The campaign of Republican Bob McDonnell fired back at a radio spot by his opponent, Democrat Creigh Deeds, that accused McDonnell of opposing mandated employer coverage for breast cancer screenings during his tenure as state attorney general.
Meanwhile, a McDonnell surrogate was forced to apologize after mocking Deeds’ halting, stammering speech patterns.
The Deeds ad was based on McDonnell’s absence from a April 2006 letter, signed by 41 attorneys general, opposing a U.S. Senate bill that would have allowed employer health plans to skirt state mandates on coverage, including for mammograms.
“To launch this attack on Bob in the middle of Breast Cancer Awareness month based on a simple matter of not signing on to a national form letter is just beyond the pale,” Betsy Beamer, former secretary of the commonwealth under the Allen administration and a breast cancer survivor, told reporters.
Meanwhile, a high-profile McDonnell surrogate, BET co-founder Sheila Johnson, offered an apology Monday after a video surfaced of her mocking Deeds’ halting speech patterns at a campaign event.
She referred to Deeds as McDonnell’s “op-op-op-o-opponent,” drawing recriminations from both the Deeds camp and the Stuttering Foundation of America.
Deeds does not have a reputation as a great orator, which Democrats say signals his unpolished authenticity.
“Creigh is the first person to admit he’s not the smoothest talker,” senior campaign adviser Mo Elleithee told reporters.
Johnson, in an e-mail to the Associated Press said she was seeking to show Deeds’ inability to articulate solutions on important issues.
“I shouldn’t have done it in the manner in which I did and for that I apologize for any offense he, or others, may have taken,” Johnson said.
