The latest Washington Post news story on the Virginia governor campaign doesn’t mention Bob McDonnell’s 1989 Regent University thesis until the tenth paragraph of a generally balanced news stories on Republican McDonnell and Democrat Creigh Deeds and their campaigning on Labor Day. Here’s that paragraph:
“Deeds has tried to sharpen contrasts with McDonnell by criticizing McDonnell’s conservative record on social issues, including abortion. His campaign received a boost last month with the publication of McDonnell’s 20-year-old graduate school thesis in which he wrote that working women, feminists and homosexuals were detrimental to the traditional family. McDonnell has dismissed the thesis as irrelevant to the campaign and sent a visual message Monday by surrounding himself with dozens of female supporters wearing pink McDonnell shirts.”
I’m not so sure Deeds’s campaign received a boost from the thesis issue; recent polling suggests that opinion hasn’t shifted much. But I suppose there’s some rational basis for saying it did.
Still, the story tends to support the conclusion I drew from Post columnist Robert McCartney’s Sunday opinion article, that the Post news side’s campaign to “Macaca” McDonnell is sputtering.
