Down in polls, Deeds not taking back seat

NORFOLK — R. Creigh Deeds wedges himself into the rear seat of his used navy Ford Explorer, pushing aside boxes of campaign literature and leaning against the passenger-side window to avoid the hanging suits and shirts in his traveling wardrobe.

Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” is on the radio, and a large yellow bag of Halls menthol cough drops rests between the two front seats of the over-stuffed sport utility vehicle. But Deeds, 51, — the Democratic state senator from rural Bath County and one of four men who want to be Virginia’s next governor — can’t afford to rest.

With about two weeks left in the race, he’s running behind in his quest for the Democratic nomination. He lacks the celebrity showmanship and campaign millions of former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe and the populous, heavily Democratic Northern Virginia base of the pugnacious former Del. Brian Moran of Alexandria.

On this evening, Deeds is also a little behind schedule for an appearance at a barbecue in Norfolk’s Lafayette Park, organized to drum up volunteers to get out the vote for him in the June 9 primary.

“Just drive,” Deeds says as aide Davis Walsh fiddles with the GPS device.

An uphill battle to win the nod

As the only Democratic candidate to have run a statewide campaign, Deeds knows he’ll have to travel a lot of roads — many uphill — to wrest the party’s nomination and get another crack at Republican Bob McDonnell in November.

“The person who wins this primary is the person who does the best job figuring out who is going to vote in this primary and turns them out,” he says matter-of-factly.

“If it’s going to be decided by money, let’s face it, Terry McAuliffe is going to flood the market with money. There’s nothing I can do about that,” he says. “But I’m the best prepared to be governor.”

In 2005, Deeds ran against McDonnell for attorney general, losing by 360 votes out of 1.9 million cast in the closest statewide election in modern Virginia history.

“He spent $6 million, I spent $3 million — and he beat me by 360 votes,” Deeds said. “I put everything I had into that campaign.”

That experience did not deter Deeds from his goal to run for governor, despite suggestions that he should again seek the attorney general’s office.

“Why run for attorney general again?” says Deeds, who decided to run for governor on Sept. 13, 2007 — the day former Gov. Mark R. Warner announced he would run for the U.S. Senate

“I would take a back seat to Mark Warner, but there’s nobody else out there I’m going to take a back seat to.” He officially entered the race in December.

Beneath the friendly, folksy manner and his somewhat halting, self-conscious public speaking style, Deeds is a man who doesn’t back down, even when the odds are against him. It goes back to advice he got a long time ago.

“I had an uncle named Frank Wood who years ago told me and a bunch of other guys that we were only going to get out of things what we put into them,” Deeds says. “He was exactly right. That’s the secret of life. You’re either all in — or you’re not in at all. And you have to be all in to expect to get all out.”

‘The power of government’

Born in Richmond to a city police officer, Deeds was raised on his maternal grandparents’ farm in Bath County a rural Allegheny Highlands enclave that borders West Virginia and today has fewer than 5,000 residents. He spent part of those early years living in a trailer with his younger brother and their mother, who separated from her husband when Deeds was 7. She works today as a mail carrier.

Deeds got a taste for politics at a young age from his grandfather, who was chairman of the local Democratic committee and had the first house in the county to be hooked up to electricity.

“I grew up learning about the power of government. There are some things government can stay out of, but there are some things government has to do,” he says. “The power of politics is to effect change for good. I grew up knowing that and I always felt like I had a role to play.”

Deeds has been running for something ever since.

He met his wife, Pam, at Concord College in West Virginia, where he was involved in student government. In 1987, three years out of law school at Wake Forest University, he was elected commonwealth’s attorney in Bath County. In 1991, he was elected to the House of Delegates, then won a special election in 2001 to fill the state Senate seat in Charlottesville of the late Emily Couric.

Along the way, Deeds and his wife, an unemployment claims counselor in Covington for the Virginia Employment Commission, had four children: Amanda, Rebecca, Gus and Susannah, the youngest, who attends Bath County High School.

Holding the middle ground

By necessity, Deeds’ candidacy, as well as his political life, has been calibrated by finding common ground and consensus.

His barbell-shaped district stretches nearly 150 miles — from the more liberal academic environs of Charlottesville to the conservative-minded, hunting and fishing culture of tucked-away mountain towns and farms running to the West Virginia border.

“I come from a very rural part of the state — to get elected to anything ... to get anything done, I’ve always had to reach out and work with other people,” he says. “If you look at my legislative record, I’m the guy that can bring people together and get things done.”

In the General Assembly, Deeds has supported the death penalty, abortion rights and legislation banning same-sex marriage. He prides himself as a land conservationist.

He has backed bills friendly to supporters of gun rights, such as a measure to let holders of concealed-weapons permits carry concealed guns into bars and restaurants. But this year he also authored a compromise version of a bill to restrict sales at gun shows. It passed in committee but failed to clear the Senate.

In 1998 he wrote Megan’s Law, which made public the names of sex offenders on the state police registry. In 1996 he helped create the Governor’s Opportunity Fund, which provides loans and grants to localities trying to encourage private investment that creates jobs.

Staying out of the fray

During the campaign for governor, there have been few fundamental disagreements among the Democrats on issues such as the economy and education.

Deeds has been content to remain largely out of the fray as McAuliffe and Moran have traded barbs in a clash of personalities, indicating they believe Deeds is less a threat than they are to each other.

That could help the man from Bath go from the back seat to the driver’s seat.

“Because it’s a three-way race and no run off, he could sweep the rural areas and at least run a strong third in urban areas and eke out a win if Moran and McAuliffe split the other vote,” said University of Virginia political scientist Larry J. Sabato.

“He’s letting the two other guys beat themselves up, and meanwhile he’s been running his own game,” notes Quentin Kidd, professor of political science at Christopher Newport University. “The way this guy wins isn’t to be somebody he isn’t, but to be who he is and to press his case.”

Still, Kidd says, primaries “favor the money guy,” and as good as Deeds’ strategy might be, “part of me wonders whether he has the resources to get the people out.”

So Deeds has been traversing the commonwealth in his road-weary Explorer — the same vehicle he purchased with 10,000 miles on it to take on McDonnell in 2005. It survived a collision with a bear last August and now has more than 308,000 miles.

He hasn’t slept in his own bed in four weeks, but he’s been to plenty of community fish fries and barbecues, rounding up volunteers, Twittering on the road and spending hours on the phones scraping up money for a home-stretch television binge in media markets where he thinks he can bank the most votes: Hampton Roads, Roanoke, Bristol and Richmond.

He stopped in South Richmond one night recently to press the flesh outside a supermarket, make his case and indulge his appetite for yet another hot dog with mustard. Funk and hip-hop blared as the local DJ drummed up enthusiasm for “Dee Creeds.”

“Here’s the thing you need to know,” he told the largely black crowd, sprinkling references to John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama in his message of jobs, education and equal opportunity and winning over the group.

“We, the people, are the boss,” he said, “and we get the kind of political leadership — good or bad — that we demand or deserve.”