McDonnell, Deeds in area on late campaign pushes

Republican Bob McDonnell and Democrat R. Creigh Deeds swung through the Charlottesville area on Monday to make one final appeal for votes in today’s gubernatorial election.

McDonnell, along with the rest of the GOP statewide ticket, led a rally of some 200 members of the Republican rank-and-file in a parking lot outside of Landmark Aviation at the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport at noon.

“We’re pushing hard in these last hours and we’ve been energized by the polls, but we’re far more energized by the people we’re meeting,” McDonnell said.

In a reference to the many polls predicting a sweep for the GOP ticket of McDonnell, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling and attorney general nominee Ken Cuccinelli, Cuccinelli waved aloft a broom that read “McBolliNelli” on the handle.

McDonnell, a former Virginia attorney general and member of the House of Delegates, told supporters that the Republicans are ready to take the helm of Virginia after the consecutive gubernatorial terms of Democrats Mark R. Warner and Timothy M. Kaine.

“We’re ready to lead if you’re ready to win,” McDonnell said to cheers. “We’ve got a great team. Every governor needs a good lawyer and I’ve got a great one in Ken Cuccinelli, and Bill Bolling has been a great lieutenant governor. Now he’s going to be the busiest lieutenant governor in history.”

At the same time, Deeds and the Democratic statewide ticket headlined a packed rally of an estimated 175 cheering supporters inside the party’s campaign office on the Downtown Mall.

“I’m all in this campaign for you, I need you to be all in for me,” Deeds told the mass of cheering supporters, many waving blue Deeds For Virginia signs. “If I have the extraordinary opportunity to be the 71st governor of the commonwealth of Virginia, I will be all in every day working to create opportunity and prosperity and hope in every corner of the commonwealth. Let’s get this done.”

Deeds, who has represented the Charlottesville region in the state Senate since 2002, said he has put forward a “positive vision that’ll take Virginia forward.”

Deeds highlighted his economic improvement plan, which would among other things offer employers a state tax credit for every job created. He also mentioned his ideas to make higher education more affordable, which include a proposal to create a scholarship fund that would pay for half of a student’s college tuition, so long as the student maintains a B average and commits to two years of public service as a teacher, firefighter, police officer or in other needed fields.

Deeds will return to Charlottesville from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. today to greet voters at the Herman Key Recreation Center polling place.

At the GOP rally, McDonnell said the Republicans’ plan for Virginia’s economic recovery will help return jobs to the commonwealth without adding to government bloat.

“This campaign, at its heart and soul, is about jobs,” McDonnell said. “We don’t believe that more government programs and expenditures and decisions made by some government bureaucrat will create jobs. We believe the free enterprise system, the private sector, is where the jobs will come from, where we can have people using their God-given talents and hard work creating jobs and making the difference. We believe [taxes are] your money that you spend every year by giving it to the commonwealth. We thank that money deserves to be allocated by a wise and frugal government.”

Despite the polls, Deeds said, victory is still within reach. If Democrats turn out to vote today as they have in the past, he said, they can prove the pundits wrong.

“I know the votes are out there,” Deeds said. “It’s up to us to get them out.”

Kaine, who is also chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said Deeds and the rest of the Democratic ticket — lieutenant governor nominee Jody Wagner and attorney general candidate Steve Shannon — are the best bet to maintain Virginia’s rankings as the best managed state, the best state to do business and the best state to raise a child.

“I want to make sure the next governor is somebody who will carry on that tradition,” he said.

Kaine acknowledged that Deeds is down in the polls, but said Democrats in Virginia have a long history of pulling out unlikely victories, such as races won by U.S. Sen. Jim Webb against Republican George Allen in 2006 and President Barack Obama’s win over GOP presidential nominee John McCain in 2008.

“Creigh is the underdog. He’s running against the guy that he lost to four years ago,” Kaine said. “But we’ve made something of a cottage industry of running underdogs and winning. So far we’ve done pretty well.”

Virginia and New Jersey are the only two states in the country holding a gubernatorial election this year. Many analysts are looking to the outcome of those races as something of a referendum on the Obama administration and the national policies of the Democrats.