Editorial board and public interview Creigh Deeds

R. Creigh Deeds said he was open to more taxes to pay for fixing gridlock on Virginia’s roads in a live webcast on insidenova.com on Friday.

The Democratic gubernatorial candidate came to Manassas for a meeting with the editorial board of the News & Messenger.

He was interviewed as part of a process in which the board — composed of the publisher, the editorial-page editor and the top news editors — chooses a candidate to publicly endorse for the office of governor.

Instead of having private meetings, the newspaper this year invited readers to submit questions for the candidates via e-mail and the social-networking site Twitter.

Then Editorial Page Editor Alex Granados posed those questions before an Internet audience.

Republican hopeful Robert F. McDonnell faced this scrutiny Sept. 30, and Deeds appeared just after 2 p.m. Friday.

Reader inquiries concerned everything from immigration to jobs, and from unions to McDonnell’s controversial graduate thesis.

On transportation, Deeds said he would sign a bill that included new taxes for transportation.

“The reality is this is an urgent problem that has to be addressed,” said Deeds, a state senator from Bath County.

He dismissed charges from McDonnell that he has no plan for transportation, saying that he would bring Democrats and Republicans together to find solutions.

Deeds also criticized his opponent’s road proposals as a “laundry list of things” that have either been rejected by the General Assembly or that would take billions of dollars out of the state’s general fund budget. He said the latter was unthinkable.

“Transportation has never been in competition with the general fund priorities: health care, public safety and education,” Deeds said, “and they won’t be when I’m governor.”

On immigration, a newspaper reader wanted to know why Deeds didn’t support an unsuccessful bill in 2008 by state Sen. Charles J. Colgan.

The Manassas Democrat’s legislation would have required employers to participate in the “E-Verify” program, a federal Web-based system that allows businesses to check the immigration status of applicants.

“Gosh, I don’t remember that bill,” Deeds said, adding that he’s voted on thousands of bills in his 18 years in the General Assembly.

Regarding jobs in general, Deeds noted that his economic plan calls for giving companies a tax credit for every job created, while McDonnell’s tax credit plan wouldn’t kick in until the 51st job created.

He also slammed McDonnell’s plan to make Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling the state “job czar” if both Republicans win Nov. 3. Bolling faces a re-election challenge from Democrat Jody Wagner.

“When I’m the governor, I will be the job czar,” Deeds said. “I will be in charge of economic development.”

In terms of more purely political topics, reader Cletus E. Shultz of Woodbridge wanted to know if Deeds would return $200,000 in campaign contributions from the Service Employees International Union, which is linked to the controversial liberal group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

“Well, Cletus, I’m not going to return that money,” Deeds said. “I don’t know anything about ACORN except what I read.”

Required reading for political observers this year, meanwhile, has been McDonnell’s thesis. Written while he was a student at Regent University in Virginia Beach, it calls out working women, feminists and gays.

Some have been aghast at the document. Others have said it has little import because it was written 20 years ago.

Deeds said it gives insight into what he suggests is an ill-advised focus on social issues.

“The reason the thesis is relevant,” he said, “is because it puts his record into context.”

Overall, Deeds said that, if elected, history would judge his time in office as one in which the Old Dominion prospered in the areas of transportation, the economy and higher education.

“In short, the answer to the question is ‘We really did create opportunity, prosperity and hope in every corner of the commonwealth,’ ” he said.

Staff writer Jonathan Hunley can be reached at 703-369-5738.