"Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) traveled to Northern Virginia yesterday to push for the elimination of estate taxes while accusing his Democratic opponent, James Webb, of wanting to raise taxes.

Webb, campaigning in Richmond with Mayor L. Douglas Wilder (D), focused on his main themes of Iraq, government accountability and the gulf between the rich and poor.

Allen, who is seeking a second term, was on a day-long campaign swing with Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va). He said voters should judge him on his record, which he said includes keeping taxes low, investing in technology and strengthening national security.

Webb, Allen said, "can't learn about all the issues in eight months," referring to the amount of time the Democrat has been a candidate.

"If you pay taxes, if you work for a living, if you care about families, look at my record of performance," Allen said at an event in Fairfax County, where he toured TrafficLand, a company that provides Internet access to traffic cameras.

As the Senate campaign enters its final phase, polls continue to show a very tight race.

Webb, campaigning with Wilder, also a former governor, said yesterday that he is feeling increasingly confident he can help Democrats reclaim the Senate.

"We're going to win. These past two days, I think, this is going to happen," said Webb, who plans to campaign today with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), actor Michael J. Fox and retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark.

Warner was Allen's star power yesterday, and the state's senior senator stepped up his pleas that voters return Allen to the Senate.

"This is my partner," Warner said during a campaign stop at a tree farm in Loudoun County. "I served now with 261 individuals in my 28 years [in the Senate], and I rank George right up there as the best. . . . The most important thing is we trust each other."

In fact, Warner helped Allen respond to questions from reporters, interrupting him when he thought his answers were too long.

"George, there are about 20 members of the press here, and I think each of them has a question," Warner said after Allen, answering a question about how he plans to win Loudoun and Prince William counties, spent several minutes talking about memory chips.

But after weeks of distractions, Allen tried to steer the debate to taxes. He spoke about the need to eliminate the estate tax, which he refers to as the "death tax."

Under President Bush's tax cuts, the estate tax is being phased out through 2010, but it will revert to its original rate in 2011 unless Congress votes to make the cuts permanent.

"I think we ought to give the death penalty to the death tax," Allen said.

Yesterday, as he's been doing for weeks in television ads, Allen accused Webb of wanting to raise the estate tax. Webb has said that he supports eliminating the tax on estates valued at less than $5 million and that Allen's assertions are not true.

Allen and Webb also condemned remarks by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.). During a speech in California, Kerry told a group of college students, "You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

Kerry, who said he was trying to make a joke at Bush's expense, apologized yesterday.

"It is just deplorable for John Kerry to make those comments," Allen said.

Webb, a former Marine who has a son serving in Iraq, said: "John Kerry may have been trying to tell a joke. If so, he needs to work on his punch line."

Webb spoke to about three dozen people who packed a small Richmond restaurant. "It's not just Iraq," Wilder said, referring to Webb's early opposition to the war in Iraq. "It's the great division that's happening with the haves and the have-nots. These are the kinds of things that Jim Webb can change."

But even as both candidates tried to stay focused on issues yesterday, they traded charges over who was responsible for the negative tone of the campaign.

Allen reiterated that he holds Webb responsible for an incident in Charlottesville on Tuesday during which a liberal blogger says he was assaulted by GOP supporters. Three men wearing Allen stickers confronted W. Michael Stark and slammed him to the ground as he tried to ask whether Allen ever spat on his first wife.

Allen's former wife, Anne Waddell, issued a statement Tuesday calling Stark's question "a baseless, cheap shot."

Webb aides said Stark has no connection to the campaign. Webb contended that Allen, who has been trying to make an issue out of sexual references in Webb's novels, is the one running a nasty campaign.

"People are rejecting this kind of political campaigning," Webb said." (Michael D. Shear, The Washington Post, November 2, 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