McDonnell takes convincing victory in governor's race

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
and BRISTOL HERALD COURIER

RICHMOND, Va. — Republican Bob McDonnell easily won the Virginia governor’s race Tuesday as independent voters who last year helped deliver the state to President Barack Obama handed the GOP a convincing victory.

Unofficial results showed McDonnell with about 60 percent of the vote over Democrat R. Creigh Deeds. Exit polling by The Associated Press indicated that independents had a role in that decisive margin.

The Republican Party also took the state’s lieutenant governor and attorney general posts by similar margins.

“I just got tackled by my five kids and my wife, and there are a lot of tears on my cheeks right now,” McDonnell said from his campaign headquarters in Richmond.

McDonnell, the state’s former attorney general, did especially well in Southwest Virginia, where he got more than 70 percent of the vote in the city of Bristol and in Grayson, Lee, Scott, Smyth, Tazewell, Washington, Wise and Wythe counties.

The GOP candidates for lieutenant governor and attorney general also received about 70 percent of the vote in Bristol and seven Southwest Virginia counties.

Statewide, Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling got about 59 percent of the vote Tuesday, beating his opponent, Democrat Jody Wagner, by 14 points. And Republican Ken Cuccinelli beat Democrat Steve Shannon by about 16 points.

Deeds, addressing a somber rally at a Richmond hotel room late Tuesday, acknowledged the Democratic defeat.

“We’ve got a whole pile of work in front of us, and just because we didn’t get the right result tonight doesn’t mean we can go home and whine,” Deeds said.

The Virginia election, along with the contest for governor of New Jersey, was viewed as a first referendum for Obama, who campaigned personally for Deeds and New Jersey’s Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine. Exit polls from the Garden State showed Corzine’s Republican challenger, Chris Christie, had the lead in Tuesday’s election, especially among independent voters.

The turning tides in the two states, where Obama won considerable margins during his presidential bid just a year ago, already have prompted some congressional leaders to rethink their stances on controversial issues, including health care reform.

According to The Associated Press, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., indicated Tuesday that Congress might not complete the health care legislation this year, missing Obama’s deadline and pushing the debate into next year’s congressional elections.

While health care might be dominating politics in Washington, two key issues – jobs and the economy – dominated the governor’s race in Virginia. In Associated Press surveys at polling places statewide, about eight in 10 voters said they were worried about the direction of the nation’s economy, and the majority of those favored McDonnell.

McDonnell, 55, is the first Republican to take over the Virginia governor’s office in eight years. He never trailed in pre-election polls, though his lead narrowed in September after news reports detailed a graduate thesis he wrote in 1989 that disparaged working women, gays and unmarried “cohabitators.” He dismissed it as a forgotten academic exercise and said raising three daughters had changed his views.

McDonnell will succeed Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, who is barred by state law from seeking a second consecutive term.

Kaine directed $6 million in DNC money into Virginia for Deeds and other Democratic candidates.

Yet Deeds, a moderate country lawyer and state senator, failed to energize the party’s liberal activists despite campaigning twice with Obama, who last year powered a political tsunami that swept the GOP out of three of Virginia’s 11 U.S. House seats. The Democratic wave in 2008 also put both of Virginia’s U.S. Senate seats in Democratic hands for the first time since 1970.

Staff Writer Mac McLean contributed to this report.