Deeds plans his third campaign visit to area

Democratic candidate for governor Creigh Deeds is set to visit the Culpeper area next Saturday for a reception and sponsors dinner in Brandy Station. The visit will be the third to this area for Deeds since launching his campaign this spring.

Deeds will face the state’s Republican nominee for governor, Bob McDonnell in November. It will be the second time the men have squared off in a state-level political campaign. In 2005, McDonnell defeated Deeds by a few hundred votes to claim the attorney general’s seat.

Since his last visit to the area on July 4, the Deeds campaign has focused heavy attention on a 1989 graduate thesis penned by McDonnell while he was at Regent University.

The thesis, written when McDonnell was 34, lays out a conservative political and social blueprint. McDonnell’s opponents say the paper demonstrates that he is likely to pursue a socially conservative agenda if elected. McDonnell has responded by distancing himself from the paper, saying his views have shifted over the past 20 years.

The Deeds campaign however points to McDonnell’s voting record as a legislator as evidence that he actively sought to implement the policies described in the thesis.

“As a state legislator, attorney general and gubernatorial candidate, (McDonnell) has been remarkably consistent in following through,” Deeds spokesman Jared Leopold said in a statement. “Virginians have a right to know not just what McDonnell’s record is, but what agenda he intends to bring to the governor’s mansion.”

In 1991, Deeds, now 51, was elected to the House of Delegates. He entered public service as a Bath County prosecutor.

He won reelection five times before leaving the House for the Senate. Deeds represents the 25th District, an area that includes the City of Charlottesville and stretches to the West Virginia border.

For more information about next weekend’s Brandy Station event, contact Margot Bolon at (571) 303-2262 or e-mail .