Most campaigns are fairly predictable with one or two big surprises along the way.

For instance, I expected Jim Gilmore to lose to Democrat Mark Warner last year. But, I didn’t expect him to almost lose the Republican nomination to an obscure Northern Virginia delegate with a very controversial record.

After we got well into the gubernatorial election in 2005, I expected that Democrat Tim Kaine was likely to prevail over Republican Jerry Kilgore. I did not expect that he would win by a margin larger than the man he hoped to replace, then Gov. Mark Warner.

Likewise, I expected Barack Obama to win last year’s Democratic presidential primary in Virginia, but I had no idea that he would win by as big a margin or that Hillary Clinton would only win one congressional district in the entire commonwealth.

And this year’s race for governor is following suit. We could have all guessed that Terry McAuliffe would raise gobs of money and outspend everyone else in the race. We could also predict that the race would get a little nasty, given the stakes and the lack of policy differences between the candidates (although, it has gotten nastier than I would have predicted). But today the Washington Post caught me completely off guard. Its editorial board endorsed Creigh Deeds.

Here’s a link to the editorial. I won’t go into all the reasons they gave for picking him. They do a fine job of laying out their rationale.

Instead, I will reference the lead paragraph to the endorsement.

                    WHO IS the best candidate for Northern Virginia? Judge by appearances and there
                    are two obvious possibilities in the Democratic primary for governor: Brian Moran, the former
                    Alexandria prosecutor who served a dozen years in the House of Delegates, and Terry R.
                    McAuliffe, the Richmond outsider who has lived in McLean for roughly 17 years. Not in the
                    running would be R. Creigh Deeds, an unassuming state senator from a district closer to
                    West Virginia than to Fairfax City.

That rather succinctly explains my surprise at this endorsement. If you are either Moran or McAuliffe, you’d have to be miffed. They lost out on the biggest newspaper endorsement in this primary campaign. But, this is particularly true for Moran. Think about it… Moran has a long record of elected service to the people of Northern Virginia. The Washington Post is most familiar with him and his record. And instead of picking him, they went into far rural Virginia and sided with Creigh Deeds.

Make no bones about it… this is a HUGE deal for Deeds. From a recent poll, to his advertising, to several recent straw polls, to this endorsement, Deeds is on a roll. He has momentum at exactly the right time in this race.

Will the Post endorsement be a game changer in and of itself? Absolutely not. Newspaper endorsements rarely are. But, it will possibly force some voters to take another look at him. Timed this close to the election, when his ads are running at a good pace and when the other two Democrats are spending all their time playing offense and defense, Deeds is in the best position he could possibly hope for.