. The idea, he says, is to avoid the gridlock of two years ago when 1,600 people in three Southside communities lost their jobs after Martinsville-based Tultex Corp. closed textile plants. Then-Gov. James Gilmore and the General Assembly couldn't agree on a benefits package for workers.

Warner also wants to work with the state's Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission on how it spends the state's $4.2 billion share (over 25 years) of the tobacco settlement. Since its creation in 1999 the commission has distributed more than $40 million in grants to tobacco communities in southwestern Virginia and Southside. It's now developing plans to fund telecom infrastructure projects - something Warner says he supports so long as they choose the right technologies. Yet, Warner sent confusing signals by appointing Michael J. Schewel, a respected corporate attorney in Richmond, as secretary of commerce and trade. Sources say he's not well-known either in the economic development profession or in rural Virginia.

For hard-hit regions there isn't much to do but focus on long-term restructuring and build on what they still have. Pulaski Furniture in Pulaski, for example, has cut about 1,000 people from its Virginia work force since May 2000 when it went private through a management-led buyout. Now many of the company's products are made in China and the Philippines; it has around 1,250 workers in Virginia. Still, that's better than no jobs at all. "There's no doubt about it, we have fewer employees here," says CEO John Wampler. "We wish we could have brought everyone with us to the point we are, but sometimes you have to make your company stronger."

Warner so far hasn't announced any specific actions, but at least he hasn't ignored communities in trouble. He went to Henry County three weeks after his election win to host an "economic summit" just after VF Imagewear announced its massive layoffs. Tom Harned, director of Martinsville's economic development office, says he's in regular contact with Warner. He praised Warner's private venture-capital initiatives, though he says they haven't borne much fruit. Southside Rising, a fund tailored for Southside, did try to start a couple of high-tech ventures but "just as a couple of projects started coming on line, the high-tech bubble burst," he says. The tobacco commission won't help much, Harned says, because Martinsville has no tobacco and Henry County grows only a little. The city did get $114,000 from the commission for a city incubator - not much of a sum considering the huge layoffs.

After a string of layoffs, unemployment in Henry County has climbed to 9.5 percent, and Martinsville's unemployment rate is nearly 13 percent. In Dickenson County in southwestern Virginia, unemployment now tops 15 percent. Those figures won't turn around quickly, all agree, and state largess is a long shot. On Jan. 8, Warner told top business executives in Richmond that the next 2 1/2 years could see a $3.2 billion budget shortfall and revenues could fall short through 2005. If true, there won't be much available for innovative economic development programs. Even so, Warner's campaign raised hopes among rural workers that he could combine business know-how with the power of state government to shorten their wait. "I got hired for good times and bad," Warner says. Well, at least he's got a job.