RNC Chairman Michael Steele to campaign in Hampton Roads

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele will be coming to Hampton Roads today to visit with volunteers working this afternoon in both the Chesapeake and Virginia Beach campaign offices.

The campaign offices are located at 524 Johnstown Road in Chesapeake and 505 S Independence Blvd, Suite 103 in Virginia Beach.

Steele is expected to be in the area about 2 p.m.

When you couple this with the McCain visit last week and Obama’s visit to ODU next week, the national spotlight is clearly beginning to shine on Hampton Roads as key to winning this campaign.

Norfolk and Portsmouth traditionally vote Democratic, Virginia Beach leans Republican, and Chesapeake generally is solid Republican (last year being the first it wasn’t in many years).

If you think that South Hampton Roads needs to be won by the GOP in order to win this election, then it’s not a surprise to see these visits here.

Romney, Huckabee, Barbour, and Giuliani will also appear in Virginia on behalf of McDonnell the remaining few days of the campaign.

The Washington Post also has an interesting article this morning about the potential failure of the Deeds camp to listen to the DNC and the White House. Damage control, anyone?

Senior administration officials have expressed frustration with how Democrat R. Creigh Deeds has handled his campaign for governor, refusing early offers of strategic advice and failing to reach out to several key constituencies that helped Obama win Virginia in 2008, they say.

Democratic strategists said that over the summer, Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) offered Deeds advice on winning a statewide election. Among other things, Kaine, who is also chairman of the Democratic National Committee, told Deeds that he should lay out more of his own vision and stop attacking Republican Robert F. McDonnell so ferociously. But Deeds did not embrace the advice, according to a national Democratic strategist.

A senior administration official said Deeds badly erred on several fronts, including not doing a better job of coordinating with the White House. “I understood in the beginning why there was some reluctance to run all around the state with Barack Obama,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly about the race. “You don’t do that in Virginia. But when you consider the African American turnout that they need, and then when you consider as well they’ve got a huge problem with surge voters, younger voters, we were just a natural for them.”

Of course, this is also damage control for the WaPo who practically begged Deeds to go negative.

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About the author

JR Hoeft

Conservative to the core; liberal with his opinion! J.R. has been involved in politics for over a decade and has worked on several campaigns in Hampton Roads. He has served on the Executive Committee of the Republican Party of Chesapeake and the Central Committee of the Republican Party of Virginia. He is also the director of “Blogs United” in Virginia. E-mail J.R.. Follow J.R. on Twitter.