For a guy who won't take money from Dominion Resources Inc., Terry McAuliffe spends a lot of time with some of the energy company's biggest names.
McAuliffe, one of three candidates for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, schmoozed Tuesday night with prospective backers at a meet-and-greet at the home of Thomas E. Capps, Dominion's retired president and chief executive officer.
Capps has donated $2,500 to the McAuliffe campaign, according to the latest fundraising and spending reports.
McAuliffe has said he will not accept contributions from Dominion's political-action committee, in part because of the company's resistance to government-mandated use of renewable fuels.
"But individual employees and retired employees are free to do as they please," said Lis Smith, McAuliffe's press secretary.
A centerpiece of McAuliffe's candidacy is his support of alternative, nonpolluting fuels.
Smith on Wednesday confirmed the closed, unannounced event at Capps' house in Richmond's Windsor Farms.
About 50 people attended, including lobbyists for the transportation, energy and health-care industries as well as medical, communications and property-development executives.
Smith said McAuliffe has held many similar get-togethers across the state. Others, she said, have been organized by African-American ministers, considered a key to the black vote, and university students.
McAuliffe's closest advisers include another former Dominion executive, Eva Teig Hardy.
Hardy, who ran the company's lobbying-public-relations-and-charitable department and who knows the candidate through Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, has given McAuliffe $7,750.
Another Dominion official, Christopher B. Rivers, has contributed nearly $1,700 in cash and services to McAuliffe.
Capps' successor as president and CEO, Thomas F. Farrell II, has donated $15,000 to Republican Bob McDonnell.
The company's retiring chief financial officer, Thomas N. Chewning, is listed by McDonnell as a $10,000 contributor.
McAuliffe's opponents in the June 9 Democratic primary are state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds of Bath County and former Del. Brian J. Moran of Alexandria.
Deeds, who has received $5,000 from Hardy, on Wednesday cruised for votes in coal-rich Southwest Virginia.
Contact Jeff E. Schapiro at (804) 649-6814 or jschapiro@timesdispatch.com.
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