Deeds blames national party agenda for lag in polls

Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Creigh Deeds said in an interview that he was lagging in the polls entering the final weeks of the campaign in part because of voter concerns over his national party’s agenda.

“Frankly, a lot of what’s going on in Washington has made it very tough,” Deeds said in a “Battleground Virginia” interview sponsored by ABC 7/WJLA-TV, POLITICO, Google and YouTube. “We had a very tough August because people were just uncomfortable with the spending; they were uncomfortable with a lot of what was going on, a lot of the noise that was coming out of Washington, D.C.”

As one of two off-year governor’s races — the other is New Jersey — that are being closely watched for signals about the 2010 midterm election landscape, the factors behind Deeds’s struggles to date are being studied closely in both parties.

If the ambitious agenda being pushed by President Barack Obama is what’s dragging down the Deeds campaign — rather than the candidate’s own deficiencies, as some top Democrats believe — then the Virginia race could be a troubling harbinger for the national party.

In Virginia, this year’s contest will test how deeply a new politics has taken root in the Old Dominion. Democrats have won the governor’s race in this traditionally conservative-tilting state twice in a row, and Obama last year became the first Democrat in 44 years to carry the commonwealth in a presidential election.

But while the race seems to have tightened in recent weeks, Republican Bob McDonnell has never trailed in any poll — despite a drumbeat of hard-hitting Deeds ads portraying him as a conservative extremist hostile to working women.

Both Deeds, a state senator, and McDonnell, a former state attorney general, discussed the race with WJLA anchor Leon Harris and POLITICO Editor-in-Chief John F. Harris in separate interviews that were broadcast Tuesday night on the ABC affiliate in Washington. The candidates also took questions from Virginians ranging from a Leesburg City Council member to a George Mason University student, via Google Moderator and YouTube.

Deeds said he was now “reframing” the race in an effort to shift the focus more toward state issues and away from a broader national debate that is perilous for a Democrat running in a slightly right-of-center state.

But even while confidently laying out a path to victory, Deeds conceded that McDonnell had staked out a lead over the summer, thanks to the absence of a GOP primary and the Republican’s ability to spend much of the year introducing himself to voters in a fashion that downplayed his roots as a social conservative.

“I came out of the primary, and a lot of people didn’t expect me to win,” he said. “I had to spend a couple of months hunkering down, raising money. Bob could build up his fundraising advantage to run soft and fuzzy ads and build up a lead over me.”

Deeds defeated two other Democrats in a costly June primary that depleted his war chest. He has trailed McDonnell in every poll since then, but public and private surveys have indicated the race has tightened.

That’s in part because of the disclosure of a controversial graduate school thesis McDonnell penned in 1989, when the then-34-year-old Republican outlined a series of far-right stances on cultural issues, including a claim that working women were a detriment to society.

The document, Deeds said, puts McDonnell’s record “in context.” The Democrat has saturated the airwaves with ads informing voters about his rival’s writings.

Before he narrowly defeated Deeds in 2005 to become attorney general, McDonnell served for 14 years as a state delegate, carving out a reputation in the General Assembly as a go-to man for cultural conservatives.

The Republican denied, however, that he had been animated by issues such as abortion in his years in the Legislature.

“Two percent of the bills that I patroned in the General Assembly had to do with abortion — eight out of 386. And guess what? Five of them were the same,” McDonnell said, noting that some of the measures included widely supported efforts to outlaw some late-term abortions and require minors to gain parental consent for abortions.

He suggested that voters, in a state that has been rapidly trending toward the Democrats and has a political tradition of rewarding moderation, are aware of his social conservatism.

“People know that I’m pro-life, I’m pro-family, and that shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody,” McDonnell said, while adding that it’s kitchen-table issues such as jobs and roads that he’s been running on in this campaign.

That focus — and his own polished presentation — have played a significant role in the GOP’s advantage to date in the contest, something Deeds himself hinted at.

“If this election is about who’s the smoothest candidate, who can be the slickest communicator, I’m not going to win,” Deeds said.

To this end, the Democrat acknowledged that he had not performed well following a Fairfax, Va., debate last month — when, in a conversation with reporters, he equivocated on whether he’d raise taxes for transportation.

The moment was captured on camera, and now national Republicans are spending millions to air the footage in a commercial pummeling Deeds.

“I’ve been in the Legislature 18 years, and it’s easy for me to lapse into legislative-speak,” he said.

Deeds reiterated that he’d be willing to sign a tax increase for transportation if that is what a bipartisan commission recommended.

Even while McDonnell has benefited from outrage on the right and unease in the middle toward President Barack Obama — and a hunger among many in his party to reclaim the governor’s mansion after successive Democratic chief executives — he expressed a measure of concern about the volume of the political debate.

“There are people on both sides of the political spectrum that feel very deeply about their views and probably routinely cross the line,” McDonnell said, noting that he found some behavior at the town halls and the outburst toward Obama by Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) “inappropriate.”

As for his own party, Deeds said he and Obama agreed on a majority of issues and that he expected the president to come into Virginia to campaign with him before next month’s election.

“I don’t think he’s getting enough credit right now for lots of good signs that are emerging in the economy,” Deeds said, while noting that he differs with the president on cap and trade.

And despite his deficit in the polls, Deeds indicated that he wasn’t interested in any further debates.

Asked about a statement he made earlier this year in an interview with WJLA and POLITICO, in which he said he would like to face his Republican rival in a debate, Deeds faulted his campaign.

“I don’t have anything to do with the schedule,” he said. “I would have loved to have done a debate with this format.”

When it was noted that it was his name on the ballot, Deeds said that his campaign had a multitude of requests and pointed out that he and McDonnell had done more forums this year than the two candidates in the 2005 gubernatorial race.