"This will be remembered by Buono and all of her people – many of whom will be delegates to the state convention – because she's been abandoned by many other Democrats," said Larry J. Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. While she has made recent gains in the race toward next month's election, a poll this week still showed her trailing by 24 percentage points. "He'll get a lot more out of backing Buono than he did Cory Booker, who everybody was behind," Sabato said.