In his interview with TPMDC this afternoon, Terry McAuliffe pushed back on the national media’s coverage of him in recent weeks, and media reports that Creigh Deeds is limping toward the finish line in the Virginia Governor’s race.
In recent days, several articles have suggested McAuliffe and his supporters have strong opinions about how Deeds has run the race against Bob McDonnell (R). But McAuliffe rejected the idea that it was time to count Deeds out.
“I think a lot of journalists are going to look foolish when Creigh Deeds wins this election,” he said.
Last week, the New York Times published a long article on the race claiming that Democrats in Virginia are now regretting their selection of Deeds and wished McAuliffe was at the top of the state ticket.
McAuliffe rejected the article’s premise and said that he knew nothing about it. “None of us were near the story,” he said. “You can’t control what people are going to say.”
“I never like these kind of stories,” he said.
Another recent national article rankled Deeds supporters in recent days. Early this month, Politico published an account of a McAuliffe appearance at Harvard University, where he addressed students at the school’s Institute of Government. The story reported that McAuliffe had criticized Deeds’ strategy, saying he was focused too much on McDonnell’s graduate thesis — something McAuliffe said he wouldn’t do were he the nominee, according to Politico.
McAuliffe said he spoke with the reporter after the article was published to tell him he had the article wrong.
“A Republican student got up and said ‘Mr. McAuliffe, can you win the Virginia Governor’s race just running soley on the thesis?'” McAuliffe recalled. “My answer was, ‘no, you have to also have a positive message. I didn’t even mention Creigh’s name. I said, in fact, Creigh shouldn’t only be talking about the thesis because the Washington Post is doing it for him.”
“That was the context,” McAuliffe said, “and Criegh knows it.”
Asked to give his take on Deeds’ campaign, McAuliffe admitted he didn’t know much about Deeds’ field strategy or get-out-the-vote plans. But he said he and Deeds were in near constant contact, and the two agreed that the “closing argument” of the campaign was one focused on the economy.
“He and I agree on that issue, and Creigh’s been out there talking about it at events,” he said. “In fairness to Creigh,” McAuliffe said, half of his ads “have been positive — and that’s not true for Bob McDonnell and the Republican Party.”
That said, McAuliffe insisted, the thesis is not a dead issue in the race. And the voters it motivates could be the difference between victory and defeat for Deeds. McAuliffe said Deeds still needs to shore up the Democratic base’s women and African American voters, but McAuliffe said he’s still got time to do it.
“I think you’ll see a lot of those voters come home in the next two weeks as some people start tuning in for the first time,” he said.
McAuliffe let out a signature chuckle when told he sounded more confident than most in a Deeds victory. “You know me,” he said. “I’m an optimist.”
