Rep. Jim Moran, Virginia Democrat, said today the federal funding for the Dulles Rail project is likely now in jeopardy because the Bush administration sees no benefit in helping Northern Virginia's growing Democratic population.

"No matter how valiant Gov. (Tim) Kaine's efforts are, I think they are going to bounce off tin ears," he said this morning on WTOP Radio. "I think (the administration) has made a decision probably for both political as well as budgetary reasons to reject this.”

While there is no hard evidence that politics has derailed the project, others today in Richmond shared Moran’s concerns in behind-the-scenes conversations, questioning whether Northern Virginia is getting payback for the major role it played in electing Democrats in recent local and statewide races.

The region gave Jim Webb 120,000 vote edge over Sen. George Allen in the 2006 election that helped Democrats take control of the U.S. Senate and last November voters there handed Democrats two of the four additional seats they needed to take control of the Virginia Senate for the first time since 1995.

Kaine, Moran and the rest of Virginia's congressional delegation have said they were caught off guard at a meeting Thursday on Capitol Hill after federal officials told them the 23-mile rail extension was in jeopardy of losing out on $900 million in federal funding.

In my story today Kaine said he remains puzzled about what had happened between September, when the state submitted $300 million in proposed cuts to the Federal Transit Administration, and the meeting on the Hill.

"I don't know what happened in the hours before that meeting because we were getting positive signals right up until the meeting," he told me. "We walk into the meeting and it is like all the negatives."

While Kaine, a Democrat, says he remains optimistic about the project surviving, Moran today was more blunt in his assessment.

“We're not going to get the $900 million in federal funding from this administration," he told WTOP.