Does Deeds Have What It Takes?
By Georgie Gale | Friday, June 12th, 2009 | PoliticsThe progressives of Virginia all received a stunning blow on Tuesday when Creigh Deeds walked away with a double-digit victory in the Democratic Primary. Democrats in Virginia, who had been enjoying a trend of multiple recent victories in the Commonwealth were left scratching their heads as to why the most conservative of the candidates was the winner.
The fact of Deeds’ moderate policies will work both for and against him in the upcoming campaign. Conventional wisdom says that independents and swing voters are more likely to vote for a moderate candidate than one of more extreme views. But Bob McDonnell is hardly an extremist himself. Conservative, yes, but nothing that would turn away the undecided voter.
Both candidates will have funds dumped in their coffers from all over the country, likely in levels previously unseen in non-Presidential years. The eyes of the nation are on Virginia when there is little else going on politically, and Virginia politics are often a predictor of national trends. Watch for the money to come rolling in.
So what will distinguish the two candidates in the end? Both reasonably appealing to undecided voters. Both well-funded. In the end, it will come down to the ground game. How will each candidate do, reaching out at the grassroots level.
Bob has always had the ability to fire up the base, where the grassroots volunteers are found. His party is excited to back him as one of the most viable candidates they’ve had in years. He’s been working on his ground game across the Commonwealth, and in fact never stopped since the last time he met Creigh in the race for Attorney General.
Does Creigh have what it takes to fire up the Democratic base? Is he left-leaning enough for them to get excited about him and come out in droves to support him? Creigh is a nice guy. He has decent values. But will he be able to galvanize the grassroots to make the difference in what may prove to be a very close race? Will he have to depart from his moderate values and paint himself as more liberal and progressive in order to keep his base interested?
Only time will tell if Deeds will have the support he needs to make himself competitive.
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Georgie Gale of Virginia Beach. That's it.
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11 Responses to "Does Deeds Have What It Takes?"
Good analysis on Deeds. Many Dems are smarting over primary losses. Deeds is just not liberal enough for many of them. Especially the Moran camp where many of their dedicated people are. Brian Kirwin is right that Deeds should personally steer clear of negative campaigning. Perhaps he should even feign condemnation of negative attacks by proxy. If you’re a McDonnell fan, you want Deeds to mix it up and lose his aura of being an adult. You’re gonna get the negative attacks regardless, you might as well have Deeds dirty himself.
Perhaps purposefully, however, you neglected to mention weaknesses that McDonnell will have to deal with:
1) McDonnell’s past: His association with Pat Robertson and insisting that oral sex be illegal even among married couples. The Dems will use that, as well as the abortion issue to fire up their disappointed base.
2) While too conservative for Democrats, he’s too liberal for many on the right. His “One Gun a month” reputation will hurt him badly. As will being from VB, yet championing the HRTA. Once a conservative legislator, he conversely looked like a “Sell out” as AG.
3) The ghost of Chairman Frederick. More disturbing than supporting Frederick’s ouster was his complete silence as Chairman Frederick was ridiculed for publicly taking issue with the theories of Charles Darwin. Competence is one thing, religious beliefs being belittled by members of the RPV as others stand silent is another. Excorcising that ghost seems to be under way, but one shouldn’t ignore that as a potential problem.
4) Deeds is the least “Green” of the three Democrats. Do you try to steal the “Green” vote? Conservation, innovation, and alternatives can sell to conservatives. “Green” projects that throw the baby(the economy) out with the bathwater will scare the crap out of most voters. In recent past, McDonnell has sold “Green” rather than simply push energy solutions that are economically viable.
Over all, I really liked your post.
All the Ds have to do is say Cuccinelli. The thing is Cuccinelli fires up the R base as well.
I really have no idea what base is actually bigger. It should be fun to watch.
The main problem for the Rs is the Warner effect. Deeds is going to pull rural voters and I don;t think McDonnell can cut into the suburban and urban D territory voters to make it up.
When the Dems say Cuccinelli is extreme, ask why Independents, Ron Paulers, Libertarians, and rural gun loving Democrats will vote for him.
Ask how super extreme and threatening Ken Cuccinelli continually wins in liberal NOVA. Do you really think the marriage issue is gonna hurt Cuccinelli with rural Democrats? Sometimes abortion is an issue with independents, but will it be this year? I don’t see that. Stem Cell research possibly a problem, but there are plenty of adult stem cell advances for Cuccinelli to come out in favor of if that needs to be neutralized for independents to grasp on to what they like about Cuccinelli.
A straight shooter that wrote the leading senate legislation on Eminent Domain reform. Great on the 2nd amendment. If he keeps fighting to protect our Constituitonal Rights, we need him as AG.
Fact is there are two adults in the race.
Although they came up in opposite parties there are a lot of similarities.
Both were seen as up and coming stars in their parties when they were in the House.
Both, if they hadn’t chosen other paths, might have some day been Speaker of the House.
Both good looking guys who speak fairly well, Deeds with more passion, McDonnell with more message discipline.
It’s going to be a tight race to the wire.
On the undercard, Jody Wagner has a tough road. The attacks on the financial forecasts aren’t all together fair, but they are true enough for politics.
Shannon-Cuccinelli is interesting. I don’t think Steve Shannon has really proven anything as legislator or candidate. Cuccinelli has obvious strengths and weaknesses.
If there’s one race that’s likely to get ugly, it’s this one. If advising Shannon I’d be telling him to go stone ugly right now, calling the guy “Kookinelli” in every ad. Down ticket races don’t get much attention, if you get out of the gate hard negative and define the guy before he has the chance to define himself, he might not ever get the chance.
“Will he have to depart from his moderate values and paint himself as more liberal and progressive in order to keep his base interested?” No, he can run as a moderate/center-left candidate and liberal base will still support him. Why? Because they believe that once elected he will shift to the left like all other so-called moderate Democratic candidates have done recently. I don’t know that much about Deeds so whether or not he would do this if elected is a different story.
I agree with Brett that Bob McDonnell’s support of the HRTA and HB 3202/SB 668 is not going to help him with a lot of conservatives in his old stomping grounds of Tidewater. However, given the choice between the two – a lot of Conservatives will most likely vote for a Republican than a Democrat.
But as far as some of the more active conservative grassroots in our neck of the woods being fired up to work hard to get Bob elected – I wouldn’t count on it.
Reid, ya might want to know Deeds voted for SB668 and HB3202.
SB668 — Patron Marty Williams
02/15/02 Senate: VOTE: PASSAGE (27-Y 13-N)
NAYS–Bolling, DEEDS,
02/15/02 Senate: VOTE: PASSAGE (25-Y 15-N)
NAYS–Bolling, DEEDS,
02/27/02 House: VOTE: PASSAGE (56-Y 42-N)
YEAS– MCDONNELL,
04/17/02 Senate: VOTE: ADOPT GOV. RECOMM. (34-Y 5-N)
YEAS– DEEDS
04/17/02 House: VOTE: ADOPTION (67-Y 30-N)
YEAS– MCDONNELL
Where were all the Republicans? Oh that’s right, THEY SPONSORED THIS BILL. From the looks of things, DEEDS was right there with BOLLING until the final vote. And where was McD? Oh YEA! On the wrong side of the voters with Marty.
Big business then, big business now. Just say YEA, while the voters say NAY in November.
Deeds will have a difficult path to tread. If he plays the Pat Robertson card against McDonnell it will look like an attack on religious people. The truth is the Hampton Roads is responding well to Bob McDonnell’s full-spectrum views. This means that Deeds will need to win in Western Virginia, he has already attacked McDonnell’s social positions, and this will not likely go over well in Southwest Virginia.
There is way too much micro analyzing going on. This reminds me of 2008 when every one and their brother was talking about a specific state and why that would make the difference. Baloney. The economy was in a free fall by October 2008. Only a blind man could not see that the party in power was going to take a beating. This obsession with micropolitics was ridiculous.
Same thing in Virgnia 2009. Look at the macro, not the micro of this or that region, issue, etc. For 20 of the past 28 years, moderate Democrats have been Governor (or better stated, Democrats who campaigned as moderates). The only 2 elections that the Democrats lost featured a nominee portrayed as extremely liberal (Terry) followed by a roaring economy that Gilmore rode into office against a very weak opponent. Any Virginia Democrat will tell you that Beyer’s campaign was their worst statewide effort in decades. I have a friend who worked for Bill Dolan (anyone remember him?) who laughs about that 1997 campaign and how poorly it was run. As long as the macro elements don’t take a drastic turn (economy tanks, major state gov’t malfunction, personal incident), I think Deeds has to be seen as the favorite as he is seen as a fairly moderate Democrat by most of the electorate.
Ghost, your key phrase is “Democrats who campaigned as moderates.”
Why could they get away with it? Because for the most part, they didn’t come out of the legislature. They did have a voting record. They could say “I will not raise taxes” and no one could point to anything saying that they would.
Deeds has vote after vote after vote after vote for tax increases – sales tax increase, gas tax increases, regional tax increases.
I don’t think he can get away with saying he suddenly opposes raising taxes after consistently voting for them every chance he got.
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