Waring said she did not know who the young man was until she asked another player to identify him and learned it was George Allen. That player was Neal Brendel, who was attending the University of Virginia law school and went on to become a professional rugby player. He told MSNBC's "Hardball" that he did not remember the incident.
Dick Wadhams, Allen's campaign manager, said of Waring's charge: "It's false. Absolutely untrue."
The issue of race has been a complicated one for Virginia, which held the capital of the Confederacy and was the first state to elect an African American governor, in 1989.
Now, voters are grappling with the subject in a campaign that was supposed to be a cinch for Allen, whose trademark cowboy boots and tobacco chaw seemed to appeal not only to Virginia voters but to a broader pool of conservatives as he positioned himself for the 2008 GOP presidential campaign.
His political future will be decided in places like Leesburg, in the center of wealthy and fast-growing Loudoun County, where an influx of more moderate voters is nibbling at the edges of a Republican stronghold. Democratic Gov. Timothy M. Kaine won the county in 2005, the latest sign that a once solidly red state may be more in league with the mid-Atlantic than the Old South.
In the quaint Leesburg Restaurant one recent morning, locals seated at a lunch counter were digesting more than the bacon and eggs.
News of the alleged racial slurs was turning the eyes of the nation on a state that has all but shed its segregated past, dredging up stereotypes and stirring emotions.
But a lot of voters here were more concerned with growth, gridlock and taxes.
"The roads stink," Mike Craig, 58, the owner of Leesburg Hobbies & Collectibles, said over his steaming cup of coffee. The subject of potholes had sparked his outrage more than whatever words Allen might have used as a younger man.
"There are ways to use the word that are not disparaging toward a race.... What if you make a lawyer joke? Does that mean you think all lawyers are bad?" he asked.
Many Allen supporters suspect that the talk of slurs and the deer's head were the work of a mean-spirited campaign and a biased media. But even if the allegations were true, many felt forgiving.
"Ninety-eight percent of all adults in this country have used that word at least once in their lifetime, including myself," Gary Keeler, 71, declared from a rocker on the front porch of a children's store that he and his wife own. "Politics is so dirty now."
