Words and Deeds

As the campaign enters its final two months, polls show Democratic candidate Creigh Deeds trailing by more than ten percentage points, but the race will no doubt tighten. Democrats believe they have found a silver bullet in McDonnell’s socially conservative views. The Washington Post has spent most of the past two weeks reminding its Northern Virginia readers that McDonnell wrote a thesis on the “Republican Party’s Vision for the Family,” in which he defended “the importance of the family in its God-ordained covenantal form” while working on a master’s degree at Regent University in 1989. As a result, Republicans are bracing for a nasty campaign straight from political central casting that portrays the GOP standard bearer as a religious zealot.

Never mind that McDonnell–the state’s former attorney general–premised his campaign on inclusion, pragmatism, and competence, not social issues. Or that he spent 14 years compiling a record in the state’s House of Delegates. Or that the suburban Northern Virginia native offers detailed solutions to front-porch concerns such as improving schools, reducing traffic congestion, and bringing jobs to the state.

Deeds might not catch up on those issues. So a caricature that sends shivers through minivan-driving suburban swing voters is just what is needed. Paint McDonnell as a right-wing, anti-abortion, Bible-thumper. And call on the Post–always a reliable ally of Virginia Democrats–to provide the bullets for political character assassination.

Team Deeds won’t win any originality awards for these tactics. Democrats and their allies used them against George Allen in the 2006 Senate race and, remarkably, even against John McCain in 2008. Why change a winning formula? “Trying to make McDonnell unacceptable to Northern Virginia women is probably the only thing that can save Deeds at this point,” a Democratic operative in the state told me.

The electoral texture of the state, though, feels different this year. Echoes of 2008 are still fresh, but words like “change,” “hope,” and “post-partisanship” strike many as less believable than they were a year ago. The Obama track record makes campaigning here a special challenge for Democrats this cycle. The tactics of 2006 and 2008–when the state’s independent voters (about a third of the electorate) were weary of Republicans–carry less punch today. “McDonnell doesn’t have the baggage McCain had,” a longtime Democratic activist told me.

Other state dynamics also hamper Deeds. Tim Kaine, the current governor, “had the luxury of succeeding Mark Warner, who was very popular,” a Democratic activist in the state says. “Kaine is not Warner, and his additional role of chairing the Democratic National Committee isn’t helping Deeds control the impact of national events,” he adds. “That’s not a good thing with the Democrats’ national numbers falling.”

Virginia also has its own tradition of political reaction. Since 1977, in every gubernatorial contest following a presidential election, the state has voted in the party that lost the White House a year earlier.

Some believe Deeds, a state legislator from rural Bath County on the far western edge of the state, is not well enough known to pull off a successful effort in the politics of personal destruction. Negative campaigns can produce powerful results, but they’re not infallible. Attacks punctuate a narrative; they don’t write the whole story. “Too many Virginians don’t know Creigh Deeds. He runs the risk of just sounding nasty, mean, and negative,” a longtime Republican activist told me.

The McDonnell campaign’s internal research provides another reason why the negative attacks may not stick: McDonnell’s likability. “He comes across more like the kind of guy you want to have a beer with or that coaches your kid’s Little League team,” one Northern Virginia supporter told me. “You make him out to be some kind of Elmer Gantry and people say, ‘What?’ It just doesn’t fit.” “People who know him and worked with him in Richmond think he’s a good and decent guy,” a Democrat with close ties to the state legislature told me. “Deeds is scrambling to find something that will work,” he added.

Then there’s the issue of undecided Obama supporters. Part of the Democratic presidential candidate’s appeal was his promise to rise above the polarized politics of the past. No matter what you think about the veracity of those claims, it inspired and motivated a bloc of voters. Deeds runs the risk of alienating them with harsh attacks. National Journal‘s Amy Walter wrote recently that Democratic gubernatorial candidates in both Virginia and New Jersey want to turn back the clock. “There isn’t much ‘Yes We Can’ or even ‘Hope’ coming from the two Democrats running for governor this year.” She’s right.

Amplifying Deeds’s attacks is the Democrats’ amen corner–liberal 527 organizations and the Washington Post. The Post has run at least 35 articles, editorials, blog posts, and cartoons in less than two weeks about his 20-year-old graduate thesis. But a new Rasmussen poll shows the flap resonates most with self-identified Democrats. “When the [thesis] story broke I thought it was the first time Deeds had a chance,” a Virginia Democrat told me. “I wrote him a check after reading the story.”

The newspaper’s saturation coverage is fodder for Deeds’s campaign in another way, too. They are trying to change the subject away from McDonnell’s plans for jobs, education, and transportation, and the paper’s lack of attention when McDonnell raises those issues helps.

But the Post‘s song is getting repetitious, and its predictable lyrics may annoy rather than persuade voters. Deeds, the Democrats, and perhaps even the Post will redouble their efforts in the next few weeks, hoping they can chip away at McDonnell’s image, particularly in the vote-rich, independent-minded Northern Virginia suburbs. But it might backfire. Despite the potential bang of the negative campaign, citizens of the commonwealth, like other places, care more about a politician’s record than his college papers.

Gary Andres is vice chairman of research at Dutko Worldwide in Washington, D.C.