With less than 40 days to go in his campaign I thought it was worth taking a moment to focus on the remarkable series of events that have unfolded over the past week.
On Wednesday, Bob was endorsed by The Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce; on Thursday, the Fraternal Order of Police; and this morning the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce added their name to the long list of people and organizations supporting Bob McDonnell and his plans to create jobs in every corner of Virginia.
In an op-ed piece for The Washington Post Wednesday, our opponent finally came clean with voters that his first act if elected will be to raise taxes on Virginians. The Washington Post editorial page noted, “R. Creigh Deeds, the Democrat running for governor in Virginia, has now unequivocally committed himself to support higher taxes…,” The Washington Post (September 24, 2009). Deeds’ call to raise taxes on Virginians, and the issue will infuse every race for the House of Delegates from here on out. Today’s campaign coverage is dominated by former Democratic Governor Doug Wilder refusing to endorse Deeds, telling the Washington Times that Deeds’s desire to raise taxes in a weak economy “doesn’t show leadership and responsibility to me.” Newspapers from The Roanoke Times to The Virginian-Pilot to The Richmond Times-Dispatch to the Waynesboro News Virginian have lambasted Deeds for running an “overwhelmingly negative” campaign, airing “deceitful” television spots, promoting an “outright lie”, and for the fact that he 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." (You’ll be seeing some of these quotes on your TV screen starting today) Entering the final month of the campaign bob had $1.4 million MORE in cash on hand than the Deeds campaign, a significant advantage. The grassroots activists are enthusiastic, walking neighborhoods, phoning voters, planting yard signs and knocking on hundreds of thousands of doors. As of late September, they have already nearly doubled the number of doors knocked on by our party during last year’s Presidential election here in Virginia.
Bob, Bill and Ken are running as a unified ticket, and working closely with our candidates for House of Delegates. Bob is over 50% in the latest Washington Post poll, taken AFTER a wave of negative attacks from the Deeds campaign about a decades old graduate school paper. And a Research 2000 poll reported on by The Washington Post found Bob up 50-43, basically unchanged from August. And every poll finds our voters to be more motivated and enthusiastic than Deeds’ backers. Historically races in Virginia tighten after Labor Day, and it’s likely to tighten more in October as a lot of self-identified Independents who tend to vote Democrat come home, but the fundamentals of the race remain strongly in Bob’s favor. Creigh Deeds has refused to engage in a series of statewide debates with Bob, and just this past Tuesday he refused to join Bob on stage at a joint forum at Virginia Union University. The Richmond Times-Dispatch wrote, “we are worried about Deeds' reluctance to take the stage with McDonnell. A governor must be willing to face his constituents and the political opposition. Why is Creigh Deeds so afraid?”We know the answer to that! Bob cleaned Creigh’s clock in the Fairfax County Chamber debate, and has a platform of specific ideas to create jobs, improve our schools, build new roads and make energy more affordable. And Creigh Deeds is the most aggressively anti-business and jobs killing candidate for governor of Virginia in modern history—actually running on tax increases in a time of recession. Taken together these points paint the picture of a race unfolding on Bob's terms, with the energy, ideas and momentum entirely on Bob's side. Forty days is still a lot of time in politics, but ask yourself, “Would I rather be playing hand or theirs?” But if Bob plays his hand well, keep working hard, and continues to get his message out then Republicans will win the Virginia governor’s race for the first time in more than a decade, sweep the statewide offices and increase Republican representation in the House of Delegates.
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