Conservatism Inc stalwart Ed Gillespie spent most of his pointless campaign in Virginia tightly focused on a purely economic, Beltway centered program.  Not surprisingly, he's been consistently behind Democratic Senator Mark Warner from the start.  As the campaign closes however, Gillespie is trying to redefine himself as an opponent of political correctness.

Virginia Senate contender Ed Gillespie (R) is standing behind the Washington Redskins' name, he says in a new ad.

The ad makes reference to a bill introduced by Senate Democrats that would revoke the National Football League's tax-exempt status if it continued to stand behind the team's name. In the ad, the Gillespie campaign claims that his opponent, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), refused to say whether or not he supports the bill.

"I'll oppose the anti-Redskins bill," Gillespie says, before he says that government should focus on job creation "and let the Redskins handle what to call their team."

[Gillespie Backs Redskins Name in New Ad, by David McCabe, The Hill, October 27, 2014]

It's probably too little, too late but Gillespie has also closed the once massive gap in recent days.

Republican Ed Gillespie is making a tight race out of his ambitious plan to defeat Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, slicing deep into the incumbent’s lead in the final days to re-emerge as a player in the GOP set piece to take the Senate.

By some accounts, Gillespie, a former Bush White House staffer and Republican National Committee chairman, has already done his job by forcing Democrats and their supporters to keep spending money on an expected victory, instead of on the handful of other Senate races that they desperately need to retain control of the upper chamber.

But with 10 days to go before Election Day, Gillespie, who according to a recent poll has cut the lead to single digits, feels confident about winning and is in no mood to declare a moral victory for what Washington war room strategists refer to as “expanding the playing field.”

[As Virginia Senate race tightens, GOP's Gillespie confident about upsetting Warner, by Joseph Weber, FoxNews, October 25, 2014]

Of course, Warner has an effective retort to this pseudo-populist image creation.

[T]he Warner campaign meanwhile continued to bombard the airwaves with ads about Gillespie previously lobbying for Enron — the energy conglomerate forced into bankruptcy in 2001 by an accounting scheme that also resulted to 21 people either pleading guilty or being found guilty of related crimes.

Bottom line — it's hard to reinvent yourself as tribune of the people when you support mass immigration, are a former RNC head and lobbyist, and spent the previous few months talking about the Export-Import Bank.