Below The Beltway

The Virginia Governor’s race had it’s traditional kickoff yesterday at the Buena Vista Labor Day Parade. And, just as the Deeds campaign has been trying to use McDonnell’s Regent University thesis against him, the Virginia GOP is doing it’s best to tie Deeds to Democrats in Washington:

Throughout the day, Republicans tied Deeds to a national Democratic Party that they are convinced is losing ground in Virginia, where last year voters backed a Democrat for president for the first time in more than four decades. They said Deeds would support soaring government spending, Democratic efforts to reform health care and federal cap-and-trade energy legislation.

“You know [state Sen.] Deeds is going to be carrying water for Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid,” McDonnell told hundreds of spectators munching on fried chicken and turkey legs at a park pavilion after the parade. He was referring to the House speaker and Senate majority leader, respectively.

Deeds rejected the notion that he would be an ally of Washington, promising instead to stand up for rural areas including Buena Vista — 40 miles from his home in Bath County and part of the district he represents. Among the thousands of colorful campaign signs erected in the early morning hours on hillsides and along the parade route were posters that declared the area “Deeds Country.”

“I’m not sure I’d know either one of them if I saw them, except I’ve seen them on television,” Deeds said of Pelosi and Reid. “I’m sure they wouldn’t know me.”

Along similar lines, the Post pointed out yesterday the difficulty that Deeds faces in trying to balance his rural roots with his absolute need to perform better in the Northern Virginia suburbs than he has to date:

[Deeds] faces an increasingly difficult balancing act in trying to drum up support in populous, Democratic-leaning Northern Virginia while maintaining the “country boy” persona that has paid him dividends in this conservative region.

In the Washington suburbs, he is motivating the Democratic masses by attacking McDonnell’s antiabortion record and highlighting the Republican’s past writings that were critical of working mothers, gays and “fornicators,” an approach that could backfire at home, said David Reynolds, a newspaper columnist from Lexington, Va., about 42 miles east of Covington.

“Deeds has nothing to gain from such attacks in a state that is socially conservative and in a statewide campaign where he is attempting to transfer his good, clean and passionate country lawyer image,” said Reynolds, a Republican who is supporting Deeds.

In fact, some Democrats are starting to worry that Deeds is not spending enough time concentrating on what is a crucial area for them:

The amount of time Deeds spends in rural Virginia has also worried some Northern Virginia supporters, who say it would be a mistake to assume that their vote-rich region will fall in line behind him simply because he is a Democrat.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) spent a year courting the suburban voters responsible for his 2005 victory, and an August Washington Post poll showed Deeds running about even with McDonnell in Northern Virginia. McDonnell, meanwhile, has done his best to play up his suburban credentials, reminding voters repeatedly of his Fairfax County roots and lining the median strips with signs declaring himself “NoVa’s Own.”

Deeds notes that he spends about half his time “north of the Occoquan River,” and he bristles at the suggestion that his time in rural Virginia is not well spent. He describes his effort as inclusive of the entire state, including small towns where Republicans vastly outnumber Democrats and their entire populations are sometimes smaller than the number of shoppers who visit Tysons Corner Center on an average day.

Jim Riley at Virginia Virtucon finds some significance in Deeds’s comment about the time he’s spending north of the Occoquan:

Given that Prince William County is south of the Occoquan, that is a pretty telling sign right there that Deeds is now husbanding resources and starting to write-off whole counties.

Especially when you combine that quote with reports earlier this weekend that the Deeds campaign may be closing it’s Prince William County office.

In 2005, Tim Kaine won Prince William by 1,186 votes In 2006, Jim Webb beat George Allen here by 2,094 votes. And, in 2008, Obama beat McCain by 25,814 votes while Mark Warner beat Jim Gilmore by 51,026 votes, and Gerry Connolly beat Keith Fimian by 9,466 votes. If Deeds really is writing off Prince William County, he’s in pretty bad shape.