"Virginia voters in two days will decide one of the state’s most bizarre and nasty U.S. Senate races and end a contest that could determine which political party wins control of the Senate.

The war in Iraq, taxes and, perhaps most of all, the character of the candidates have become major issues in an increasingly bitter fight for a seat that Republicans have held since former Gov. George Allen captured it in 2000 when he beat former Gov. Charles S. Robb by a 52-48 percent margin.

Allen, R-Fairfax County, this year is facing well-funded Democratic challenger Jim Webb, a novelist and former GOP Navy secretary under President Reagan. Independent Green Gail Parker, a retired Pentagon budget analyst, also is on Tuesday’s ballot.

Charlottesville voter Sherman White, 63, said African-American voters are likely to tip the outcome of the extremely close race.

“The black vote will determine who’s going to get the Senate seat,” said White, twice an independent candidate for Charlottesville City Council in the 1970s.

“I think Webb has a good chance,” said White, an African-American voter retired from postal work. “The people are unhappy with the direction of the war in Iraq. We need to get our boys out of there. I don’t mean cut and run, but we need an orderly withdrawal and to hand things over to the Iraqis.”

John Darden, chairman of the Albemarle County Republican Party from 1986 to 1990, said Allen will win Tuesday by the same 52-48 percent margin as his last contest, in part because the conservative GOP base is motivated to cast ballots for a constitutional amendment defining marriage.

“George will win because after all the smoke has cleared people are going to look at all that he has accomplished since 1983. He’s been consistent,” said Darden, who helped run Allen’s early campaigns for the House of Delegates.

“I think the turnout for the marriage amendment will be crucial for his re-election,” Darden said.

White said he isn’t positive that Webb will win and thinks that Allen still has a chance because “the thing Allen has going for him is money.”

As of Oct. 18, Allen and Webb surpassed $17 million with Allen spending more than $12.6 million of the total. In recent weeks, Webb has benefited from more than $6 million in national Democratic Party money pumped in to boost his campaign.

The two campaigns alone “shouldn’t have any trouble spending over $20 million combined by Election Day,” said Matthew Smyth, director of communications for the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.

Numerous groups are spending money for Allen or for Webb in the final weeks of the contest, including a national anti-abortion group paying for Allen ads and a national liberal organization funding ads critical of the senator over the war in Iraq.

Webb said Congress has failed to provide oversight of the Bush administration and its failed foreign policy.

The Democrat accused Allen of being a rubber stamp for Bush.

Allen began running an ad last week accusing Webb of favoring Social Security and other federal benefits for illegal immigrants, something the Webb campaign is calling false.

Webb on Thursday accused Allen of running a “classic Karl Rove campaign designed to divide people, to go after their emotions, to assassinate people’s character. This has been an incredibly negative campaign.”

A month after insisting that the campaign get back to issues, Allen, who had taken a pummeling on character questions, revived the character issue by paying for ads and saying he viewed passages from Webb’s six novels as “degrading of women.”

“Those excerpts are, I think, demeaning of women and he will have to explain those passages,” Allen said. “The judgment will be on the part of the people of Virginia.”

Allen did not say he had read any of Webb’s novels but, “I’ve read those excerpts” depicting explicit sexual behavior and incest.

Webb made fun of Allen’s attacks on his fiction.

“If you’ve been in office 25 years and you’ve been in the Senate for six years and the last couple of weeks of your campaign the best you can do is try to dissect your opponent’s novels, you really don’t have much to bring to the table, folks,” Webb said of Allen.

“The entire focus of their campaign has been designed to go after me on issues other than the political issues,” he said.

“Why? It’s not hard to figure out. George Allen has nothing to report.”

The two candidates have sparred over taxes as well, with Allen insisting that Webb would allow all of President Bush’s tax cuts to expire.

Allen said Webb wants to increase taxes by $2,000 on every Virginia family. Webb disputes the charge and said he would keep middle-class tax cuts.

“This issue of taxation matters a lot,” Allen said Tuesday in Charlottesville. “It is a philosophical difference. … I think this tax relief ought to be made permanent. My opponent stands with Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Kerry and Ted Kennedy.”

The senator also said he opposes amnesty for illegal immigrants and charged that Webb favors amnesty.

The Webb campaign disputes the charge and said the Democrat would have opposed the immigration bill passed by the Senate and including what Allen called amnesty.

Parker, the Independent Green Party candidate, is a retired Air Force officer who worked at the Pentagon, where she believes a new accounting system could save taxpayers billions of dollars.

Parker is an advocate of high-speed rail to replace traffic on the nation’s highways. " (Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, November 5, 2006)

Editor's Note: An index to coverage of George Allen on the Loper website may be found at http://loper.org/~george/archives/2006/Aug/925.html