Candidates tout successes as Sept. nears end

The last full week of September ended with the campaigns of both of Virginia's candidates for governor claiming victory.

Both had reasons to be happy.

Three polls released during the past week show that Democrat R. Creigh Deeds has closed the gap with Republican Bob McDonnell to within 2 to 5 percentage points.

"It's a reflection of the fact that people are waking up to the race and responding very well to Creigh's message and show a healthy amount of skepticism of Bob's message and his record," Deeds senior adviser Mo Elleithee said a conference call with reporters.

Meanwhile, McDonnell got a boost from several large endorsements, including the Fairfax Chamber of Commerce and the Fraternal Order of Police, which represents about 8,000 law-enforcement officers across the commonwealth.

Yesterday, McDonnell accepted the endorsement of the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce, which cited the candidate's stances on business issues and transportation.

He also arguably got a boost from a non-endorsement -- the unwillingness of influential Democrat L. Douglas Wilder, the first African-American elected governor -- to endorse Deeds.

"We've really garnered a lot of support from a lot of places," McDonnell campaign chairman Ed Gillespie told reporters in a conference call.

"It's clear that one candidate is running on ideas, policies and initiatives," added Gillespie, who said Deeds is running a "nonstop negative campaign devoid of any specific ideas."

McDonnell spent yesterday in Hampton Roads campaigning with Sheila Johnson, a co-founder of BET. Johnson, traditionally a key Democratic donor, has endorsed the Republican's campaign. Deeds spent the day in Southwest Virginia.

McDonnell's camp has released two ads -- including one that clips the state's newspapers to paint Deeds as a negative campaigner who is trying to mislead voters.

The other features McDonnell's daughter Jeanine, a former platoon leader in Iraq who speaks up for her dad as a supportive father.

That ad is a response to the fallout from McDonnell's 1989 graduate school thesis, in which he wrote that working women are detrimental to families and that government policy should favor married couples over "cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators."

The Deeds campaign this weekend planned to hold 64 so-called "book clubs" across the state to have people read the document, which McDonnell penned for his law and public policy degree at religious broadcaster Pat Robertson's Regent University.

"We always knew this was going to be a very hotly contested race and that things were going to narrow in the end," Gillespie said.

Elleithee said both candidates come across as likeable, but in the end, the race will come down to "who's got a record more in line with the mainstream of Virginia."

Contact Jim Nolan at (804) 649-6061 or .