Obama lends star power to Virginia race

Democrats hope President Barack Obama gave a last-minute boost to their gubernatorial nominee in Virginia but it may be too late.

Obama attended a rally with state Sen. Creigh Deeds (D) in Norfolk on Tuesday, aimed at exciting the area’s heavily African-American populace a week before Election Day.

“I have every confidence Creigh Deeds will be a terrific governor. He’s smart. He’s honest. He’s devoted to the people of this commonwealth and to the American Dream that he discovered and lived here,” Obama said Tuesday. “He’ll always be straight with you about the challenges you face, and he’ll be out there every single day working as hard as he can to meet them.”

{mosads}”We have just begun to deliver on the change you voted for, and we need a partner like Creigh Deeds to help us finish what we started,” Obama said.

But surveys show former Attorney General Bob McDonnell (R) with a formidable, if not insurmountable, lead.

The latest poll, conducted by The Washington Post, shows McDonnell leading 55 percent to 44, a slightly wider lead than the Republican had in the last Post survey, conducted three weeks ago.

McDonnell leads among both men and women and beats Deeds by 61 percent to 36 among independents. Though Deeds leads in Northern Virginia, his 56 percent-to-43 percent edge there is lower than the margin that successful Democrats have reached in recent years.

Obama seemed to acknowledge the challenge in his remarks to the Virginia faithful.

“There’s no doubt this is a tough race. It was always going to be. Even though Virginia’s been moving in the right direction, it’s still a pretty evenly-split state with some pretty independent-minded folks,” the president said.

And Deeds’ best effort to get back into the race may have fallen flat, the poll shows. Even though Deeds has hammered McDonnell relentlessly on a graduate thesis the Republican wrote two decades ago — a thesis that espoused some views critical of women in the workplace — voters trust McDonnell to handle issues of special concern to women by 49 percent to 42.

Meanwhile, McDonnell sports wide leads on key issues for Virginia, including the economy, taxes and transportation — an issue that has driven Northern Virginia voters for years. Fully 53 percent of voters say they trust McDonnell to handle transportation best, while 37 percent pick Deeds.

Although Obama’s appearance Tuesday could increase turnout in key Democratic areas, his support for Deeds is unlikely to move the electorate as a whole. Seven in 10 voters said expressing support for the president with their gubernatorial vote will not be a factor for them.

{mosads}Deeds’s inability to capitalize on a changing electorate, should he lose, will be spun as a reaction against both Obama and Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine (D), the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. But Old Dominion voters still see both favorably: 54 percent approve of Obama’s job performance, while 58 percent approve of the job Kaine has done.

Democratic strategists have been privately critical of the way Deeds has run his campaign, saying the nominee spent far too much time attacking McDonnell while eschewing advice from the White House and Kaine.

Virginia has a long history of voting against the party that controls the White House. Not since 1973 has a president’s party won Virginia’s governor’s mansion. Obama did carry the state in 2008; he was the first Democratic presidential candidate to do so since Lyndon Johnson.

And lately, the party out of power has won the governorship. During the George W. Bush administration, Kaine won the governorship in 2005 even though Republicans had a four-point edge in self-identified voters, while Sen. Mark Warner (D) won the governorship in 2001 against a six-point GOP edge.