Voters Deserve Details, Specifics From Hopefuls

The commonwealth of Virginia faces tough challenges in the coming years, challenges that the next governor must deal with.

Transportation, education, economic development and other pressing issues will be on the governor’s desk, demanding attention, actions and solutions.

That’s why we’ve hammered Democrat Creigh Deeds so often on these pages for his refusal to engage in a full-fledged, greater-than-normal debate schedule with Republican Bob McDonnell.

By running from McDonnell’s call for up to 10 debates across the commonwealth leading up to the November election, Deeds has deprived Virginians the opportunity to learn more about their platforms.

McDonnell himself made this point during last week’s gubernatorial debate before members of the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce. He pointed out to audience members that his plan to address Virginia’s transportation crisis totals 19, single-spaced pages of detailed information. He then displayed Deeds’ plan: a blank sheet of paper.

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Sure, it was a stunt, but McDonnell’s 100-percent correct.

Deeds has put forward absolutely no concrete set of proposals on any of the critical issues in this race, not transportation, not education, not economic development ... not a one.

Instead, he’s hinted that his transportation plan might include a higher gas tax, given the same old Democratic spiel for what’s wrong with public education (hint, it involves teacher salaries) and hemmed and hawed about his plans for economic development.

His strategy, it appears, is to meet with every Democratic constituency group, shore up his support there and count on the aura from Barack Obama’s victory in the state last year to propel him into the Executive Mansion.

And then there’s the 20-year-old thesis “scandal,” in which the Deeds camp is trying to frighten moderate Virginia voters into believing McDonnell is some sort of far-right wing, religious theocrat who’s out of touch with modern society. It’s a load of bunk.

So far as engaging the wider electorate in a discussion of the issues leading up to the election, he’s having none of that, it appears.

Television advertising — of the touchy-feely variety — seems to be his preferred way to communicate with the state’s voters, but in a recent spot, he’s moved from fluff to outright demagoguery.

The ad in question, which has been shown in our part of the state, outright blames McDonnell, then the state’s attorney general, for Appalachian Power Co.’s recent series of rate hikes.

It’s an outright lie, and the good senator and his campaign operatives know it. APCo, under the law (a law Deeds voted for as a state senator) is indeed entitled to collect certain costs and expenses from its customers. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, but to suggest, as he does in the ad, that there was a dark cabal between the GOP, McDonnell and Big Power (to coin a phrase) is disengenous, at best.

We’ve stated our disagreement with McDonnell’s transportation proposal, for instance, arguing the numbers just don’t add up and that it involves the budgeting equivalent of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

But the fact that McDonnell at least has put his proposals in writing for voters to haggle over speaks volumes for him and his campaign.

It’s more than his oppoent.