McDonnell flap affects other races

It's popping up in Northern Virginia. In suburban Richmond, too, it's become a talking point.

Bob McDonnell's moldy graduate-school thesis and its less-than-politically correct observations on premarital sex, gays, birth control and working women are seeping into races for the Republican-run House, usually low-turnout, friends-and-neighbors affairs in which party affiliation often means little.

The stakes are higher this year, because the House elected in November will in 2011 draw boundaries that could determine control of the chamber in the decade ahead.

In at least five House races in Fairfax and Prince William and two in Henrico, Democrats are trying to saddle Republicans with McDonnell's anachronistic 1989 musings as a law student at Regent University, started by Pat Robertson, a longtime ally and occasional big-dollar donor to the Republican frontrunner for governor.

These contests are taking place in territory where Democrats have been on the march: the cookie-cutter subdivisions that tipped their way for governor, U.S. Senate or president. This was supposed to be Opportunity Land in 2009. That was before anti-Obama headwinds kicked up.

Still, Democrats, despite private doubts that they can snatch back the House, encourage McDonnell trickle-down if only as a flickering chance to grab the attention of Warner, Webb, Kaine and Obama voters who are considering backing Republicans.

But assuming Democrats, including gubernatorial hopeful Creigh Deeds, succeed in convincing these folks to stop, listen and reconsider, they face a tougher task: veering the conversation from issues over which governors and legislators have little control, such as jobs and energy, and toward the real business of state government, such as roads and schools.

Against Del. Bob Marshall of Prince William, Democrat John Bell is using the McDonnell thesis to paint his Republican opponent for what he is: a reliable conservative whose rigorous consistency makes McDonnell seem a philosophical parvenu.

And unlike McDonnell, Marshall, the happy warrior of the right, doesn't run from a record that includes a perceived crusade against abortion; trying to put contraception out of reach to young women and allowing the state to intrude in legally permissible life-ending decisions.

Greg Werkheiser, in a rematch with Del. Dave Albo, R-Fairfax, is pressing the House Courts Committee chairman to denounce McDonnell's "backwards agenda for Virginia." Perhaps trying to change the subject, Albo is running an ad on cable television in which he says he "fought downstate politicians who wanted to raise your taxes and give you nothing in return."

In Henrico, Democrat Tom Shields, citing Del. John O'Bannon's opposition to, among other things, emergency contraceptives for rape victims, wants the incumbent "to not only repudiate Bob McDonnell, [but] explain his own extreme record."

Even spouses are getting into the act. Democrat Jim Towey's wife, Emily, signed a letter attacking Del. Bill Janis of Henrico, one of the conservative shock troops of the House GOP, for sharing McDonnell's "out-of-touch political philosophies."

Seems saving Democratic candidates -- at a minimum, making them relevant -- is a family value.

Contact Jeff E. Schapiro at (804) 6496814 or . Watch his video column Thursdays on TimesDispatch.com. Follow him at twitter.com/RTDSchapiro. Listen to his analysis Fridays at 8:33 a.m. on WCVE (88.9 FM).