Bob McDonnell has blinked in the face of Creigh Deeds’ challenge on social issues, and it could be a costly tactical miscalculation.
A few weeks back feeling beleaguered by poor polling numbers and a need to break McDonnell’s momentum, the Deeds campaign tried to shift the conversation away from economic issues and to McDonnell’s position on abortion. Many people thought this was a tactical error on Deeds’ part. At a time when the state faced the worst economic environment in decades, when unemployment was as high as it had been in years, and when budget cuts were looming, could Deeds really expect to mobilize voters by arguing that McDonnell’s position on abortion made him too risky to be elected governor?
The polling also seemed to suggest that Deeds’ move was a mistake. At the time Deeds made his move on abortion, polling showed him trailing McDonnell by about 8-points. A Washington Post poll the next week gave McDonnell an even greater lead of 15-points. Deeds’ move seemed to help, not hurt, McDonnell.
However for Deeds, it was the only clear path to victory in November. Internal polling showed that moderate and younger women moved rapidly away from McDonnell when they learned about his views on abortion and other social issues. If Deeds could loosen McDonnell’s hold on these voters then he might be able to shift momentum generally away from McDonnell.
For his part, McDonnell had spent months establishing himself as the “jobs” candidate who would be the “jobs governor.” He had not spent any time at all talking about social issues. McDonnell’s response to Deeds’ move on abortion was to call it desperate and suggest that it was because Deeds had nothing to say about the economy. When asked by reporters about his position on abortion, McDonnell would respond that he had always been pro life and then talk about his economic or energy plans.
From a tactical perspective, McDonnell was playing it well. And then, word got around that reporters were looking into his past. Amy Gardner’s piece in the Washington Post on Sunday reporting on McDonnell’s 1989 Regent University master’s thesis was the first to detail McDonnell’s views on many of the social issues including abortion that the Deeds campaign had been trying to draw attention to.
McDonnell’s response was uncharacteristic of the well-oiled campaign he has run so far, sounding defensive and unsteady, and claiming that he had changed his mind on many of the hot-button issues such as whether government should discriminate against homosexuals or whether contraceptives should be outlawed. He claimed that his views had changed as he got older, but he was 34-years old when he wrote his master’s thesis.
McDonnell has blinked. For several weeks he has largely ignored the charges leveled by Deeds that he is too scary to moderate suburban voters to be governor. But now that McDonnell has stepped back to defend himself against his own words he has given the charge legs.
This is certainly not a game changer for either candidate, but it might in fact be the very momentum shifter that Deeds has been looking for. And thus begins the fight for the moderate and young women voters who will decide this election.
Quentin Kidd is Director of the Center for Public Policy and Associate Professor of Political Science at Christopher Newport University
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