Creigh Deeds is picking up the story about Bob McDonnell’s graduate school thesis and running with it:
Republican Robert F. McDonnell’s 20-year-old master’s thesis is a relevant topic for discussion in the Virginia governor’s campaign because it helps shed light on his record, Democratic opponent R. Creigh Deeds said Wednesday.
“The thesis explains the social agenda that has apparently driven his legislative agenda during the years,” Deeds said in an interview. “If anything, this ensures people understand there are very clear differences between me and the other guy in terms of our record. Records are important.”
Deeds was making his first public comments about the paper since it had been described in a Washington Post report Sunday. He had been out of the state, attending fundraising events with top Democrats in California, as the governor’s race at home became consumed with McDonnell’s 1989 academic work.
In the paper, McDonnell laid out a plan for Republicans to use government to strengthen the family.
Deeds’s campaign has been trying to keep public attention on the document, in which McDonnell wrote that working women were detrimental to the family and that federal child-care tax credits were harmful because they encouraged women to work outside the home.
Wednesday’s comments by the Democratic state senator were designed to extend discussions of the thesis, as was a speech he made at the opening of a campaign office in Alexandria, where a volunteer held a sign that read “Working Women for Deeds.”
“He wasn’t 20 years old when he wrote it. He was 34,” Deeds said. “Thomas Jefferson was 33 when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. . . . It’s relevant.”
Well, actually, Senator Deeds, it’s the voters who get to decide what’s relevant and what isn’t. It’s quite possible that they’ll agree with you, but they may also see that this is all an irrelevant distraction from the issues that actually matter.
