god isn't a republican....

ok, so i was intrigued byu this richmond, va article about the gub race......

Jerry W. Kilgore got his referendum.

The Republican's crushing defeat by Democrat Timothy M. Kaine in the governor's race signals that, despite the rapid ascendancy of the GOP, Virginia's political orientation is more practical than partisan.

Beyond the state's borders, Kaine's victory will be seen as a setback for an embattled President Bush, who nationalized the hard-fought contest with his last-minute fly-in for Kilgore's anemic candidacy, a centerpiece of which was a promise to let voters decide on tax increases.

The fortunes of two presidential prospects also are affected by the result: Departing Democratic Gov. Mark R. Warner's are up; Republican U.S. Sen. George Allen's are down.

National Democrats, looking for a winning strategy in the 2006 congressional elections and the race for the White House two years later, will note that Kaine not only held the centrist coalition that lifted Warner to office in 2001 but also effectively played the values card that Republi- cans believed was theirs.

"We're trying to show here that God isn't a Republican," said David Eichenbaum, who, with Karl Struble, produced much of Kaine's radio and television advertising, including commercials in which the candidate invoked his Catholic faith. "This may be one of the biggest lessons that Democrats have to take out of this."

As a Catholic, Kaine said he opposes abortion and the death penalty. As a prospective governor, he vowed to uphold the laws allowing both.

Though Kilgore claimed Kaine got religion only because it was an election year, voters -- as public-opinion polls showed -- were comfortable that Kaine would not put church ahead of state.

This allowed Kaine to survive the most hazardous stretch of the eight-month, $40 million campaign: a punishing barrage of Kilgore ads by Scott Howell -- an archrival of Eichenbaum and Struble -- in which relatives of murder victims branded the Democrat unreliable on the death penalty.

One spot suggested that Kaine would not execute even Adolf Hitler.

Republicans, certain that Kaine's stance on capital punishment would prove politically fatal in a state where 75 percent of voters favor it, were instead stunned by a backlash. In one survey, one in four voters said they were more inclined to oppose Kilgore because of the disputed ads.