Mr. Cuccinelli’s campaign is pointing to lesser-known chapters of his biography, like his lead in opposing human trafficking in Virginia. He has also worked to expand mental health treatment. It even notes that as an undergraduate at the University of Virginia he took part in protests calling for the hiring of a sexual assault awareness educator.

“His record is more complicated than he’s given credit for,” said Larry Sabato, a political scientist who taught Mr. Cuccinelli in an Introduction to American Politics class.

Polling shows a dead heat between Mr. Cuccinelli and his presumed Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe, a businessman and former political operative, with both getting 38 percent of registered voters in a Quinnipiac University survey last week. (A three-way race including Mr. Bolling showed him pulling more support from the Republican than the Democrat.)

Whether Mr. Cuccinelli is too conservative for Virginia voters remains a question: 30 percent of voters hold a favorable view of him, 25 percent unfavorable. But nearly half of voters said they still did not know enough about him to form an opinion.

The McAuliffe campaign has seized on that gap in knowledge to paint Mr. Cuccinelli as an enemy of women’s health and bipartisanship, and so far Mr. Cuccinelli, to the frustration of some in his party, has done little to address issues of jobs and the economy that might appeal to independents.

His team’s theory of the campaign appears to be that he can win by exciting the grass-roots alone, a stratagem made plausible because voters in an off-year election are older, whiter and more conservative.

Mr. Cuccinelli’s most visible campaign statement is a book, “The Last Line of Defense,” published this month, which recounts high-profile battles that made him a hero to the Tea Party.