CURL: Deeds' supporters feel weight of failed campaign

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By Joseph Curl POLITICAL THEATER

RICHMOND | At the exact minute polls closed in Virginia -- 7 p.m. -- the first song of the night came on the loudspeakers in a completely empty ballroom at the Westin Hotel, where not one supporter of Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate R. Creigh Deeds had yet arrived.

It was The Band's "The Weight."

"I picked up my bag, I went lookin' for a place to hide," the singer sang. "Hey, mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed? He just grinned and shook my hand, and 'no' was all he said."

Just 54 minutes later, Mr. Deeds was "lookin' for a place to hide." By then, he didn't have many people to hide from: only a few dozen people had showed up for the election night "party," and most hadn't even finished their first cocktail (but perhaps the cash bar - with top-line booze going for $8 a pop - was a deterrent).

Shortly after 8 p.m. -- by then all the top Democrats on the ballot had lost -- the big-screen TV tucked in the corner of the tiny ballroom, which had been tuned to CNN for the running election returns, was switched to a slide show of Mr. Deeds on the campaign trail. Shot after shot showed him with Democratic luminaries such as President Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and former President Bill Clinton.

That, at least a few said quietly, might have been part of the problem.

"I think a lot of people are just fed up with Obama," said one Deeds supporter, who started to give his name but then said, "Wait, I better not."

"Oh, don't even get me started about Obama. Where was he?" said another, who also refused to give his name.

While a plethora of news articles emerged in recent days seeking to knock down national implications of the Virginia election, voters didn't exactly agree with the media. Exit polls showed that more than a quarter of state voters said their vote was to express opposition to Mr. Obama and his policies.

Eight in 10 voters said they were worried about the direction of the nation's economy -- Mr. Obama's economy -- and the majority of those favored the Republican candidate, Robert F. McDonnell.