The first major electoral contest following any presidential election is the Virginia governor's race, and no less so this year given Barack Obama having been the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state since 1964. But this year, the Obama magic may have worn off in the Old Dominion, with Republican Bob McDonnell showing a consistent lead over Democratic opponent Creigh Deeds and on target to end eight years of Democratic governors.

As we've documented, the Washington Post has done its best to drag down McDonnell's numbers and boost Deeds, namely by trumpeting a decades-old graduate thesis and hyping it as a potential game-changer in the race.

But today, when it came to a big snag in his campaign, the Post reported but buried an article that cast the Deeds campaign in a decidedly unfavorable light.

The bottom line: either Deeds lied to a police union or his campaign is incredibly inept. Or both.

It seems the Deeds gubernatorial campaign told two different law enforcement interest groups two conflicting positions on collective bargaining. Yet in reporting the story, the Post placed Rosalind S. Helderman's article on page 4 of the Metro section rather than page A1 or even the front page, page B1, of the Metro section.

Helderman noted that "the Deeds campaign now says" that a questionnaire returned to the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) wherein Deeds asserted in the first person, "I am a strong supporter of collective bargaining rights for public safety employees" was really, as Helderman put it, just "filled out incorrectly by a staff member."

By contrast, Helderman noted, Deeds on September 14 told the Virginia Sheriffs' Association "that he does not support collective bargaining."

Towards the close of her article, Helderman cited "FOP legislative chairman Kevin Carroll" who "said Deeds had made no attempt to amend his answers to the questionnaire in the weeks since he submitted it to the organization." The FOP, unlike the Virginia Sheriffs' Association, supports collective bargaining for law enforcement officers.

Yet rather than give prominent coverage to a story that shows egg on Deeds's face, the Post ran another campaign-related story on page B1, one that noted a "Record Haul for Deeds" in campaign donations:

R. Creigh Deeds, the Democratic candidate for Virginia governor, raised half a million dollars more than his Republican opponent in July and August, collecting more over the two-month period than any other gubernatorial candidate in state history. 

—Ken Shepherd is Managing Editor of NewsBusters