Obama's Virginia campaign: Party calls

by Mark Silva

President Barack Obama returns to the campaign trail this evening, raising money and stirring up a rally for the Democratic candidate for governor of Virginia - one of the long Republican-voting states that supported Obama's own election last year, and a dominion where Democrats are attempting to secure their foothold.

It's one of just two states holding gubernatorial elections this year, along with New Jersey. And the outcome will be viewed as a measure of how well Obama's party is holding a state that hadn't voted Democratic in presidential elections since the 1960s.

The party's candidate, state Sen. Creigh Deeds, is making a second run at statewide office after narrowly losing the attorney general's race, by just 360 votes, in 2005.

It's also a rematch for Deeds, who will face former Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell, the Republican who won that match four years ago and stepped aside recently to run for governor.

The GOP is putting plenty of horse-power behind McDonnell, who will deliver the Republican radio and Internet response to Obama's weekly address on Saturday. The outgoing governor of Virginia, Tim Kaine, has become chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

In a state where African American voters account for about one-fifth of the vote, the White House is attempting to convince former Virginia Gov. Doug Wilder, the first black to hold the office, to endorse Deeds. Wilder didn't support Deeds in the 2005 election.

McDonnell has been linking Deeds with Obama in a state that the Democratic president carried, but where polling shows growing discontent with the Democrats in charge of Congress. Obama also won with the help of an extensive ground-game of field offices staffed by campaign aides mobilizing voters across the state. Deeds lacks that.

Deeds, a moderate state senator from rural Virginia, has refused in debates or interviews to be identified with the healthcare proposals of either Obama or the Democrats in Congress. Yet the White House is doing what it can to help Deeds win, because a loss could also be blamed on the administration.

Terry McAuliffe,a former Democratic National Committee chairman and chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign last year, was among the candidates whom Deeds defeated in a party primary earlier this year.

The president plans to speak at a fundraiser for Deeds at Tyson's Corner, a heavily populated area of McLean, Va., just outside the Washington beltway this evening. And then Obama plans to address a rally for the party's candidate at the same hotel in McLean.