The voter-registration table wasn’t quite as alluring as the pizza and chicken nuggets, but it drew some interest nonetheless. Eight students—a few posing for photos as they signed—filed applications yesterday at Chesterfield Community High School to vote in the November general election. Two teachers joined them. Many others took home the applications handed out by the League of Women Voters during the 350-student school’s lunch periods, said Amy Burgett, a 30-year volunteer with the organization.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine came to Lynchburg yesterday to talk about building a better broadband communications network to strengthen rural counties’ economies, but first he had to talk about what he called “the elephant in the room.“ “Our national economy is in tough, tough shape,“ Kaine told state legislators and county officials who, he said, are reading “newspaper headlines that most of us have not seen in our lifetimes.“

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine came to Lynchburg yesterday to talk about building a better broadband communications network to strengthen rural counties’ economies, but first he had to talk about what he called “the elephant in the room.“ “Our national economy is in tough, tough shape,“ Kaine told state legislators and county officials who, he said, are reading “newspaper headlines that most of us have not seen in our lifetimes.“

Two Virginia delegates said yesterday that they will pursue legislation to strengthen Virginia’s law against price gouging after a disaster such as a hurricane. House Minority Leader Ward L. Armstrong, D-Henry, said he noticed that gasoline in his district spiked dramatically, to between $4.30 and $4.50 a gallon, after Hurricane Ike struck the Gulf Coast this month.

With the nation’s financial system in turmoil, some critics point to industry deregulation co-sponsored by a former congressman from Richmond as the cause of the problem. They blame deregulation for creating huge companies that have put the country’s financial system in jeopardy. “I respectfully disagree,“ former Rep. Thomas J. Bliley Jr., R-7th, said yesterday. “I don’t think Gramm-Leach-Bliley has any direct influence.“

Richmond Mayor L. Douglas Wilder only hints at his preference for mayor, but his former supporters are speaking volumes with their checkbooks. Corporate leaders and others who bankrolled Wilder’s campaign to lead City Hall in 2004 are overwhelmingly behind Robert J. Grey Jr. in this year’s race, according to an analysis by the Virginia Public Access Project, a nonpartisan tracker of political giving in the state.

They’ve been blocked in by the Straight Talk Express. They’ve gawked at Secret Service agents from their balconies. They’ve watched campaign staffers overrun the Starbucks. Sen. John McCain’s neighbors in Crystal City are learning what it’s like to live and work next to the headquarters of a presidential campaign, and the reviews are mixed.

Inside the Beltway Offshore map: The same day the House voted to lift a ban on offshore oil drilling, Virginia’s Republican House delegation called on the Interior Department to redraw state boundary lines in the outer continental shelf so the state could claim and control its fair share of the seabed. The eight Republicans, led by Rep. Thelma Drake, R-2nd, wrote Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorn, asking the department revert to more equitable boundaries outlined in a 2005 map as the agency plans for new oil and gas leases offshore.

With economic anxiety rising, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama scrambled yesterday to adjust their messages to connect more directly with financially struggling voters. Obama talks directly into the camera in a new, two-minute television ad on how he’ll fix an economy in which “paychecks are flat and home values are falling.“ McCain and running mate Sarah Palin softened opposition to government bailouts, accepting the U.S. takeover of the nation’s largest insurer as unfortunate but necessary to protect ordinary Americans.

Catholics have a moral obligation to participate in the political process. That was the message about 150 people heard tonight during a two-hour program sponsored by the Virginia Catholic Conference, Office of Justice & Peace and the Richmond Sowers of Justice. The “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship” program, which included greetings from Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo of the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, was held at St. Bridget’s Church.