FLOYD, Va. – Banjo, fiddle and harmonica blaring behind him, Creigh Deeds looked at ease as he pressed through a swell of clog-dancing revelers. Here, at the Floyd Country Store Jamboree, Deeds was more the grinning country politician than the besieged gubernatorial candidate.
Part campaign rally, part Friday night entertainment, the jamboree was a launching pad for a late-game effort by the Deeds campaign to reconnect with rural Virginia.
The swing through the southwest was sandwiched between visits to the D.C. suburbs and Hampton Roads, part of a 20-stop tour for a Democratic campaign facing what looks to be an insurmountable gap in the polls.
None of the troubles showed on Deeds’ face as he chatted up patrons. Floyd is a few hours’ drive from Deeds’ own Bath County district, but the veteran Democratic legislator was for all intents and purposes in his home turf. The same stammering speech and lack of polish that have cost Deeds in debates with Republican nominee Bob McDonnell came off as an asset. Running throughout the evening was the sense of Deeds as “one of us,” accompanied by hope — however distant — that he would become the first governor with deep rural Virginia roots since Gerald Baliles was elected more than two decades ago.
“The reality is today’s Virginia is a suburban state,” Deeds said. “I don’t know when you’re going to have a chance to really elect a rural governor again.”
That natural connection with rural voters was one of the most compelling factors behind his candidacy when he won the Democratic primary in June. Far more than his Democratic opponents — former Del. Brian Moran and former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe, both based in Northern Virginia — Deeds was thought to have a real shot of peeling away Republican votes in the traditionally GOP-favored region.
Polls increasingly point to another outcome. McDonnell — who claims heritage in both Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads — holds a commanding lead in southwest Virginia, where he has bombarded voters with ads linking Deeds to climate change legislation believed to cost jobs in the coal-rich territory. Deeds has renounced the current cap-and-trade bill being considered by Congress, and McDonnell’s continuing charges have led to frustration within the campaign.
“I don’t think Creigh could be more clear about his position on cap and trade at this point,” Deeds campaign manager Joe Abbey said at a campaign stop Saturday in Christiansburg.
The campaign’s rural message is tailor-made for an economically stagnant stretch of an otherwise prosperous state. Transportation concerns, which have dominated much of the race, take a back seat to unemployment. The campaign is keen to point out the GOP-controlled House of Delegates’ decision in April to reject $125 million in unemployment benefits through the federal stimulus package, a move McDonnell supported. And it heavily played up Deeds’ modest, agrarian upbringing.
“It takes someone who hasn’t come from a lot, who’s known the void of economic opportunity, to really understand what people are going through right now and what it takes to get them out,” Abbey said.
