Christina Nuckols of The Virginian-Pilot seems to think so. In an article in Sunday’s paper* she says:
[Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob] McDonnell does his best to encourage comparisons with Warner, and he’s clearly taking cues from the Democrat’s 2001 campaign. McDonnell makes only occasional mention of his party affiliation, for example, and he stresses economic recovery and government efficiency measures.
Nuckols was discussing the recent press release from the McDonnell campaign which announced “bipartisan support” for his candidacy. What the release really showed, though, was a number of Republicans, all of whom had previously supported Democrat Mark Warner, either in his Senate bid or as governor.
Warner remains a tremendously popular individual, with Democrats and Republicans alike. McDonnell, in an attempt to remake himself into a moderate, despite his background, is wise to try to tie himself to Warner. By obtaining the support of moderate Republicans, McDonnell continues to demonstrate that he recognizes the need to appeal to the middle.
A leopard doesn’t change its stripes, however, and like the revered former president Ronald Reagan, I suspect we are going to see the wink-wink sleight of hand appeals to the conservative base. Watch McDonnell closely for his equivalent of Philadelphia, Mississippi. Not saying the issue will be race, but there will be moments of using code to send a message to conservatives that he really is one of them.
And being one of them means he’s no Mark Warner.
* – The Virginian-Pilot, in its infinite wisdom, has put the columnists behind a firewall. You can only read them online if you subscribe to the newspaper or separately subscribe to ePilot. I guess they can reprint the New York Times or the Washington Post but choose not to emulate them.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
I hope voters will see through this charade.
If the ads that he has run so far are any indication, we’ve got our work cut out for us to make sure it doesn’t happen.
If the race for governor is going to be a sprint to the middle, you have to figure Deeds has a head start on getting there. It will be hard to demonize Bob McDonnell though. He comes across as reasonable and, unlike Cuccinelli for example, doesn’t have a habit of sticking his foot in his mouth.
Anyone sounds reasonable when speaking in platitudes. And that’s the problem as I see it with McDonnell. He is not explaining his solutions. He is only talking about the problems and that he is going to fix them in some highly generic sense. He isn’t rolling out his Public-Private Partnerships idea here in NoVA. He isn’t mentioning that we have two PPTA projects underway: the 495 HOT lanes and the 395/95 HOT lanes. If he think PPTA is really the solution for NoVA’s traffic problems and Hampton Roads’ ones as well, he should really be playing up the projects in place. The signature projects of the PPTA are primarily privately leased (or owned), tolled transportation facilities.
Selling off (or leasing them for 80 years) our transportation facilities to private industry is definitely a means of solving the state’s perpetual funding problems with transportation. The question I have is whether this is really a popular idea. And we will never find out if McDonnell doesn’t elaborate on the solution he supports.
“Hope and Change” all over again.
WHAT? No one has to “demonize” McDonnell, he’s done it to himself. He was behind HB3202 which created wholly unconstitutional, “ILLEGAL” government bodies. Neither the center and certainly not the right are buying into that. And if McDonnell thinks his being attached at the hip to Pat Robertson is going to be ignored, he is delusional.
There is no “demonizing” Bob McDonnell, about anything that he hasn’t already demonized himself over!
Nathan,
There’s a difference between citing a guy’s record– which you’ve just done — and making people hate him for that record. There are guys working in Virginia now who make big bucks to convince voters to hate candidates for their records. I’m just saying McDonnell has some of that “Teflon” quality that Reagan and Clinton had. It’s going to be hard to make his record stick to him.
McDonnell’s record has already “stuck” to him. I don’t know who you are talking to, but the people I have coffee with and associate with, many Republicans and former Republicans, DO NOT LIKE MCDONNELL.
The very idea that McDonnell has a Reagan Teflon quality is absurd on its face and laugable, when you start to travel across Virginia and hear what the grassroots thinks of him.
When McDonnell took sides in the Jeff Frederick fiasco he alienate the entire right wing of the party. I guarantee you that it has stuck and it will follow him to his grave.
I just find is baffling why you think McDonnell is teflon or that he has anything even close to a “Reagan” quality!
As far as the “guys making big bucks”, I don’t think the “world shakers” are moving anyone’s hearts or opinions about McDonnell’s horrid record as both a member of the General Assembly or as Attorney General.