Virginia candidates step up efforts in waning hours

Democrat R. Creigh Deeds took his campaign to Hampton Roads yesterday, while Republican Bob McDonnell flew around the state in late efforts to drive up turnout in a contest that has taken on national significance.

Virginia and New Jersey are the only states holding elections for governor tomorrow. Those contests, and a special election for a congressional seat in upstate New York, are getting national attention because they are the first major contests after President Barack Obama’s election last year.

Virginia has become a swing state, said Dan Palazzolo, political scientist at the University of Richmond. If, as polls indicate, the Republicans sweep Virginia’s three statewide races, a year after the state voted for Obama, “it will send a message that maybe government is getting too big, that maybe more taxes, more government and more debt is not the way to revive the economy,“ he said.

“It will be interesting to see how Sens. [Mark R.] Warner and [Jim] Webb react,“ Palazzolo added, referring to the state’s two Democratic senators who have yet to commit themselves on health care and other Obama policy initiatives.

Virginia’s national significance was highlighted last week when Obama went to Norfolk to stump for Deeds, while Republican Party headliners, including potential presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Haley Barbour, were in Virginia to campaign for the GOP ticket.

Obama did not return to Virginia after the visit Tuesday but made two campaign stops yesterday in New Jersey, where Gov. Jon S. Corzine, a Democrat, is fighting to hold onto his seat in a tough three-way battle.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, Obama’s handpicked chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has campaigned in Virginia and New Jersey in the campaigns’ waning hours.

McDonnell, the GOP candidate for governor, and his ticket-mates, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling and Ken Cuccinelli, the candidate for attorney general, began yesterday in Chesapeake, before flying across the state to airport rallies in Tazewell, Weyers Cave and Winchester and a rally at the Leesburg campaign office.

Deeds and his running mates, Jody Wagner, seeking the lieutenant governor’s position, and Stephen C. Shannon, running for attorney general, spent the day in Hampton Roads. They traveled with Kaine and Rep. Robert C. Scott, D-3rd, from Hampton, to Norfolk, to Virginia Beach, back to Hampton and to Newport News.

In a brief phone interview, Deeds said no one was discouraged by polls showing the three Republicans with double-digit leads but were encouraged by his message.

“I’m the guy with a plan to create jobs, to bring people together, improve the quality of life and fix transportation,“ he said.

Using volunteers, the Democrats planned to knock on 375,000 doors during the closing days and make more than 700,000 get-out-the-vote phone calls.

McDonnell, encountering better weather as he flew west, said “we have a great chance to win,“ but that it still comes down to the grass-roots efforts on Election Day.

“We have a tough economy,“ he added. “We have to encourage jobs creation and entrepreneurship and find ways to improve education.“

Tomorrow’s election will have a much smaller electorate than the presidential electorate. Typically, fewer than half of Virginia’s registered voters cast ballots in an election for governor. Seventy-four percent voted last year, so there likely will be more than 1 million fewer votes cast tomorrow in the state.

Virginia has more than 5 million registered voters. About 3.7 million voted last year.

The weather may cooperate after days of rain. Dry conditions are expected tomorrow throughout most of the state.