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• RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- The dominant figure in a Virginia Senate race that could determine the direction of Congress next year is President Barack Obama even though both candidates for the seat are former governors well-known to voters.
• Republican George Allen, trying to redeem his political career and win back the Senate seat he lost six years ago in a chaotic, slur-stained campaign against Democrat Jim Webb, has a simple strategy: If Obama falls, Democrat Tim Kaine falls

with him.
• Kaine, like Allen a former governor, was Obama's hand-picked chairman of the Democratic National Committee for two years. Their fates in November are linked in a battleground state that both parties consider critical to winning the White House as well as controlling the Senate.
• That makes Virginia the perfect spending target for the super political action committees on each party's side, a chance to bag two opponents at once using the same dollars. As go Obama and Republican Mitt Romney in the president race, so go Kane and Allen.
• Allen denies Kaine even the Virginia courtesy of addressing those who've held their office as "governor," calling him instead "Chairman Kaine," a derisive reference to his two years as head of the Democratic Party, one of them during his final year as governor. An Allen billboard in rural areas is even blunter: "Obama's senator, not Virginia's."
• ___

• WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congressional bargainers appeared to be closing in on a compromise that would head off a July 1 doubling of interest rates on federal loans to 7.4 million college students and end an election-year battle between President Barack Obama and Congress.
• Senate aides from both parties said Friday the two sides were moving toward a deal on how to pay the measure's $6 billion price tag, the chief source of partisan

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