After months of debate over economic issues and health care reform, the race in Northern Virginia’s 11th Congressional District is shifting to the volatile issues of abortion and guns.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is expected to start airing a radio ad Friday calling Republican challenger Keith Fimian’s views on abortion “extreme.”
Democrats also sponsored at least one traffic report on WMAL 630 Thursday that targeted Fimian’s view that all abortions should be disallowed even in the cases of rape, incest or to protect the life of the mother.
Meanwhile, the National Right to Life political action committee ran an ad of its own on WMAL Thursday defending Fimian’s views on the issue.
Fimian is also being portrayed as an extremist on guns by the man he’s challenging, incumbent Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly, and an outside gun-control group.
Connolly’s campaign is circulating a video of Fimian saying in a television interview that the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech could have been thwarted if other students had been armed.
“I think that at Virginia Tech, if one of those kids in one of those classrooms was packin’ heat, I think that would not have happened,” Fimian said. “The perpetrator of that crime would have thought twice before walking into a classroom if he thought there was any chance of someone being armed and preventing him from doing that.”
Connolly’s campaign manager, James Walkinshaw, said, “Keith Fimian’s extreme position on guns and outrageous comments about the Virginia Tech tragedy serve to show yet again that he is too extreme for Northern Virginia.”
In a separate attack on Fimian, Americans United For Safe Streets, a national gun control group, paid $150,000 for a television spot that criticizes Fimian for not supporting a measure that would require anyone buying a gun at a gun show to undergo a criminal background check, as they would if they bought the gun in a retail shop.
Fimian’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
George Mason University’s Stephen Farnsworth said it wasn’t entirely surprising to have social issues raised so late in a campaign that has focused largely on the economy.
“It’s really hard for a Democrat to run on the economy,” he said. “I think in the 11th District, describing Fimian as a socially conservative Republican helps Connolly.”
And Lori Haas, a board member for the Virginia Center for Public Safety, a nonprofit organization trying to reduce gun violence, said it’s important for voters to know where candidates stand on social issues.
“Social issues,” she said, “are part and parcel to who the candidate is.”
