How Deeds defied expectations, won the race

With Michael Sluss, The Roanoke Times

In early May, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds was running last in the polls, short on money and making news for laying off several campaign staffers. The conventional wisdom was that his well-funded opponent, Terry McAuliffe, was likely to win the Democratic primary.

Yet Deeds, a state senator from Bath County, improbably scored a decisive victory Tuesday over McAuliffe and Brian Moran.

"I'm often underestimated," Deeds said Wednesday. He never lost faith, he said.

"We had a plan when we set out on this journey, and we worked it to death."

Deeds won by carrying nearly every locality in the state's most populous and economically vibrant region, Northern Virginia - home to both McAuliffe and Moran.

He also did well in Virginia's second-largest region, winning all five major cities in South Hampton Roads.

His turnaround began a few weeks ago when polls showed Deeds gaining ground. Then, The Washington Post endorsed him.

That "gave people a reason to examine our candidacy," Deeds said. He featured the endorsement prominently in his campaign advertisements and yard signs.

Polls conducted just before the primary showed Deeds and McAuliffe in a dead heat. But Deeds surpassed expectations, capturing nearly half of the more than 320,000 votes cast to McAuliffe's 26 percent.

Party leaders and campaign strategists said Deeds peaked at the right time, capturing late-breaking undecided voters.

"Oftentimes you think undecideds break evenly, but they broke heavily to Creigh," said Gov. Timothy M. Kaine.

"I think they broke to him because they figured out who Creigh Deeds was as a person, and they really liked him," Kaine said. "I think Creigh's strength has always been his authenticity. He is who he is. What you see is what you get. And I think people want that in politics. They don't want everything to be so poll-tested or driven by consultants."

Deeds also benefitted from a late surge in campaign contributions that helped pay for television ads in the expensive Northern Virginia market.

"I guess if there's a moral to this story, it's how to run a budget," Deeds' campaign manager, Joe Abbey, said late last week.

Turnout for the primary eclipsed 6 percent, a greater participation rate than in the 2005 Republican gubernatorial primary or the 2006 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate.

Boasting a large paid and volunteer staff, the McAuliffe campaign strategy partly hinged on a strong get out the vote effort on election day.

Quentin Kidd, a political science professor at Christopher Newport University, said the "vaunted McAuliffe ground game" was flawed because it was a paid operation that lacked strong connections to dedicated Democratic activists.

To beat Republican Bob McDonnell - who narrowly defeated him in the 2005 attorney general election - Deeds will need to replicate strong showings in Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia this November.

"Their support is going to be absolutely critical in a general election that is probably going to be close," Kidd said.

McDonnell is positioning himself as the candidate with connections to both regions - he is a former resident of both Fairfax County and Virginia Beach.

The two split the vote in those areas during the 2005 race.

Deeds took the suburbs around Washington along with Norfolk, Portsmouth and Suffolk; McDonnell won in the Northern Virginia exurbs plus Chesapeake and Virginia Beach.

McDonnell's current campaign chairman, Ed Gillespie, said McDonnell looks forward to debating issues such as taxes, charter schools and business-labor relations, areas where Republicans think they can gain an advantage and reverse the recent election fortunes. Republicans already are hitting Deeds for his support of a proposed gas tax increase last year, and Deeds has vowed to make transportation funding a top priority as governor.

One challenge for Deeds is to improve the soft support he has in some South Hampton Roads African American voting precincts that often go for Democrats.

Deeds can make his case to black voters as the campaign progresses, said Del. Kenny Alexander of Norfolk, who supported Moran in the primary.

"In order for him to be successful in our communities, he needs to run with us, to understand what gun control means to citizens in urban areas that are plagued by violence," Alexander said.

Deeds voted against some recent gun control measures, including banning guns in restaurants, though that wasn't enough to win him the endorsement of OpenCarry.org, a gun rights group.

A moderate, Deeds makes no apologies for votes he's taken.

"I'm a middle-of-the-road guy. I've always been a middle-of-the-road guy," he said. "That didn't change in the primary. It isn't going to change in the general election."

That consistent approach has been a hallmark of the campaign, Abbey said.

Abbey spent Wednesday discussing campaign strategy and funding with national and state Democratic party officials.

The Virginia governor's race is being closely tracked by Democrats eager to continue the party's recent string of victories, and Republicans who believe a win would be a political defeat for President Barack Obama.

History seems to be on the side of the GOP this year.

Since 1977, each year after a presidential election, Virginia has elected a governor from the party opposite the president's.

Such trends are made to broken, said Kaine, noting that Virginia voters helped elect a Democrat president in 2008 after 44 years of awarding the state's electoral votes to Republican candidates.

Julian Walker, (804) 697-1564, julian.walker@pilotonline.com