What will the Sunday Times of London say when McDonnell wins?

Bob McDonnell’s recent campaign visit here in Culpeper was attended by about a dozen local business and community leaders — and Christina Lamb, an editor with the Sunday Times of London.

One year after Virginia gave Obama/Biden a solid victory over McCain/Palin, the international press is covering McDonnell’s apparently impending victory in Virginia’s 2009 governor’s election as though it were President Obama’s interim report card.

Virginians view it more as an important choice between the actual Republican and Democratic candidates, one of whom will become Virginia’s chief executive.

Virginians see Creigh Deeds’ legislative voting record as fairly extreme, which explains why he is being very soft spoken about it.

In this year’s legislative session, the Virginia House of Delegates passed a bill that would have permitted the Virginia State Police to have voluntary, unpaid chaplains without having a government official dictate to the chaplain the manner in which they should preach or pray. Sen. Deeds’ vote killed that bill in the Senate Courts of Justice committee.

In the 2008 legislative session, SB713 would have increased the state gas tax by five cents per gallon when gas prices were already at record levels. Deeds voted for it in the Senate.

Fortunately, the bill was shut down in the House.

The year before that, a common-sense law was passed that requires state-funded libraries to set policies on how “to filter or block Internet access through such computers to child pornography” and obscenity. On Feb. 1, 2007, Deeds and five other senators voted against it.

In 2006, Deeds voted for a bill that would have: increased the vehicle sales tax; increased the diesel fuel tax; created a new 5% fuel tax at the wholesale level; and increased the vehicle registration fees. Sen. Deeds voted for those tax increases, but the House did not pass them.

Existing landlord-tenant law in 2005 said that, “The use of words or symbols associated with a particular religion … shall be prima facie evidence” of an illegal discriminatory housing practice. When something is prima facie evidence, you are presumed guilty until you prove otherwise and overcome that presumption. HB1992 tried to change the phrase “shall be prima facie evidence” to a less harsh “may be evidence.” Sen. Deeds voted to keep the existing “prima facie” language.

Five years ago, the General Assembly passed a law defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman and prohibiting “civil unions” between persons of the same sex. The bill was appropriately titled the “Affirmation of Marriage Act.” Deeds was one of 12 senators to vote against it.

In 2003, SB1205 defined “partial birth infanticide” as “any deliberate act that (i) is intended to kill a human infant who has been born alive, but who has not been completely extracted or expelled from its mother and that (ii) does kill such infant.” The bill made “partial birth infanticide” a felony.

That bill did become law, but Creigh Deeds was one of the 12 senators to vote against it.

It is not McDonnell vs. Obama. It is McDonnell vs. Deeds, and when McDonnell wins over Deeds, perhaps the Sunday Times of London will report it was Deeds’ own radical votes from 1991 to 2009 that caused him to lose.

Sharman’s column appears each Tuesday.