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On Sunday, the Washington Post scored a nice scoop by unearthing a thesis written by Virginia Republican Bob McDonnell, a former State Attorney General currently leading his Democratic Opponent, Creigh Deeds, in the state's gubernatorial race, which will be decided on November 3. The thesis [PDF] is basically a blue print for an evangelical social policy, which calls "working women" "detrimental" to families, lumps homosexuality in with drug use and pornography as things the government should "restrain, punish and deter," says "the civil ruler is a minister of God," and argues that the government should privilege married couples over "cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators." All this comes alongside more conventional anti-choice rhetoric and calls for "covenant marriage." The Deeds campaign has jumped all over this, focusing particularly on the comments about women, who make up a large share of the Virginia electorate, but the entire package will discomfort moderates and independents who have been the deciding factor in recent Virginia elections. McDonnell has been disparaging the paper as an academic exercise written while he was a student (he was 34 years old at the time, a year a way from his first electoral campaign) and saying his views have changed. That he hasn't "thought about it in years," his other defense, is obviously not true -- Post reporters retrieved the document after McDonnell told them he wrote a thesis on "welfare policy." The Republican's critics won't let up until he elaborates how specifically his views have changed, which may hurt him among the social conservatives who make up his electoral base. It's a fine line for the Republican to walk and it has the potential to lose him votes from both camps. But will the two-decade old paper really affect the outcome of the race? McDonnell has a very healthy lead and a strong message about the economy, while Deeds, who is in the mold of a Tim Kaine/Mark Warner Democrat (the past two governors) has run something of a listless campaign that has recovered a little bounce only after a staff shake-up a few weeks ago. While folks have been referencing then-Senator George Allen's infamous Macaca moment, a paper -- no matter how extreme its contents -- just doesn't have the visceral grab of a video showing the candidate articulating something far outside the mainstream. But the thesis could be used effectively to increase turnout in Northern Virginia, the key voter pool for Virginia's Democratic politicians. During the 2008 Congressional race in Virginia's 11th District between Republican Keith Fimian and Democrat Gerry Connolly, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee launched attacks on Fimian's position in favor of extremely restricting a woman's right to choose an abortion, arguing that Fimian was too extreme for Northern Virginia. Fimian ended up losing to Connolly by 12 percentage points. McDonnell shares Fimian's positions on abortion -- which helps explain the Deeds campaign's recent focus on social issues -- and McDonnell's thesis contains even more evidence that the Republican nominee supports an agenda for the government that even moderate Republicans might find extreme. Everything hinges on whether Deeds' campaign can make the case that McDonnell acted on these views during his time in government. That he has supported extreme restrictions on abortion, covenant marriage, and voted against bills designed to stop pay discrimination, among other policies in the thesis, is true. Even though McDonnell now denies that religious law should supercede civil law, as he wrote in the paper, there is still enough of a record to demonstrate that he has legislated as though it ought to. Next, we'll see new ads and polls come to the fore. One day after the news really broke, we can conclude that the thesis has succeeded in changing the conversation about this election, and that is Deeds' first step towards victory. But only a first step.
-- Tim Fernholz
