Dems harp on McDonnell thesis for third day

Democrats continued to bludgeon Republican Bob McDonnell Tuesday over a recently discovered graduate thesis he wrote decades ago which advanced a conservative social agenda and argued that feminism and nontraditional families are harmful to society.

Among the latest tactics of Democrat Creigh Deeds' campaign was a conference call with several former Republican legislators who have served with McDonnell and assert that the writings reflect the former attorney general's beliefs.

“The thesis that I have been reading about is exactly who Bob McDonnell is," said former state Sen. Russ Potts, a Winchester Republican who ran for governor in 2005 as an independent. "He was out of the mainstream all those many years and, over the whole 16 years we served together, he was out of step with the mainstream then."

Potts and several other Republicans on the call were among those who previously endorsed Deeds over McDonnell in this year's gubernatorial race.

On Monday, McDonnell repudiated some of the language in the 1989 composition during a lengthy conference call with reporters as the controversy over his writing intensified.

McDonnell, 55, has maintained that some of his views have changed since he wrote the paper as a 34-year old graduate student at what is now Regent University in Virginia Beach.

Meanwhile Tuesday, the state Democratic Party posted another Web video (edited for dramatic effect) drawing attention to the thesis and news coverage of it. The party seems intent to push this storyline as long as possible for political gain. (Later in the day, the Democratic National Committee unveiled a similar Web ad.)

(Both Deeds and McDonnell are sponsoring rapid response Web ads that provide links to their campaign homepages when Internet users perform a Google search for the term "McDonnell thesis," according to a company official.)

Also joining the fray Tuesday was Jody Wagner, the Democrat running for lieutenant governor, who used the thesis tempest to suggest that her Republican rival, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, shares the ideas in McDonnell's paper.

"If Bolling agrees with the vision for Virginia that Bob McDonnell articulated in his thesis-as his votes indicate he does-he should say so. If he doesn't agree, he should speak up," Wagner campaign manager Elisabeth Pearson said.

In response, Bolling spokesman Matt Wells accused Wagner of trying to divert attention from her faltering campaign by referencing the thesis controversy.

"Bill doesn’t share the views set forth in the thesis, and Bob McDonnell has said that he no longer shares these views," Wells wrote in an e-mail.

-- Julian Walker

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