Deeds to Wage Risky Attack On Opponent's Abortion Views

[cal04]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/08/AR2009080802533.html?hpid=moreheadlines

Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate R. Creigh Deeds will launch a campaign this week to portray his opponent's longtime efforts to restrict abortion as out of the mainstream, a potentially risky strategy for a Democrat in the once solidly conservative state.

Deeds (Bath), a state senator who supports abortion rights, said he will join female supporters in Annandale on Monday for the first of three events across the state where he will argue that Republican Robert F. McDonnell devoted too much of his 17 years in public office working to limit access to abortions. McDonnell has said he is against abortion in every instance, including rape and incest, except when the life of the mother is in danger.

Deeds's appeal is directed at moderate suburbanites in Northern Virginia and elsewhere who might be turned off by McDonnell's views. It's also an attempt to rally support from Democrats who have joined Virginia's electorate in recent years but who might be ambivalent about Deeds because of his relatively conservative positions on guns and other issues.

The effort is also designed to undercut one of the main themes of McDonnell's candidacy: that he is a moderate who would concentrate on jobs and the economy if elected.

"I think it's an area that shows a clear distinction between us," Deeds said in an interview Saturday. "I'm a moderate guy, and I've been a consensus-builder my entire career. . . . My opponent is the guy who has pursued a socially driven ideological agenda who now is masquerading as a centrist."

[Barack_America]

1. That will be very interesting. nt

[Nay]

2. Good for him! But I don't know how it's gonna play in this dummy state of

Virginia. There are plenty of RW idiots here. But my hat is off to him.