Republican who ran as an independent candidate. Early in the race, Kilgore showed solid leads of ten points or more in the polls, but Kaine steadily closed the gap and ultimately defeated Kilgore by a margin of 52% to 46%. Kilgore's campaign was at times criticized for taking steps to avoid debates; Kilgore refused to debate Potts for the majority of the campaign, at times leaving Kaine and Potts to debate each other in his absence. He agreed to debate only with Kaine, and only if the footage could not be aired in campaign commercials. During this debate, he refused to answer whether or not he would make abortion a crime. This apparent public moderation of his previously open and hard-line stance on abortion troubled some of his conservative supporters. He was further criticized for failing to limit his negative advertisements to 50% of his campaign's total publicity as Kaine proposed. One such advertisement featured a father whose son had been murdered by a man who was on Virginia's death row; the father expressed doubt that the sentence would be carried out if Kaine were elected and alleged that Kaine would not even have authorized the execution of Adolf Hitler, based on an interview with the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The negative reaction to the mention of Hitler combined with Kaine's pledge to carry out the death penalty and explanation of his personal opposition as arising from his Catholic faith helped to neutralize what many observers thought would've been a potent issue for Kilgore. Kaine's campaign also ran an ad entitled "Wrong" quoting many Virginia newspapers in their condemnation of Kilgore and his campaign ads which stated (all caps emphasis) "All these newspapers can't be WRONG: 'Jerry Kilgore's ads are a VILE attempt to manipulate for political gain. . . they TWIST the truth. . . and SMEAR Tim Kaine. . . Kilgore's attacks are DISHONEST. . . FALSELY accuse Kaine. . . and TAR a decent man. . . Kilgore CROSSED the line. . . DRAGGING Kaine's beliefs through the mud. . . Jerry Kilgore should APOLOGIZE to Tim Kaine.'" In trying to explain how a solid Republican could lose a traditionally Republican state by such a large margin, political commentators cited numerous key factors. Kaine's campaign had many political advantages, including his association with the state's popular Democratic Governor Mark Warner and defense of Warner's 2004 budget priorities, his "response