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Republicans want you to believe that in Ralph Northam’s Virginia, convicted pedophiles will get to vote, serve on juries and carry guns. Be scared. Be very scared.

Democrats want you to believe that in Ed Gillespie’s Virginia, Donald Trump-aligned bigots will close the state to non-English-speaking newcomers. Be scared. Be very scared.

Barely two weeks before Virginians chooses their next governor, the candidates — sometimes through their proxies — talk about each other rather than themselves. That should tell you two things: To varying degrees, Northam and Gillespie are still firming up their respective bases. They’re also reaching to the independents.

In both instances, fear is the candidates’ principal motivator. It is potentially more powerful — and persuasive — than the rivals’ subdued personalities, which are best suited to their day jobs: Northam, a neurologist who treats children, and Gillespie, a former lobbyist who schmoozed Congress.

With his latest television commercial — a searing attack on Northam for supporting a felons rights-restoration initiative by gubernatorial short-timer Terry McAuliffe that was blocked by the Virginia Supreme Court in 2016 — Gillespie may have managed, if only briefly, to change the subject from one that he struggles to avoid: Trump.