Virginia Tomorrow

The gubernatorial campaign is beginning to take shape.

Up to this point in the race for the next governor, the campaign of Creigh Deeds has looked lackluster and direction-less at best and disorganized at worst. Let’s be fair, Deeds has had a lot to do in the few short months since his June 9 come-from-behind win in the Democratic primary. He crawled away from that victory broke and with only a skeletal staff. He needed time to raise money, hire people, and get himself organized for the general election campaign.

Bob McDonnell, on the other hand, has been running a general election campaign for about a year now, since it became apparent that he would have no primary challenger. In that time, he methodically introduced himself to Virginians as a busy family man focused on bread and butter economic issues important to millions of other busy Virginia families. He framed the central issues around the economy and talked a lot about smart and efficient government, low taxes, small business as the engine of growth, and the entrepreneurial spirit. He warned against inefficient government, bloated bureaucracies, and high taxes.

With the collapsing economy, billion-dollar federal bailouts, and trillion-dollar national deficits as a backdrop, McDonnell began to sound a lot like a moderate business-minded southern version of a Rockefeller Republican.

The mid-summer polling, for what it’s worth, suggests Deeds is losing two important groups of voters: Obama Democrats and Independents. Obama Democrats, those thousands of new voters brought into the electoral process by the Obama campaign last fall, have thus far not registered much excitement for Deeds. McDonnell is winning independents by anywhere from 10 to 15 percent. Deeds can’t win in November this way.

So, when you don’t like the way the conversation is going what do you do? You change the subject. Deeds has done this in two ways. First, he has embraced Obama. After twice staying away from Obama events in Virginia, Deeds held a rally with the president last week, and Obama asked his supporters to get excited about Deeds. Second, and nearly simultaneously, Deeds shifted the conversation to McDonnell’s position on social issues starting with abortion, but this is surely going to expand beyond abortion.

The thinking seems to be that if they can shift the conversation to McDonnell’s very conservative positions on most social issues they can cause independent voters who have thus far liked what they’ve heard from McDonnell to pause. And, if during that pause, they can engaging the so far unengaged Obama voters then they can begin to close the gap in the polls.

This is a risky strategy for the Deeds campaign, but they know that a victory in November depends upon their doing two things: convincing independent voters that McDonnell’s social conservatism is more of a threat to them than the shaky economy and re-create the excitement of last fall’s presidential campaign amongst the Obama Democrats.

Quentin Kidd is Director of the Center for Public Policy and Associate Professor of Political Science at Christopher Newport University