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Dredging up desperation: Mr. Deeds' campaign is mud

October 4, 2009 12:36 am

I TAKE IN megadoses of politics throughout the month, so I don't like to write about the subject in this column. I'd rather introduce readers to the pungent salt marshes and varied birdlife of Chincoteague or assess the brilliant yellow of the tulip poplars lining the field where I run my dog. But, alas, these days I have politics on my mind. I've been inspired--by Creigh Deeds.

I haven't met him yet, but I suspect Deeds is a nice guy. He's a family man, a legislator with 18 years of experience, and a friend of former state Sen. John Chichester. I was glad when Deeds won the Democratic primary in this year's governor's race, and I was interested to hear his ideas on solving the problems facing Virginia.

But I've been sorely disappointed with his campaign. In fact, I'm disgusted with the nature of the TV ads he's been running, and I'm holding out hope that, in this last month, he'll see the light and get square. Because when "whatever it takes to win" becomes a politician's game plan, voters lose.

Deeds' campaign for Virginia governor had been faltering this summer. He had no plan to fix transportation, nebulous positions on other issues, and he seemed to perpetually be playing catch-up. When Republican candidate Bob McDonnell said that, if elected, he'd re-open the state's rest areas within 90 days, Deeds said he'd do it in 60--kind of an "oh, yeah?" approach to leadership.

Then, just before Labor Day, The Washington Post handed Deeds what he apparently thinks is a trump card: the now-famous 20-year-old master's thesis written by McDonnell when he was at Regent University. The thesis was an exercise in designing social policy for the Republican Party on a national scale, and its verbiage and ideas (and even its quaint typewriter font) reflect Reagan-era thinking and, yes, conservative religious values.

The way Deeds is using this old document, you'd think McDonnell was trying to put Virginia in a burqa. In one Deeds campaign ad, somber women supposedly addressing the GOP candidate proclaim darkly, "We know what you wrote about working women"; "Your record troubles me. You sponsored 35 bills restricting a woman's choice"; and "You oppose birth control for married adults."

First of all, McDonnell hasn't "opposed birth control for married adults." In his thesis, he decried the weakening of marriage through a series of U.S. Supreme Court rulings, including one that had to do with contraception.

Second, he sponsored only eight bills regarding abortion (which, by the way, may be a "woman's choice" but probably isn't a baby's); he was listed as a co-sponsor on others, but many were the same measures introduced in successive years.

Finally, half of McDonnell's deputy attorneys general were women, his wife has worked in and out of the home, and his daughter was a platoon leader in Iraq. And he's going to force women out of the workplace?

All this whoop-la over a single, 20-year-old thesis is ironic. Is this the same Democratic Party that dismissed Barack Obama's 20 years in a church led by a black nationalist preacher--the Rev. Jeremiah "God damn America" Wright--with a shrug?

Deeds had agreed early on to drop the divisive social issues and concentrate on policies critical to today's Virginians. In the campaign's first debate, at The Homestead resort, Deeds said, regarding abortion, "We can't be continually dividing our citizens along the social mores, the social politics, and politics that are personal views." During the July 25 debate, Deeds responded to a question from the moderator, saying, "I've never made social policy a huge part of my campaign or a main focus of my agenda."

What happened, Mr. Deeds? Slumping polls and incoherent policy, I would suggest, and a campaign of desperation.

But lest you write me off as a social conservative (which I acknowledge) and therefore blind to the "threat" McDonnell poses, take a look at a Deeds ad on an entirely different issue, the one that claims McDonnell supported $180 million in electric-power rate increases when he was attorney general.

Utility rate increases are approved by the State Corporation Commission. Typically, the utility asks for an increase, and the attorney general's office, acting on behalf of the consumer, makes a recommendation to the SCC. In 2007, Appa-lachian Power asked for an increase of $198.5 million. McDonnell's office recommended $29.8 million. In 2008, Appalachian asked for $207.9 million; McDonnell's office suggested $133 million. So, yes, he "supported" power-rate increases--but well below what the company had asked for (and close to what the SCC eventually granted). The Deeds ad falsely puts him in bed with Appalachian Power. The Lynchburg News and Advance calls that assertion an "outright lie."

I'm sick of smear campaigns. There are real differences in political philosophy between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to taxes, the role of government, unions, businesses, transportation funding, and so on. These are the issues I want to hear about.

I'll admit it: When the tide goes out, the salt marshes around Chincoteague can stink. But I'll take them any day over Deeds' style of campaign ads. Bearing false witness? It's wrong--even in these "progressive" times.

Linda J. White is assistant editorial-page editor of The Free Lance-Star.