As Bush Visits Va., Kilgore Stays At Arm's Length

Kaine held two campaign events in this region Friday, greeting supporters at a restaurant in Suffolk, then appearing at Virginia Beach's new convention center to receive endorsements from current and former mayors.

Asked about Kilgore's absence from the Bush speech, Kaine, who presents himself as the logical successor to Warner, said: "What I take away from it is, there's a big difference between how regular people are looking at the way we are doing things in Virginia and what people see as Washington-style politics.

"I do think Virginians look at national politics and they see indictments, they see challenges with ethics in Congress and they see a slow response to emergencies," he said. By contrast, in Virginia, "they see a state that four years ago had major problems" but has restored its fiscal health.

Warner, speaking in Richmond after the luncheon that Kilgore attended, went further, predicting that the bad news for the Bush administration would help his fellow Democrat on Nov. 8.

"If the contrast is between how things are going in Richmond versus how things are going in Washington, I think people will say, 'Let's keep the state path,' " the governor said.

On the other hand, the governor's race is not yet on the radar screen of some voters in Hampton Roads, who are closely following the president's fortunes but cannot distinguish Kaine from Kilgore.

"I'm not really following the governor's race," said Terry Maloney, 37, a Persian Gulf War veteran who works at the Ford Motor Co. assembly plant in Norfolk. He's furious with Bush over the Iraq war. "We've lost 2,000 lives for nothing," he said.

As for his vote Nov. 8, he said: "I don't know a thing about the candidates. I know they're fighting a lot on television."

Staff writer Chris L. Jenkins in Richmond contributed to this report.