In Virginia, a big race gets down and dirty
WASHINGTON -- On Friday, Senator George Allen of Virginia released a compilation of sex scenes from novels by his Democratic opponent, James Webb. And thus a Senate race that was already something of a carnival moved closer to becoming a travesty.
The move followed blog rumors last week of something explosive in Allen's divorce files -- which the senator has declined to open -- and questions about whether either candidate, or both, used slurs to describe blacks.
The race would have been merely an exclamation point on a national election marked by over-the-top negative campaigning, but now it appears likely that the Virginia seat could determine the balance of the Senate.
Democrats need five seats to break even with Republicans. Democratic challengers lead Republicans in polls in Montana, Rhode Island, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
If all goes as expected, a victory in Virginia would knot the Senate at 50-50. Republicans would maintain nominal control, thanks to Vice President Dick Cheney's tie-breaker, but the parties would probably enact some sort of power-sharing arrangement.
And, of course, if Democrats coupled a victory in Virginia with one in either Missouri or Tennessee, the party would assume control on its own.
All this makes Webb a crucial figure to liberal hopes, which is ironic. A former Republican who still admires Ronald Reagan -- and who features Reagan in his ads -- Webb has the odd distinction of being perhaps the only Democrat attacked from the left by a conservative Republican.
The Allen campaign accompanied its release of the sex scenes from Webb's novels with interviews of one of the senator's advisers, Kay James, who told The Washington Post, "How can women trust Jim Webb to represent their views in the Senate when chauvinistic attitudes and sexually exploitative references run through his fiction and nonfiction writings?"
The reference to Webb's nonfiction writings was meant to remind women that Webb, a Naval Academy graduate and a Navy secretary under Reagan, once ridiculed the idea of women in the service academies, saying they would be a great place for a "horny woman."
Webb is the type of maverick who has to be either embraced by voters as a larger-than-life personality -- or rejected as a boor.
Nebraska's Bob Kerrey, another Navy veteran hero-turned-politician, had some of Webb's quirkiness and dark currents, but with a less contentious personality. Same with Arizona's John McCain. And Webb, on the hustings, comes off as if he could be McCain's more taciturn, and misanthropic, younger brother.
Webb's calling cards, like McCain's and Kerrey's, are his independence and integrity. He grew up a Democrat, but rejected the party's heady liberalism of the 1970s. Now he's back with the Democrats, because of his principled objection to the Iraq war, and his sense that conservative economic policies have hurt the average worker.
Along the way, he became a Vietnam War hero, acclaimed novelist, and thoughtful -- if sometimes bombastic -- critic of American foreign policy.
But Webb's efforts to present himself to Virginia voters have been overshadowed by a series of gaffes by Allen that have dominated the race so far.
They began with Allen's infamous depiction of an Indian-American man as a "macaca," a type of monkey. The gaffes created an opening for Webb, but they also consumed a lot of time that Webb could have used to introduce himself to voters.
And now Allen is hoping that a few carefully chosen attacks can raise enough doubts about the challenger to send voters back to the tried and true.
Then again, nothing about the Virginia Senate race so far has been tried and true. And the most surprising development of all has been that this contest of dueling macho personas -- with Webb campaigning in combat boots to honor his son in Iraq, and Allen wearing a cowboy hat and chewing tobacco -- has turned into a battle for liberal votes.
Virginia Democrats have won statewide only with big turnouts from the liberal Washington suburbs and among blacks, who make up nearly 20 percent of the population. Blacks don't like Allen, but are lukewarm about Webb, who has opposed affirmative action in the past. So Allen hopes to pick off just enough liberal support to eke out another term.
Thus, the career of one of the nation's top conservatives -- and control of the Senate -- could hinge on whether liberals can learn to love Jim Webb. He hasn't made it easy for himself.
Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond. 
