Virginia governor candidates hold last-minute rallies

NORFOLK

Rwayne Walton has a history of working for winners.

He volunteered for Barack Obama's presidential campaign. He worked on Donald McEachin's successful campaign for state Senate, in Henrico County.

For the past six days, though, he's been volunteering for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds, who lags in polls against Republican opponent Bob McDonnell.

"How do I feel about coming out here and putting the effort in for what might not be a winning campaign?" Walton said. "Sometimes you got to go down with the ship. I'll give him my support whether he's winning or losing, and maybe I'll be giving him the extra support he needs that'll get him over the hump."

Both Deeds and McDonnell were in Hampton Roads on Sunday to stage last-minute rallies. With two days until the election, the candidates urged supporters to keep up their efforts.

"Polls don't vote - people do. And we're going to have to have your help," McDonnell told a crowd gathered at Chesapeake's Republican Party headquarters. "Knock on a door, send out a last e-mail, put up a last couple of signs."

McDonnell field manager Christie Craig said her Chesapeake office would spend the next two days doing "pretty much what we've been doing the whole campaign" - phone banking and knocking on doors.

But, she said, because the McDonnell campaign has been in full swing since April, the need for a big push in the last few days i s not great.

"Everybody forgets it's a marathon, it's not a sprint," McDonnell spokesman Tucker Martin said.

The Deeds campaign especially is counting on get-out-the-vote efforts to make up the gap between him and McDonnell, which a recent poll measured at 12 percentage points, with McDonnell making gains among likely Hampton Roads voters as well as independents.

In a memo to media organizations, Deeds campaign manager Joe Abbey emphasized that the campaign still had access to the organization that won Virginia for Obama last year.

"We are moving into the get-out-the-vote phase of the campaign with one of the best field operations in the nation," he wrote.

"We have made hundreds of thousands of contacts in the last week and will be doubling those efforts in the final days of the campaign."

Deeds was scheduled to make stops at six Hampton Roads locations Sunday. At his Norfolk campaign office, where supporters were getting ready to canvass neighborhoods, Deeds told them he could still win - with enough commitment from them.

"If you give us these two days - and sleep is vastly overrated - if you give us these two days, we will give you four years like you've never seen," Deeds told volunteers.

Walton, who was making phone calls at the office Sunday, said he'll keep showing up until voting i s over.

"There are a lot of phone calls still left to be made, a lot of doors left to be knocked," he said. "I'm trying to sprint at the end."

Alicia Wittmeyer, (757) 222-5216, alicia.wittmeyer@pilotonline.com