In Tuesday's special election, Jane Maddux or Creigh Deeds will take Emily Couric's uncompleted term.
THE ROANOKE TIMES
Creigh Deeds spent much of the fall learning his way around a new House of Delegates district and preparing for the probability that his fellow Democrats would elect him as their floor leader in 2002.
Jane Maddux spent the same period working for Republican candidates and pondering her own future run for political office.
Their plans changed shortly after the death Oct. 18 of state Sen. Emily Couric, a Charlottesville Democrat who had held the 25th District seat for six years. In the span of a few weeks, Deeds and Maddux emerged as the top candidates in a race to fill the remaining two years of Couric's term. Their campaigns will conclude Tuesday, when voters in the reconfigured district will cast ballots in a special election.
The election will be the second in as many months for Deeds, a Warm Springs lawyer who recently finished a successful campaign for a sixth House term in a district that stretches from Bath County to Blacksburg.
Maddux, an Albemarle County business owner, is no stranger to the campaign trail, either. She lost to Couric two years ago, getting 34 percent of the vote in her first try for public office.
This election battle is being fought within new district boundaries created this year by the General Assembly. The district stretches from Charlottesville to the West Virginia border and includes Alleghany and Bath counties, the southern portion of Rockbridge County and the cities of Covington and Buena Vista.
The new boundaries stirred up a hornet's nest of legal issues and threats of lawsuits. Because Madison, Greene and portions of Orange and Albemarle counties were removed from the district, voters in those counties cannot participate in this election and must wait two years to vote for who represents them in the Senate.
"They're not the districts I wanted," said Deeds, who could not have sought the Senate seat if the old boundaries were used. Republicans, who hold majorities in both houses of the General Assembly, controlled the redistricting process, Deeds said. The GOP holds a five-seat majority in the 40-member Senate pending the outcome of Tuesday's election.
If Deeds wins , a special election Jan. 8 will fill his House seat. The 2002 General Assembly session begins Jan. 9.
Deeds, 43, has done most of his campaigning east of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where the majority of the district's voters live. He has Couric loyalists backing him as he tries to make inroads in vote-rich Charlottesville and Albemarle County.
Maddux, 51, has spent most of her time in densely populated parts of the district but has not ignored the western counties.
"We've executed our plan as we set out to do," she said. "Our grass-roots effort is going better than we could have hoped."
Both candidates have identified public education and health care as defining issues in the race.
Deeds has been a vocal critic of GOP legislative leaders for failing to amend Virginia's two-year budget and leaving the state with no money to raise teachers' salaries. He has also called for revisions to the state's controversial Standards of Learning, arguing that the current standards put too much emphasis on memorization and too little on "analytical thinking."
Maddux supports the SOLs and said the standards may only need gradual adjustments over time. She also supports tax credits to help parents pay for private-school tuition, an issue that has gained support as Republicans have built majorities in the legislature. She rejects critics' complaints that the tax breaks would effectively divert taxpayer funds from public schools.
"My intent was never to take away from public schools," she said. "Never, ever."
Maddux and Deeds also have sparred over proposed legislation to exempt specialized health care facilities from the complicated state approval and oversight process applied to hospitals. Maddux said eliminating the state's certificate of public need requirement would enable health care providers to establish specialized, free-standing clinics in rural areas. Her campaign has mailed out brochures criticizing Deeds for opposing a bill last year that "would have expanded and made more accessible cancer screening and treatment."
Deeds said the mailing distorted his position on the bill, which was defeated by a 63-35 vote. Deeds said the elimination of the certificate requirement would not expand health care in rural areas. Instead, he argued, the deregulation would enable health care providers to "cherry pick" patients in densely populated areas and leave hospitals saddled with the costs of caring for indigent patients.
"People are not clamoring to change the law so they can serve the under-served," Deeds said. "People are clamoring to change the law so they can make money."
The two candidates will get assists from leaders of their respective parties in the campaign's final days. Gov.-elect Mark Warner will appear at a Charlottesville fund-raiser for Deeds today, and U.S. Sen. George Allen will make an appearance with Maddux on Monday at the University of Virginia.