The Washington Post reports today that relatively few Republican candidates around the country have incorporated the Pledge To America into their campaigns.

Two of our western Virginia Republican challengers — Robert Hurt in the 5th District and Morgan Griffith in the 9th — are mentioned by name as among those who’ve not signed it yet.

The Pledge was loosely based on 1994′s Contract with America, which became the focal point of that year’s national push.

The Post reports that the Pledge, however, hasn’t caught on nearly as much as the Contract.

Here’s the bits of the story that mention Hurt and Griffith, including the lead:

A week after House Republican leaders gathered at a lumberyard in Sterling to announce their “Pledge to America,” one of the party’s prized recruits stopped at a business about 150 miles away to make a campaign pitch about taxes, regulation and the government’s role.

Virginia state Sen. Robert Hurt touched on many of the themes of the pledge, but he didn’t mention it by name or quote a single line from the 48-page document. He hadn’t even looked at it.

“I have not sat down and read it,” said Hurt, adding that he had glimpsed “summaries of it.”

[snip]

Morgan Griffith, the GOP challenger to Rep. Rick Boucher in Virginia, had “not finished going over” the pledge as of Tuesday, his campaign spokesman said.

On a side note, I was glad to see Piney River — a small community in Nelson County — used as the story’s dateline. I love small place names, and when I covered Franklin County and Southside Virginia I tried to use unusual place names as often as I could.