Rural Areas A Magnet For Deeds

Suburban Balancing Act Grows Increasingly Shaky

COVINGTON, Va. -- When R. Creigh Deeds strode into the brilliantly lit Covington High School football stadium, heads whipped around and arms reached out of the throngs to greet him. The crowd erupted as Deeds jogged onto the field for a wave at halftime. Later, a half-dozen boys, chests smeared with blue and red paint, launched into a chant that began: "Gimme a C! Gimme an R! Gimme an E!"

As Deeds struggles against anonymity in Northern Virginia, he is something between a celebrity and a family member in this tiny mill town near the West Virginia border. A native of nearby Bath County, Deeds has a natural affinity with the rural communities that have become a centerpiece of his campaign for governor. He returns Monday for the annual Labor Day parades in Covington and Buena Vista, which will also feature his opponent, Robert F. McDonnell (R).

But as the race intensifies, he faces an increasingly difficult balancing act in trying to drum up support in populous, Democratic-leaning Northern Virginia while maintaining the "country boy" persona that has paid him dividends in this conservative region.

In the Washington suburbs, he is motivating the Democratic masses by attacking McDonnell's antiabortion record and highlighting the Republican's past writings that were critical of working mothers, gays and "fornicators," an approach that could backfire at home, said David Reynolds, a newspaper columnist from Lexington, Va., about 42 miles east of Covington.

"Deeds has nothing to gain from such attacks in a state that is socially conservative and in a statewide campaign where he is attempting to transfer his good, clean and passionate country lawyer image," said Reynolds, a Republican who is supporting Deeds.

The amount of time Deeds spends in rural Virginia has also worried some Northern Virginia supporters, who say it would be a mistake to assume that their vote-rich region will fall in line behind him simply because he is a Democrat.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) spent a year courting the suburban voters responsible for his 2005 victory, and an August Washington Post poll showed Deeds running about even with McDonnell in Northern Virginia. McDonnell, meanwhile, has done his best to play up his suburban credentials, reminding voters repeatedly of his Fairfax County roots and lining the median strips with signs declaring himself "NoVa's Own."

Deeds notes that he spends about half his time "north of the Occoquan River," and he bristles at the suggestion that his time in rural Virginia is not well spent. He describes his effort as inclusive of the entire state, including small towns where Republicans vastly outnumber Democrats and their entire populations are sometimes smaller than the number of shoppers who visit Tysons Corner Center on an average day.

In Waynesboro, where he stopped earlier on game day, Deeds told a group of supporters a favorite story about a columnist who maligned him after his narrow defeat to McDonnell in 2005 for attorney general.

"She wrote that Bob McDonnell almost lost that election to a nobody from nowhere," he said. Gasps and whistles rose up from the group. "If a state senator that's on the ballot for statewide office, even a state senator who grew up with nothing in Bath County, is a nobody from nowhere, there's a whole lot of nobodies out there, a whole lot of nowheres."

The story was interrupted by calls of "Join the club!" and "I'm a nobody, too!"

Still, he faces difficult odds in Waynesboro, population 22,000, in the heart of red Virginia. About 35 die-hard Deeds supporters showed up for his visit to a recently opened Democratic headquarters squished between two empty storefronts in the community 32 miles west of Charlottesville.