Tight race begs space

Slightly built, tirelessly energetic and topped by a meticulously styled ’do that could belong only to a politician or an anchorman, Robert F. McDonnell looks more marathoner than statesman, and in that sense hopes to run again after a week of staggering. Platforms for re-launching a gubernatorial bid that once sailed, but now drifts, arise this week, first on Monday with the traditional Labor Day campaign kickoff and later in the week when Gov. Timothy M. Kaine is expected to announce $1.5 billion in budget cuts.

It will be the economy again, and this, McDonnell believes, plays to a strength. More important, it might chase the clouds challenger R. Creigh Deeds pumped into the campaign over McDonnell’s social conservatism, a thing the latter seeks to scrub from his person as though it were viral.

To McDonnell’s thinking, and it’s a hard thing to argue, the election will swing not on what he thinks of “homosexuals” and “fornicators,” but on jobs. Here is where he hopes most to draw distinctions between a second-time foe in Deeds, the man McDonnell narrowly defeated to become attorney general four years ago. But are the candidates distinct?

By some measures, decidedly so. The Virginia Foundation for Economic Education, a Richmond-based business organization that tracks and rates state lawmakers based on whether their votes tilt toward business, puts McDonnell far ahead of Deeds. McDonnell in six years as a delegate this decade, from 2000 to 2005, voted in favor of business more than three-fourths of the time and registered an average rating of 78.3. Since 2000, as both a delegate and a senator, Deeds has voted pro-business less than two-thirds of the time and has notched an average rating of 61.1.

But on a questionnaire posed to the candidates by the business foundation, the gap almost vanished. The group gave McDonnell a business grade-point average of 3.326 and Deeds, 3.304. In addition, the candidates’ economic development plans are more similar than either likely would prefer. McDonnell wants to double to $40 million a governor’s fund for business, and so does Deeds. McDonnell wants to offer tax credits to more businesses for job creation, and so does Deeds. McDonnell plans to push rural development, and so does Deeds.

Perhaps reflecting the origins of his own campaign, which began early last year, McDonnell has lashed energy to jobs in a fashion typically conservative, touting offshore oil, reflecting the “Drill, baby, drill” mantra of last fall’s campaign. He has a point, and we support it, but it may be a tad outdated politically; the imperative in the minds of Americans to find more domestic oil has waned as prices have fallen. Another asterisk: McDonnell would bar drilling within 50 miles of shore, reflecting a Democratic concession that blocks companies from venturing where many say the black stuff is.

Deeds, similarly, has made the jobs-energy connection, but for green jobs in a fashion typically liberal and one that McDonnell reflects. Build wind turbines, erect solar panels, grow corn, charge batteries, etc. Yes, but will it work? Never mind, say the candidates. Vote for us.

Primary among the challenges for McDonnell and Deeds in a race that figures to tighten is to demonstrate that one or the other is best equipped to take up a hard task, lifting a lilting state economy amid a national recession. So far, McDonnell strikes us as the better of the two to do this, but this is based as much on his past as what he tells us would be Virginia’s future with him as governor. If Deeds can pry himself from the discussion of social issues, a topic he once said he’d avoid, perhaps he can tell us why we ought to think differently. We’re listening. So, too, is Virginia.