For Potts, Politics Hits Close to Home

"I absolutely cannot stand an arrogant judge," he said recently about that effort. "As a kid growing up, I had people make fun of the clothes I wore and the little ramshackle apartment where I grew up. I didn't like that. I don't appoint judges that don't have humility."

He has employed his hard-charging speeches most often in defense of public education, sponsoring bills to pay teachers at the national average salary and pushing hard, with other Republican senators, for the 2004 budget deal that raised taxes and pumped $1.5 billion over two years into schools, public safety and health care. In support of such measures, he often tells formative stories about his schooling, which he credits with saving him from a poverty-stricken childhood.

"We've had no better friend among the 40 senators," said Virginia Education Association lobbyist Robley S. Jones, though the group's political action committee has endorsed Kaine.

Potts's bubbling rhetoric on the topic has at times angered Virginia's vocal home-schooling community. It's one of series of issues that made Potts a major irritant to the conservative wing of the Republican Party long before he challenged a fellow Republican for the governor's mansion, Holsworth said.

In 1999, he sponsored a bill that would have required students to be enrolled in public schools to take part in school-sponsored extracurricular activities. During discussion of the bill, which was defeated in the House of Delegates, he suggested it was unfair for home-schooled students to play sports when they spend their time lounging on their couches at home instead of studying of in class.

"It raised a firestorm," said Joe Guarino, who at the time was a lobbyist for the Home Educators Association of Virginia. "Senator Potts became persona non grata in the home-school community, and that went on for quite a few years."

Potts now calls those words a "big mistake" and says he admires families who choose to teach their children at home. The senator's new support has healed some rifts, Guarino said, but others say he switched positions only after he realized how many home-schooling families live in his district. Guarino credits them with mounting a powerful Republican primary challenger against Potts's reelection in 2003.

Antiabortion groups have been angered by what they consider his shift on abortion. After backing a measure to require parental consent before a minor can get an abortion and voting to ban abortion procedures during the last part of pregnancy, he has now become a key vote in killing new restrictions on abortion in the committee he chairs.

In recent years, he has voted against legislation that would require parental permission for minors to get emergency contraception and several bills that would further regulate abortion clinics.

"The sad truth is that Russ Potts is not the first politician to abandon his positions on important issues," said Victoria Cobb, a lobbyist for the Family Foundation, which does not endorse candidates. "In terms of being pro-life and pro-family, he has become openly hostile."

Potts said he supported measures he thought were reasonable but thought more recent bills have gone too far.

"It's a moving target," he said. "You tell me who's changed. They keep pushing the envelope."

And whose views on abortion, which he often cites in speeches, inspire his?

"My wife has had a major influence on me on this," he said. "My three daughters have had a major influence on me."