On the third Sunday in September, Jim Webb got what looked like the second big break of his campaign. In a Meet the Press face-off, host Tim Russert joined Webb in dogging Allen about his unflagging support for the Iraq War. Webb's incisive critique of the war and his call for an ambitious "diplomatic process" that would include Syria and Iran sounded mighty appealing next to Allen's grinning recitations of White House talking points. When he squared off with Allen the next afternoon at a Chamber of Commerce debate in Fairfax, Webb intended to build on his Meet the Press momentum and make the campaign--finally--a referendum on the war, and on GOP mistreatment of the middle and working classes.

Instead, the debate was only just warming up when Allen suffered yet another "macaca moment." When local TV reporter Peggy Fox asked where the Senator had learned his now-infamous racial slur, Allen launched into a defense of himself and his family, noting among other things that his mother's father, Felix, had been incarcerated by the Nazis during World War II. He should have left that last part out. Fox had read a recent article in The Forward alleging that Allen was trying to hide his family's Jewish heritage, and she asked him if the allegation was true. The question jolted the normally unflappable Allen, who visibly recoiled while his half of the audience jeered and hooted the reporter. "Why is that relevant--my religion, Jim's religion, or the religious beliefs of anyone out there?" he demanded. When Fox stoutly replied that she was seeking "honesty, that's all," Allen angrily defended his honor, insisting, "I was raised as she was, as far as I know, raised as a Christian."

Throughout it all, Webb stood stock still, gazing straight ahead, expressionless as a grunt at roll call. When his time came to comment, Webb managed only to mumble a few words about how he didn't see why Allen's religion mattered. And the next day, when Allen admitted in a written statement that his mother had indeed revealed to him, a month earlier, that her family was Jewish, Webb remained as lock-lipped as he had through the whole "macaca" controversy.

Campaign-watchers viewed Webb's strange silence as another sign of his stubborn resistance to behaving like a proper politician. "The 'macaca' fallout softened up George Allen for the kill," says Mark Rozell. "Webb doesn't seem to know how to plunge the knife in."

But Webb's reticence is not simply the product of poor politicking--or a noble refusal to sling mud. Webb has troubles of his own with the same issues that have caused Allen's stumbles. During his Democratic primary campaign last spring, Webb was accused of anti-Semitism after his campaign put out a cartoonish flier depicting his opponent, Harris Miller--a longtime corporate lobbyist--as "Miller the Job Killer," a big-nosed, cigar-puffing "anti-Christ of outsourcing." (Miller now says he's convinced that his former opponent is "not an anti-Semite.")

Far more problematic for Webb's campaign--especially in a state where nearly a fifth of the voting-age population is African-American--is his history of bashing affirmative action. The most notable example is a Wall Street Journal book review in 2000, where Webb wrote: "Affirmative action, which originally sought to repair the state-induced damage to blacks from slavery and its aftermath, has within one generation brought about a permeating state-sponsored racism that is as odious as the Jim Crow laws it sought to countermand." When questions came up during the primary campaign about Webb's startling assertion that racial "preferences" were as damaging to society as segregation itself, Webb tried unsuccessfully to argue--as he does at length in Born Fighting--that affirmative action should be based on a history of economic deprivation, not simply on race. But he also said, somewhat confusingly, that he believes African-Americans should be the sole beneficiaries of affirmative action programs, not members of other ethnic groups.

As a result, says civil rights activist and Virginia Commonwealth University professor W. Avon Drake, potential black voters don't know what to make of Webb. "He went a little too far in changing his position," Drake says. "Blacks can sense when someone is genuine." When word got around that Webb had addressed Confederate descendants at the National Confederate Memorial in 1990, asserting that Southern soldiers believed they were fighting for "sovereignty rather than slavery," some black Virginians could only conclude that there was scant difference between the two white candidates for Senate. "I look at the race and I see two Republicans running for the same job," says longtime State Senator Benjamin Lambert of Richmond, who stunned his colleagues with a late-August endorsement of Allen, who had promised to help Lambert win more funding for traditionally black colleges.

Lambert's endorsement will carry little weight statewide, especially given the avalanche of racial embarrassments for Allen's campaign. In a Mason-Dixon poll taken in early September, just 5 percent of black Virginians said they would support Allen this time. But only 73 percent said they'd vote for Webb--well below the usual mark for Democrats running statewide. Webb's campaign has yet to be endorsed by the state's most powerful black Democrat, former governor and current Richmond Mayor Doug Wilder, and it's faced criticism all along for failing to reach out aggressively to black leaders and voters. But in late September Webb met with the black legislative caucus and made the rounds with respected black leaders like Ray Boone, editor of the state's largest black newspaper, the Richmond Free Press. Boone has his doubts about Webb, but his paper has taken Senator Lambert to the woodshed for equating Webb's shortcomings with Allen's. "The bottom line is that we need to send a strong message that the George Allen type of politics is intolerable and unacceptable," Boone says. "He has built a career on racist campaigns." When November rolls around, says Drake, "Webb will get 90 percent of the black vote. The question is how many votes there will be."

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