Moderation might not be enough for Deeds

Among the three men running for the Democratic nomination for governor, state Sen. Creigh Deeds seems to be the one who fits most naturally into the moderate mold shaped by Mark Warner and Tim Kaine. He's also the one who seems least likely to succeed them.

That's the conventional wisdom, at least, and there are only a couple of months left to change it before the June primary.

If anyone has the energy to accomplish that reversal, however, it would be Deeds, a man who seems perpetually on the verge of bounding from his chair - and sometimes does. Now that the General Assembly session is finished, the fast-talking Bath County Democrat spends his time trying to wrestle the party's gubernatorial nomination from two Northern Virginia residents: Brian Moran and Terry McAuliffe.

Moran is working as hard as any candidate has for the nomination, with the possible exception of McAuliffe's handlers, who seem to publish a book a day on his positions. Snark aside, though, this has been a mostly serious campaign about the issues facing Virginia.

"The Democrats want to nominate me because I'm the only guy in this race that's ever run a statewide race," Deeds said in his opening pitch to The Pilot's editorial board recently.

In that 2005 race, Deeds ran against Republican Bob McDonnell, who beat him by a few hundred votes to become attorney general. McDonnell is the GOP gubernatorial nominee this year.

Deeds clearly would like a rematch, but at the moment, he's running behind in polls and way behind in money. Primary elections, though, are unpredictable things, with tiny turnouts and wacky results. Without a doubt, though, this one will be about where the (mostly) Democratic voters want to take their party. Fault lines are all over the place.

Deeds was raised on a farm that had been in his family since 1803; by old Virginia standards, McAuliffe and Moran - who both arrived as adults - are relative newcomers. McAuliffe and Moran hail from the 'burbs of NoVa; Deeds still lives in the rural West of RoVa - what Northern Virginia wags derisively call the "rest of Virginia."

This primary will test whether - at least for Democrats - the state boils down to a crescent running from Alexandria through Richmond to Virginia Beach. Democrats have repeatedly won enough votes there that RoVa's wishes haven't mattered much.

But such divisions - in geography, perhaps in values - have also been key in preventing progress on statewide issues like transportation, which Deeds intends to make his first year's priority.

"The governorship of Virginia is the most important political job in the country, and the best," he said, maybe overstating. "... You only have four years, you're totally unencumbered by re-election politics in the beginning, and your political capital is never greater."

But first Deeds must win the job. Perhaps his only chance is to convince Democrats that only a moderate can win against McDonnell.

McAuliffe and Moran both bear the scars of countless partisan battles, for which Virginians seem to be losing patience. McAuliffe formerly headed the Democratic National Committee and was the chief enabler of the Clinton dynasty. In the House of Delegates, Moran was one of the architects of the Democrats' resurgence in the General Assembly, a position from which he resigned to run for governor.

Both men have been campaigning hard for months. Deeds is just getting started. "At the toughest economic time we've faced since the Great Depression," he said, "I just could not put personal ambition above my obligation to serve [in the Assembly]. And so maybe that did put me behind. Maybe that put me focused on the problems we have to deal with [in] Virginia."

McAuliffe is campaigning - as he said in a recent radio interview - as a "post-partisan candidate," an echo of President Barack Obama, and before him from politicians like Warner, Kaine and U.S. Sen. Jim Webb. His campaign has been professional and above the fray. Moran is also running toward the middle, though he is also taking on McAuliffe's inside-the-Beltway background, a risky boomerang for a guy from Alexandria, just across the river from Washington.

Whether either man is a credible moderate, Deeds - on guns, for example - is every bit as conservative as some GOP members of the state Senate, making his argument a little more convincing.

"I'm not going to check off on all the litmus tests," he said. "I'm a pragmatic, problem-solving guy."

The question is whether he'll have the chance to prove it in the governor's mansion.

Donald Luzzatto is The Virginian-Pilot's editorial page editor.

E-mail him at donald.luzzatto@pilotonline.com.