Deeds: I'm not out of governor's race

Creigh Deeds isn’t done in the governor’s race against Republican Bob McDonnell, he told a Lynchburg rally Saturday after Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., delivered one of the warm-up speeches.

“I’ve been counted out of elections before,” Deeds said in a reference to polls that mostly give McDonnell a 10-point lead.

“Reports of my demise are much exaggerated,” the Bath County Democrat said as cheers rose from about 100 party activists at Virginia University of Lynchburg.

“We are going win this election because we are going to drive out every single vote,” Deeds said.

Actually, Warner said, Deeds may not need to get every one of those votes.

“If the Deeds campaign can just get 60 to 70 percent of the people out who voted last year for President Obama, he will be very successful,” Warner said.

Warner also praised Del. Shannon Valentine, D-Lynchburg, calling her “a good Democrat.”

“But when she gets to Richmond, she is not a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, vegetarian, she is somebody who is there working for this community day in and day out,” Warner said.

The rally was held to encourage campaign workers to redouble their efforts to knock on doors and talk up the election with their friends and associates.

The senator said he thinks Obama’s upcoming appearance with Deeds on Tuesday at Old Dominion University in Norfolk will energize many of last year’s 600,000 new voters to turn out on Nov. 3.

“We made history last year,” Warner said, because Virginia went for a Democrat in the presidential election.

“And here, a year later, we are asking you do it one more time,” Warner said.

“I know there are people who say, ‘I’m tired, I’m politicked out. Do we have to do all these things again?’

“The answer is yes,” Warner said, because the decisions that hit closest to home are made in Richmond, and they involve public schools, university systems, transportation systems and ways to attract jobs to Virginia communities.

Deeds visited the city of Franklin on Thursday night to talk with workers at the International Paper mill, which had just announced it would close and put 1,100 people out of work at a plant that had been in Franklin for almost a century.

Decisions about how government deals with such events “are not made in Washington. They are made down the road in Richmond,” said Warner, who was governor from 2002-06.

Deeds has the “heart, character, judgment and record” to be governor, Warner said. “We need that kind of compassion in the governor’s office.”

After his visit, Deeds said he will push for a $100 increase in the maximum weekly unemployment benefit, from $378 to $478, for people who lose their jobs through traumatic economic events.

Polls don’t discourage Deeds, he told reporters after the rally.

“The only poll that matters is going to be taken Nov. 3,” he said. “The people that actually turn out and vote are going to be the ones that decide the election.

Deeds said the Democratic primary in June showed him trailing the other two candidates for the party’s nomination “till the very end, and we won pretty convincingly.”

“I’m comfortable we are going to win this election. We just have to get the right turnout and continue to deliver a positive message,” Deeds said.

More than 50 percent of his campaign’s TV ads now are positive, Deeds said.