Bill Clinton Speaks to Virginians

BILL Says

"Don't Let 'Fear Factor' Determine Deeds-McDonnell Victor"

McLEAN, Va. -- Ah, what might have been. Terry McAuliffe and Bill Clinton brought their buddy act to a pep rally Tuesday and gave Virginia Democrats a taste of what they passed up by nominating Creigh Deeds for governor, instead of McAuliffe.

Never mind that Deeds trails Republican Bob McDonnell by 7 to 8 percentage points in most polls. "November 3 is going to be the greatest comeback in the history of American politics!" McAuliffe exclaimed, adding another instant classic to his hit parade of sweeping pronouncements.

Then the former national party chairman moved on to chicken waste as energy (a staple of his own short-lived gubernatorial campaign) and said he felt like a Little Leaguer talking baseball next to Babe Ruth when he talked about the economy standing next to Clinton.

Clinton, playing his part, looked bemused. "You gotta love this guy," he said.

The pair, recently back from Africa, had teamed up earlier in the year to try to launch McAuliffe in electoral politics. Now they're back as part of an all-hands-on-deck effort to shore up Deeds.

For Clinton, it was a day of gubernatorial duties. He was due in New Jersey on Tuesday night to campaign for Gov. Jon Corzine. For Deeds, it's the week of presidents. In seven days, President Obama will make his second campaign visit for Deeds in a state he won comfortably last year.

But will the late Democratic push here be enough to help Deeds catch up to McDonnell? McAuliffe, who had led a field of three in most primary season polls, said he was speaking from personal experience -- "don't pay any attention to the polls."

Clinton offered his own lesson from the primary outcome: "Never underestimate this man." He said Deeds has the best record and best plans for jobs, education, health care and transportation -- "I have reviewed this ... This is not a close question."

More than 300 Deeds supporters and volunteers gathered for Tuesday's feel-good event in a campaign office in an industrial park in the Washington suburbs. They responded with whoops and cheers to Clinton's mild partisan swipes ("Denial is not just a river in Egypt. It apparently is the political platform of the Virginia Republican Party") and exhortations to "step into the breach" and make sure people vote.

The former president said a central issue of the election is "not being in denial" about serious problems such as state transportation woes that are choking off economic growth. He said voters shouldn't give in to "the fear factor" and stay home -- and it's up to Deeds workers to make sure they don't.

"Don't you let this election be determined by the denial strategy of people who only trigger the fear factor because the others are too busy to go vote," Clinton declared. He did not say what there was to fear, but Deeds' openness to higher taxes for transportation has been a central theme of McDonnell's campaign.

Deeds shot to a surprise primary victory after The Washington Post endorsed him in a strong editorial praising his record and style. The newspaper has now run another endorsement editorial that is, if anything, even stronger. Deeds cited the editorial Tuesday ("I was so proud") and also cited a New York Times article that deemed employer tax credits for every job created -- a Deeds proposal -- the most cost-effective way to create jobs.

The Post editorial and the prodding by Democratic heavyweights could deliver some less-than-fired-up voters to the polls. But if current opinion polls are accurate, even "heroic turnout" in Northern Virginia wouldn't make the difference for Deeds, demographer Robert Lang, co-director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, said in an interview.

Lang says Northern Virginia, five counties within about an hour of Washington, D.C., accounted for 28 percent of the vote in the last gubernatorial election. Democrats typically have to win big among liberals and moderates in the area to pull off a statewide win. But Deeds doesn't have a natural base here -- he's from the rural southwest part of the state -- while McDonnell grew up in the area.

And Deeds won't be able to match the huge turnouts of young people and black people that helped Obama become the first Democratic presidential nominee to carry Virginia in 44 years. Nor does it help that in the Richmond area, where blacks turned out in force for Obama, Doug Wilder -- the state's first black governor and the former mayor of Richmond -- hasn't endorsed Deeds.

Meanwhile, McDonnell is getting his own high-wattage help from people like Arizona Sen. John McCain, the 2008 GOP presidential nominee, and Sheila Johnson, co-founder of Black Entertainment Television.

Turnout is always relatively low in Virginia's way-off-year election, a deliberate strategy to keep the race focused on local rather than national issues. Of course, that's made it and New Jersey -- the only two gubernatorial races in the years following presidential elections -- even more closely examined for clues to national trends. But Virginia hasn't proven predictive in the past. For decades the state has simply elected governors who are from the opposite party as the president who won the year before.