The 2005 race for governor of Virginia is well underway. Republican state Attorney General Jerry Kilgore will take on Lieutenant Governor Tim Kaine. Mark Warner, a Democrat (and 2008 presidential candidate), is term limited (Virginia is the only state in the country to limit their governor's to one term, a holdover from colonial mistrust of the executive).
It looks like the death penalty will play a big role in the next election. Per the Washington Post:
Lem Tuggle and Richard Lee Whitley are long dead, executed by Virginia years ago. But Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore, the likely Republican nominee for governor, is planning to resurrect them next year as symbols of his rival's opposition to the death penalty.
Tuggle raped, sodomized and shot a woman while on parole after killing a 17-year-old girl. Whitley cut the throat of his Fairfax County neighbor and then brutally sexually assaulted her.
The death row lawyer for both men was a young Timothy M. Kaine, now the state's Democratic lieutenant governor and his party's likely nominee next year to succeed Gov. Mark R. Warner (D).
Kilgore's campaign is betting that Kaine's background as a defense attorney and strong feelings about the Washington-area snipers and other cases will make the death penalty a compelling issue in a way that it hasn't been for years. This month, Kilgore proposed the Death Penalty Enhancement Act, which would expand the number of crimes eligible for the punishment.
Kaine, for his part, attributes his opposition to his sincerely held religious beliefs. This was also the case for Alex Sanders, the Democratic nominee for the Senate in South Carolina (in 2002).
Some conservative judicial nominees, whose beliefs are often informed by their religion, are being blocked in the Senate. This is the case of Judge Pryor in the 11th Circuit, whose pro life philosophy is a result of his Roman Catholicism.
When they pledge to uphold the law despite their personal beliefs, they are not taken at their word and Republicans have cried foul, rightly so. Why isn't it good enough for a Democrat who promises to enforce the death penalty, even though his religion forbids it?