Dark-horse candidate gains as Virginia voters head to the polls Tuesday

A dark-horse candidate has emerged in the final days of Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, causing the candidates to divert attention from their plans to help the state’s troubled economy and, instead, indulge in some old-fashioned mud-slinging.

State Sen. Creigh Deeds has built momentum over the final weeks, using an endorsement from The Washington Post and a final television blitz to vault to the top of the field before Tuesday’s primary.

{mosads}He has topped former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe and former Del. Brian Moran, though not by a wide margin.

McAuliffe led for much of the race, causing Moran and Deeds to train their fire on him. But with Deeds’s last-minute surge, McAuliffe has turned his attention to his opponent for the first time, suggesting that Deeds will not be able to win a general election.

GOP nominee Bob McDonnell “has already beaten Creigh. He’s already beat him on the gas tax,” McAuliffe told The Hill as he toured the state Monday. In 2005, McDonnell edged out Deeds when they both ran for attorney general.

“They’re very similar on the issue of guns,” McAuliffe continued. “I would have a big contrast with Bob McDonnell.”

Meanwhile, Deeds and Moran have attacked McAuliffe for his job claims, which they say omit several companies that shed jobs while McAuliffe made money on them.

Still, says a Moran adviser and veteran of Virginia politics, the attacks are nothing that would kill a candidate’s chances in November.

“We’ve all kind of sniped at each other, I guess. I don’t get too excited about that, as long as it’s on the issues, which it has been,” said Moran adviser Steve Jarding. “Voters thirst for information. They want to know what’s different.”

The race has hinged on jobs and which candidate would be best able to spur an economic recovery. Deeds has focused on education as a way to improve the state’s jobs climate, while McAuliffe has touted his past as a businessman who has actually created jobs.

{mosads}Moran, the former Democratic leader in the House of Delegates, has gone the furthest in trying to tie himself to popular Gov. Tim Kaine (D) and Sen. Mark Warner (D), Kaine’s predecessor in the governor’s mansion.

Geography will play a factor in the primary as well. While McAuliffe and Moran have Northern Virginia bases, Deeds hails from the west side of the state, along the Shenandoah Mountains. The area is much more conservative than the rest of the state.

Two recent polls, conducted by Suffolk University and the independent Research 2000, show Deeds leading narrowly. The Suffolk poll, which sported a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percent, showed Deeds with 29 percent, McAuliffe at 26 percent and Moran at 23 percent.

The Research 2000 poll, conducted on behalf of the liberal Daily Kos website and with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percent, showed Deeds leading with 30 percent, Moran at 27 percent and McAuliffe at 26 percent. Both polls were conducted June 1-3.

Both polls showed a significant percentage of voters who remain undecided. Still, it is a remarkable comeback for Deeds, who as recently as late May scored just 13 percent of the vote in an earlier Research 2000/DailyKos poll, and a plummet for McAuliffe, who peaked in the same poll at 36 percent.

In the end, the contest will come down to turnout, which the campaigns and party strategists say will be between 175,000 and 250,000 voters, or 3.5 to 5 percent of registered voters.

All sides claim their field operations give them the best chance of mobilizing their own voters to make up the biggest slice of that electorate.

{mosads}“Brian and Creigh don’t have any field organizations to speak of. They got rid of their field staff months ago. I’ve got a huge field staff,” said McAuliffe, whose campaign has 14 offices open statewide. “We know who we need to get out [on Tuesday], which is a huge advantage for us.”

“They’ve put together, obviously, a top-notch organization,” said Joe Abbey, Deeds’s campaign manager. But, he added, the campaign has seen an influx of volunteers, and undecided voters are breaking for Deeds: “Our volunteers and our supporters, their care for Creigh is a mile deep. We’ve run out of phones and people have started using their cellphones.”

Moran’s internal canvassing shows he is ahead in Northern Virginia and is pulling even in Hampton Roads, Richmond and Roanoke. And if he performs well in Northern Virginia, which made up 45 percent of the Democratic electorate in the 2006 primary in which now-Sen. Jim Webb (D) beat a challenger, he could end up on top.

“If we get a replication of [the Webb race], we’re going to do pretty good,” Jarding said. “We know where our votes are and we believe there’s enough to put us over the top.”

Members of Congress have been slow to add their feelings about the race, with each candidate boasting just a single congressional backer. Rep. Bobby Scott (D) told the Post he voted for McAuliffe; Rep. Rick Boucher (D) is behind Deeds; and Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) is backing his brother, Brian. The other three Democratic House members and the state’s two Democratic senators have not thrown their weight behind any candidate.

The candidate who emerges victorious on Tuesday will face a tough race against McDonnell, who has the GOP primary to himself. Republicans have put a high priority on Virginia, and the Republican National Committee and the Republican Governors Association have already dumped about $4 million into the state.

Thanks to the RNC’s big fundraising advantage over its Democratic counterpart, it is likely that Republicans will be able to spend more money on the race than Democrats.