Deeds goes on offensive, slams McDonnell
Trailing in the polls and seeking traction with voters, Democratic candidate for governor Creigh Deeds went on the offensive yesterday. He said Republican Bob McDonnell would mire Virginia in an "an ideological crusade" that "replaces mainstream goals with his social agenda" on issues such as abortion.
Deeds' campaign followed his speech at George Mason University in Fairfax County by launching his first television ad since his June 9 victory in the Democratic primary.
The 30-second spot does not touch on social issues. Instead, it focuses on the economy. The ad features Deeds strolling with popular former Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner, now a U.S. senator, and criticizes what a narrator calls "the failed economic policies of George W. Bush."
Flanked by women during the speech, Deeds said McDonnell had "a career-long pattern of focusing on social issues during his time in the House of Delegates, sponsoring 35 bills in the General Assembly restricting a woman's right to choose."
By comparison, Deeds said, McDonnell did not sponsor a single bill that would "create jobs through economic development or provide needed resources for education."
Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for the state Republican Party, said Deeds distorted McDonnell's record. He said McDonnell was chief patron of 386 bills in the legislature. He said 76 were related to the economy, and only eight dealt with abortion.
Deeds has been trailing McDonnell in recent polls by anywhere from 7 to 15 percentage points. Political observers say Deeds, a state senator from Bath County, has been hurt by the national recession, and the dipping approval ratings of President Barack Obama as the president struggles to pass health reform and to defend the federal stimulus package.
Yesterday Deeds attempted to turn the tables and to link McDonnell to what he termed the "failed" economic policy of Bush.
"Virginia can't afford to go back to that," Deeds said during the speech, which his campaign showed via webcast to an online audience of more than 300.
The speech was designed to sharpen the distinctions between the candidates, with Deeds casting himself as the bipartisan consensus builder who would pursue solutions to transportation and safeguard education, and McDonnell as more extreme and driven by social issues.
Deeds is proposing tax credits to small businesses for each new job they create, and an additional $40 million a year for college financial aid. He said he would sign a transportation bill that provides a "dedicated, long-term funding stream" to fix Virginia's roads, as long as it does not take money away from education.
By contrast, he said McDonnell would divert as much as $5.4 billion from education to help fund his transportation plan, and would provide tax credits to businesses only for every new job created over 50 employees.
Republicans said Deeds' proposals mean higher taxes are on the way if he is elected.
In a later conference call with reporters, Deeds strategists said the candidate's speech and his latest television commercial are intended to return the campaign's focus to Virginia issues.
Or, as communications adviser Mo Elleithee put it, "break through the clutter of the national environment." He added, "National dynamics have just dominated how people look at government and this campaign."
McDonnell operatives and state Republican leaders labeled Deeds' speech a "stunt" by a faltering campaign in an attempt to energize an unenthusiastic voting base.
McDonnell communications director J. Tucker Martin said Deeds showed a willingness to "divide Virginians on social issues." He said Deeds "focused on history lessons about former governors and presidents, and trying to bring back old-time wedge politics to tear Virginians apart."
The Northern Virginia location was no mistake. In a recent Washington Post poll, Deeds led McDonnell in Northern Virginia by 45 percent to 42 percent.
Past statewide contests indicate that Deeds has to win big in the Democratic vote-rich Washington suburbs to have a chance at victory in November.
Contact Jim Nolan at (804) 649-6061 or
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Staff writer Jeff E. Schapiro contributed to this report.
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Mr.?, that’s a mighty high horse you’re up there on.
Pardon me if I prefer my politics secular, but I don’t believe that qualifies me as a “rabid partisan apologist” or a “political operative” except for in the realm of imagination.
I have long liked Creigh Deeds and I am skeptical of Bob McDonnell’s proposed policies as well as being in disagreement with some of the actions he took as AG. I’m a guy with an opinion, much like yourself.
Unlike many of his party’s rabid partisan apologists and political operatives who post comments here, I believe Creigh Deeds to be an honorable man who aspires to what is best for all Virginians. His party’s national and local political operatives’ continued attempts to divert attention from the real issues facing the Commonwealth by transparent attempts to engage in class, religious, and racial divisiveness, unfortunately, serve only to impair his campaign by wasting opportunities to propose real solutions to real problems without regard to partisan agendas. In many respects, Mr. Deed’s worst enemies are those who pretend to be his supporters.
Well, touche on the free tuition to law school, but he was still attending Regent prior to his application to law school. Perhaps that was his intention all along? Seems reasonable. Even still, someone who identifies Pat Robertson as a political mentor arouses my suspicions, mainly on the grounds that I do not agree with his (PR’s) vision of and goals for society.
?Gov’t: To pretend that there isn’t an ideological pretext to the education which one receives at a school like Regent or Liberty is what is absurd. The school’s motto is “Christian Leadership to Change the World”. What kind of change do you think they’re talking about?
Heck, the bulk of their legal library was a donation from the failed Oral Roberts School of Law, another evangelical legal institution. You remember him, right? The guy who said that, if good Christians didn’t give him $8 million, that God was going to strike him down.
Regent is not like other universities, in that most reputable institutions of law do not profess to have an outright social agenda driven by Pat Robertson’s ideology. If McDonnell wasn’t attracted to Regent because of their message (i.e. Pat Robertson’s message), then why else would he have applied to go to what was at the time a 3rd rate law school, rather than reputable established one?
Yellowhound, a little non-partisan research on your part will inform you that it is likely McDonnell attended law school in Va. Beach because he was actively employed there, full-time, while supporting his family and earning his graduate degrees in public policy and law. Further, he is a practicing Roman Catholic rather than a member of Pat Robertson’s denomination. Furthermore, as one would expect, Mr. McDonnell learned about the constitution from his law professors as one would expect of a student in any law school.
Your rabid partisanship and lack of objectivity destroy your credibility.
That said, I am not an active supporter of Bob McDonnell or Creigh Deeds - although I believe both are honest, well-qualified candidates. I’ll vote in November based on what objective information I can find about each candidate’s proposals to cure the myriad deficiencies in the government of the Commonwealth to be betterment of all its citizens - not on the basis of party loyalty or party propaganda.
“Pat Robertson is an ally and political mentor.“
—Washington Post, 10/21/05
Pat Robertson is McDonnell’s largest individual contributors, having contributed $80,000 to McDonnell’s campaigns, making him one of McDonnell’s largest individual contributors.
Video of Bob McDonnell on the 700 Club with his “dear friend” Pat Robertson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LBAeNmLGbk
McDonnell says his time at Regent gave him “the insight into what our founders believed about government and about their view of the Constitution that I am carrying forth on the job today.“ Read Pat Robertson’s understanding of the Constitution in my previous post.
Question Govt, you are quite right that it would be absurd to believe that “every graduate of every institution of higher learning should be held accountable for the political views of the Administration of the school from which he or she received a degree”. But Regency is not like U.Va. or Yale or other institutions of higher learning. It is Pat Robertson’s pet project to indoctrinate and credential Christian soldiers as Robertson defines them and send them forth to take the reins of government.
If McDonnell was not ideologically attracted to this ideological school, why did he choose to attend it?
Yellowhound: I’ve seen no evidence, credible or otherwise, that McDonnell has any particular allegiance to Pat Robertson. By the standard you and others use in making your accusations, every graduate of every institution of higher learning should be held accountable for the political views of the Administration of the school from which he or she received a degree - undergraduate, graduate, or professional. To hold or espouse such a view, is, to say the least, absurd.
As much as Bob McDonnell may be slickly trying to downplay his far-right ideology and ties to his mentor, Pat Robertson, every Virginian who is a woman or who loves a wife, girlfriend or daughter should think long and hard about the following: McDonnell believes that if a woman is impregnated by a rapist, the government should FORCE her to carry the pregnancy to term.
The next governor will control thousands of board appointments. Do you really want these seats to be filled by zealots from Regency and Liberty “Universities”?
A selection of Pat Robertson quotes:
On the constitutional separation of church and state:
“That was never in the Constitution, however much the liberals laugh at me for saying it, they know good and well it was never in the Constitution! Such language only appeared in the constitution of the Communist Soviet Union.“
On 9/11:
“Well, I totally concur.“ –- Pat Robertson to Jerry Falwell following the Sept. 11 attacks, after Falwell said, “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way—all of them who have tried to secularize America—I point the finger in their face and say: “You helped this happen.“
On “gay days” at Disneyworld:
“This is not a message of hate—this is a message of redemption. But a condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It’ll bring about terrorist bombs; it’ll bring earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor.“
GOPer:
“I still think that it is unfair to devalue McDonnell’s law degree by suspecting that he’s a merely a zealot because he attended a school founded by a Minister whose beliefs you may disagree with.“
The implication that I hold his law degree in lesser value than one from other state law schools simply because of ideology is incorrect. It’s more like it came from an institution which was, at the time, substandard.
If you will note, I was playing around with the notion that McDonnell is hampered by his ideology, i.e. his refusal to consider a common sense approach to government because of it (hence the argument of tolls vs. gas tax). If he’s going to dance around the subject of transportation funding with nonsensical proposals now, what do you expect for his 4 years in office?
It is not personal; it is a valid concern… let me pose a question: if you found out a surgeon who was about to operate on you went to a substandard medical school (and I mean substandard in the most literal sense here) where 64% of the graduates could not pass muster as docs, would you have a concern about his medical education?
Here’s my two cents about this actual campaign - Deeds and McDonnell are both highly respected in state government by their peers on both sides. McDonnell is a more polished candidate.
Virginia has voted for the opposing party for governor after each of our last 6 presidents, or something like that.
The left wing is no where near as fired up as the right wing is because they have their guys in D.C.
McDonnell wins in a landslide, and I have far more faith in him than I ever did in Gilmore or Allen.
But I keep seeing these posts about the terrible mess Virginia is in. I think like any state, we have our issues, mostly transportation.
But our unemployment rate is lower than the national average, we’re constantly recognized as one of the best states for businesses, one of the best managed states, etc. We still have our AAA bond rating.
We have relatively low taxes compared to states north of us, but have a better educational and healthcare outcomes than the low-tax states to the south.
I agree with the repub sentiment though that Dems need to get away from blaming Bush, in today’s instant access world, seven months ago is ancient history. Most of the republican voters have already forgotten about it.
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