Read about Deeds’ opponent, T.J. Aldous, here.
Incumbent state senator Creigh Deeds (D-25th District), the memory of his loss to Republican Bob McDonnell in the 2009 Governor’s race still tender in his mind, wants to keep his job in the General Assembly. Virginians face a lot of public problems, he says, and given his 20 years of experience in the legislature, he knows how to get things done there. Seasoned, perhaps even a little battle-scarred, Deeds, 53, says he has no time for party partisanship any more. The economy has been sour so long, that folks want representation that will get things done. He says he fills the bill.
Raised in Millboro, in Bath County, Deeds lives in his family’s ancestral farm home, Rock Rest, which dates to 1803. It is built of bricks made on the site. His mother, who lives there, too, still sleeps in the bed she was born in. When he was growing up with his two brothers, the farm raised cattle and hogs. If it had been up to him, he would have played baseball all the time. His parents parted when he was young. His dad, once a state trooper and then a police officer in Elkton, later worked for Brown Toyota and is known in the Charlottesville area. Deeds credits him with being a phenomenal marksman.
Deeds graduated from Bath County High School in 1976 and from Concord College in Athens, West Virginia, in 1980. He finished at law school at Wake Forest University in 1984.
“I knew I wanted to be a country lawyer,” he said. “I wanted to do general practice.” He started out in the profession in Danville. “That’s where I learned how to practice law,” he said. “I learned from great lawyers and great judges there.”
After a while he got a call from a lawyer at home telling him there was room for him in the Bath County legal market. Somebody had retired. Bath and Highland counties can’t support but so many lawyers. “I had been looking around in western Virginia, writing to firms, trying to find a place.” So he hung out his shingle in Warm Springs.
In 1987 he was elected Commonwealth’s Attorney for Bath. He ran a one-man office and prosecuted all felonies and misdemeanors himself. He opened a private practice in Monterey, in Highland County, meanwhile—wills, estates, divorces, real estate closings, the ordinary business—and stood on the defense side in cases there. “A lawyer needs to be able to see all sides,” he explained. “You hope that what you are is the sum of all your life’s experiences” – meaning that he hoped he has grown in wisdom from the variety of things he’s encountered. After a reflective pause, he added: “I don’t know anything,” the admission that is traditionally taken as the foundation of sagacity.
Deeds’s granddad was the Democratic party chair in Bath when Deeds was growing up and his affection, even veneration, for his grandfather is still clear in Deeds’s description of him.
Their house was the first in rural Bath to get electricity, Deeds said, evidence of his grandfather’s farsightedness and commitment to progress. “My mom’s father remains my biggest hero. He set me on the path of public service.
“Part of our responsibility in government is to give everybody a chance to compete, to get a bite of the apple of the American Dream. Democrats have stood for that the longest, back to FDR,” said Deeds.
In 1991, when his House of Delegates district was redrawn, he saw a chance to get elected and beat out rivals from Allegany County to win the seat. He served for 10 years, part of the time as chair of the House Democratic Caucus. Redistricting done in 2001 enlarged his district toward Blacksburg, making it harder for him to get around in it and pitting him against another established Democrat, and Deeds jumped into the Senate race instead, winning the seat vacated by Emily Couric. He’s been representing Crozet in the Senate for 10 years.
“Honestly,” he said, “I’ve cast 10,000 votes and I’m proud that we have done some good over the long haul.
“Some people get so hung up in being a Republican or a Democrat that they forget to look for ways to produce prosperity. But it [partisan pettiness] doesn’t happen that much in the Senate of Virginia.”
He ran for Virginia Attorney General in 2005 and lost “the closest election in state history,” he said, to Bob McDonnell. He got “blown out,” as he put it, in a rematch with McDonnell for the governorship in 2009. The last time he exchanged words with the Governor, Deeds said, was in his election night concession phone call to McDonnell. Since then not even social pleasantries have passed between them.
The contest cost him his marriage, too, which dissolved during the campaign. His career had kept him away from home a lot, he explained, and his wife had a heavy responsibility raising their four kids. The youngest is now in college. Now divorced, Deeds concentrates on lawyering and paying off bills. He said he appears in court in Warm Springs now three or four days a week. He teaches a class on public policy at Washington and Lee University’s law school one night a week and he campaigns in the evenings and on weekends. He recently stood at the gate of the Mead Westvaco paper mill in Covington for the morning shift change, greeting arriving workers. He drives himself around the district these days in his white Ford F-150 pickup, dictating notes and correspondence into a tape recorder as he goes. He still has daily livestock chores at home.
“After a shellacking like [the Governor’s race], I had every reason to stay home,” Deeds said. “It was an expensive loss in many ways. But sitting in the Senate last year, I realized that I want to be part of the solution. We have a lot of work that needs to be done. We’re looking at falling into some traps with K through 12 education.”
As past victories, he cited his role in passing Virginia’s Megan’s Law in 1998 and his recurring efforts to get funding for a police unit that would pursue crimes against children on the Internet. “That’s the most vile offense in the world,” he said firmly.
“To paraphrase Winston Churchill, it’s whether you keep fighting. I know how to get things done. I make a difference on every committee I’m on. I’ve got a voice that matters. I don’t wait my time to speak up any more. I ask questions and I’m not afraid of tough fights.”
His goals include “tackling middle school achievement” and increasing state funding for public colleges and universities. “We charge too much for higher education. State support is not adequate. North Carolina does it better. We have to make it a budget priority.”
Jobs are also a top priority. “We need more jobs in Virginia. In 1996 I led the legislation for the Governor’s Opportunity Fund,” a discretionary account ranging from $2 to 10 million per year, depending on circumstances, that the Governor may spend as he sees fit. “But you can’t just throw money at job creators either,” he cautioned.
Job creation “is about investment in education and transportation,” he said. “We have the right business atmosphere in Virginia. People need to sit down and talk and stop inflaming the public. We have to stop playing politics. How are we going to solve these problems? Forty percent of our bridges are deficient. Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads are the big sore spots [for transportation].”
Another of his goals is to “make the redistricting procedure more nonpartisan, like in Pennsylvania, Iowa and Mississippi.” The idea would be to form panels of six Democrats and six Republicans, plus a chairperson, that would draw districts with population, contiguity and compactness as their main criteria. Where incumbents live would get no consideration, he said. That goal would require a constitutional amendment, he said.
He’s got the bill to do it through the Senate five times, with votes from both parties, but the House does not advance it. “Power once achieved is difficult to give up,” he said. “Key decisions are now basically made in the nomination process. People want their politicians focused on solving problems, not on politicking.”
Deeds said two of the people he has admired most in Virginia politics are Dick Cranwell, a Democrat from Vinton—“effective, smart and articulate”—and the late Andy Guest. “A mountain of a man with great integrity and wisdom. They were both Virginians. They understood their responsibility was the greater good of the state, and not to choose sides.”
Deeds has little free time. He tries to keep up with The New Yorker, but who can do that? He prefers to read history or novels and tries to catch the news on TV, but otherwise sees little tube fare.
This year in the election cycle typically has the lowest voter turnout, Deeds said. “But for localities, this is the most important year. I like knocking on doors and individual contact. For years, I’ve been working with Ann Mallek and the Albemarle Supervisors. I have a good sense of the area. I’m planning on being their representative and I need their support.”
