McDonnell wins Virginia governor's race

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By Sarah Abruzzese

Robert F. McDonnell handily defeated R. Creigh Deeds in Virginia's gubernatorial contest -- a victory that ends nearly a decade of Democratic wins in statewide elections.

The Associated Press called the race for Mr. McDonnell about an hour after polls closed at 7 p.m. The result was hardly a surprise. Mr. McDonnell's lead in some polls in the final week of the campaign approached 20 percent.

But it remained to be seen whether Mr. Deeds could marshal the support of hundreds of thousands of newly registered "surge voters" that helped President Obama win the state last year.

Mr. McDonnell's victory continues a trend that has seen Virginia's governor elected from the opposite party as the president since 1977. But early Tuesday the Republican declined to discuss whether the gubernatorial race was a referendum on the Obama administration.

"I'm going to let other people, the experts, make those kinds of decisions," Mr. McDonnell said. "I decided early on we knew that the fiscal issues that faced Virginia were the ones that voters were most concerned about: jobs, the economy, transportation, energy prices, tuition increases and so forth."

Mr. Deeds defeated two better-funded, better-known rivals in the Democratic primary in June, but his campaign seemed to founder from the beginning and he trailed Mr. McDonnell throughout the race.

Mr. McDonnell raised nearly twice as much as Mr. Deeds for the general election campaign, taking in $21.4 million through last week, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. Mr. Deeds raised just over $10 million during the general election campaign and $6.2 million during the primary campaign.

The Republican campaign's only difficult patch came in late August and early September, when news broke of a 20-year-old graduate school thesis in which Mr. McDonnell said, in part, that homosexuality, working women and abortion were detrimental to American families.

The Deeds campaign referred frequently to the thesis, and polling numbers tightened.

However, voters rejected the campaign's focus on the thesis. According to a recent Public Policy Poll, 52 percent said they were "very familiar" with the thesis and 59 percent said it made no difference in their vote.

Poll numbers showed that voters thought Mr. Deeds ran a mostly negative campaign, while 56 percent said Mr. McDonnell has run a mostly positive campaign.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, who was in Richmond for Mr. McDonnell's election night party, said Mr. McDonnell's victory in Virginia will provide the party with a template for 2010.

"Bob McDonnell translates well, In other words he takes those principles, his conservative principles and he applies them in a 21st century way to the problems that people have," Mr. Steele said.

Former Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, a Democrat who withheld his endorsement, said the state needed a governor with a history of fiscal responsibility and accountability,

"The Democrat didnt have that to his point of view," he said.

With Mr. McDonnells election, Mr. Wilder said the new governor will need to keep an independent hat on, look pragmatically and realistically at things. He said the Republican must consider putting necessities before niceties.

Mr. McDonnell said Tuesday morning he has his work cut out for him.

"We're in a tough spot right now, We've got cut $6.5 billion out of the budget in the last couple of years. We've got a 6.7 percent unemployment rate, those are the overwhelmingly the top issues that will face the next governor of Virginia."

Mr. McDonnell will be sworn in on Saturday Jan. 16, three days after the General Assembly convenes for its 60 days session.