Obama to appear with Deeds on campaign

President Barack Obama will make a late campaign appearance with Democratic gubernatorial nominee R. Creigh Deeds a week before Election Day.

The time and site of the Oct. 27 appearance will be announced later, the Deeds campaign said.

News of the visit ended speculation among some pundits that the president might not make another foray into the contest for fear of losing political capital, because Deeds trails Republican Bob McDonnell in the polls.

Obama also was burned recently when former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder declined to endorse Deeds despite personal requests by Obama and Gov. Timothy M. Kaine.

The appearance by Obama -- who previously joined Deeds for an August fundraiser in Fairfax County -- will cap a flurry of campaign visits by big names.

Yesterday, former Vice President Al Gore attended a McLean fundraiser with Deeds. Former GOP presidential candidate John McCain campaigns in Hampton Roads today with McDonnell.

Former President Bill Clinton will appear with Deeds on Tuesday in Arlington County or Alexandria.

Meanwhile, the candidates for governor continued to pound each other with new negative TV ads over proposed climate-change legislation.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also entered the fray with an ad in Virginia attacking Deeds for being pro-union.

McDonnell used Gore's visit to call Deeds a supporter of cap-and-trade legislation meant to limit carbon emissions. Gore says such legislation is needed to combat global warming.

In a new McDonnell ad running in the Roanoke and Tri-Cities markets, Mark George, mill manager for the MeadWestvaco paper plant in Covington, says cap-and-trade policies could kill 1,400 jobs at the paper plant. If the mill were to close, "this would virtually be a ghost town," George says.

Deeds countered with an ad calling the McDonnell allegation dishonest. Deeds says he will not support any legislation that would increase energy prices during an economic downturn. He also says he opposes the federal legislation.

Federal cap-and-trade legislation would cap the quantity of greenhouse gases that a region can emit each year and allow companies to sell among themselves the permits to emit greenhouse gases. Opponents say this permitting process would drive up energy prices, particularly at coal-fired power plants. Southwest Virginia mines large quantities of coal.

In addition to the ad, the Republican Party of Virginia held a conference call with three Southwest Virginia legislative candidates to denounce cap-and-trade as a job-killer.

The Deeds ad is running in markets in Southwest Virginia and Harrisonburg.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce ad says unions have invested $1.4 million in the Deeds campaign. It shows Deeds at a union rally saying: "You won't just have a friend in Richmond, you'll have a partner."

It says Deeds' union "partners" want "card check," federal legislation that would make it easier to unionize employees, and that they "want to unionize state government workers."

Deeds has said he is opposed to card check and to unionizing government employees.

Contact Tyler Whitley at (804) 649-6780 or .