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RICHMOND -- Gov. Tim Kaine used his elected post as a bully pulpit to push anti-secondhand smoke initiatives for three of his four years in office, culminating last week in the General Assembly's passage of a bill to all but ban smoking in restaurants.

But despite the urging of anti-smoking advocates who want an even stronger law, none of the four men running to replace Kaine in the governor's mansion says he will make that a priority if elected.

Bob McDonnell -- who stepped down Friday from his job as Virginia's attorney general -- has already wrapped up the Republican nomination for governor. State Sen. Creigh Deeds of Bath County, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe and former Del. Brian Moran are competing for the Democratic nomination, to be decided in a June primary.

The General Assembly voted on Thursday to approve a bill that prohibits smoking in all restaurants except private clubs or where there is a separately ventilated smoking room. Kaine said he will quickly sign it into law.

The ban's passage represents a major legislative victory for the governor, but it took years of groundwork -- and active cooperation from House Republicans -- to accomplish it.

In October 2006, Kaine signed an executive order banning smoking in many state government buildings. During the 2007 legislative session, he amended a measure to require restaurants to post signs saying they allowed smoking into an outright smoking ban, forcing a floor vote on the issue in the House, which killed the bill.

The governor stopped short of supporting a blanket indoor workplace smoking ban, but even if he were to change his mind, there is little chance now that Kaine -- about to complete his final General Assembly session as governor -- will have the opportunity to push for anything stronger.

"That's going to be another legislature and another governor wrestling with that," Kaine told reporters during a news conference on Thursday.

None of his four likely successors, however, seems to have much interest in actively pushing a more restrictive smoking ban.

McDonnell opposed the ban. But while "the trend of increasing government regulations and government mandates telling restaurant owners how to run their businesses has me concerned," McDonnell said he respected the General Assembly's vote and would not try to overturn the statute if he is elected governor.

Deeds said "the marketplace is the best place to address smoking in restaurants," but said he voted for the restaurant ban because of scientific evidence showing the detrimental effects of secondhand smoke. He declined to say whether he would push for a stronger ban but said that if elected, he'd wait to see what came to his desk from the legislature.

McAuliffe said the restaurant smoking ban was a good piece of legislation. But he also declined to call for further restrictions: "I'm not going to say I'm going to do something stronger because that's not fair to people who worked so hard to get this done."

Moran noted that he had supported a proposed restaurant smoking ban during his time in the House, but like his Democratic rivals, would not say whether he would push for stronger measures.

"I think this was a big step in acknowledging the dangers of secondhand smoke," Moran said of Thursday's vote. "I think it's premature to talk about changing it. ... Let's allow it to work."

Kaine didn't talk much about banning smoking during his campaign for governor in 2005. It only became an issue after then-Sen. Brandon Bell -- who was later defeated by Ralph Smith in a Republican primary -- successfully carried a smoking ban through the Senate in 2006. (The bill was killed by a House subcommittee.)

Further, Virginia governors are essentially limited to acting only on what is passed on to them, as they can only introduce legislation indirectly through their allies in the General Assembly.

The one exception is the budget bill, where Kaine introduced another controversial tobacco initiative this year when he proposed to double the cigarette tax from 30 to 60 cents per pack. That proposal was quickly killed in both the House and the Senate.

Not surprisingly, none of the four gubernatorial candidates said they would push for a similar increase. McAuliffe and McDonnell were the most vehement about it.

Although Deeds and Moran said they would work to provide a low-tax, pro-business environment in Virginia, they both voted in 2004 to increase the cigarette tax from 2 and a half cents to 30 cents per pack. McDonnell voted against it that year.

Deeds also supported a plan in 1992 -- his first year in the General Assembly -- to raise the cigarette tax to 4 cents per pack, and he said he would have supported Kaine's proposed increase this year.

Deeds said he had supported the proposed increase in each case to balance a budget shortfall: "I was not elected to come down here and raise the tobacco tax, but I voted for it because it was the responsible thing to do."