McAuliffe has bought billboard ads linking Youngkin to the former president in the hopes of dashing his chances. In a final plea during a phone call billed as a tele-rally Monday, he called the Republican “a good man, a hardworking man, a successful man.”īut Trump lost Virginia in both 20, losing by 10 points last year. (CN) - Virginia Republicans are hoping to break their decade-long losing streak for statewide office Tuesday in an election that is being closely watched nationwide as a test of voter support for Democrats and President Joe Biden.ĭemocrat and former Governor Terry McAuliffe is hoping to reclaim his seat in the race against Republican businessman Glenn Youngkin, who hopes to secure the GOP’s first statewide win since 2009. The two have been neck-and-neck in polling despite McAuliffe’s early advantage and the state’s shift to the left in recent years, which has inspired heavy hitters from both parties to throw their support behind their respective candidates.įormer President Donald Trump has made several statements endorsing Youngkin over the course of the campaign. A year later, Democrats lost the House in a historic wipeout.RICHMOND, Va.
Virginia governor race issues ad wars series#
Democratic enthusiasm had dimmed after as the new president’s ambitious agenda got bogged down in Congress, and Republicans were animated by a series of faux controversies and anti-Obama race-baiting. Tuesday night’s flop bears a depressing resemblance to 2009’s Virginia governor’s race, when - in the first high-profile election under President Obama - Republican candidate Bob McDonnell trounced a Democratic candidate.
It does, however, heighten the urgency for finding a solution, as Democrats now have to reckon with how exactly they let a reliable governorship slip through their fingers at a time when they held the levers of national power. The party is currently engaged in a tug of war over whether they’re too ambitious in the legislation they’re trying to pass or not ambitious enough, and Tuesday’s loss is unlikely to change the minds of either progressives or centrists.
The fact that Phil Murphy barely eked out a win over Republican Jack Ciattarelli to hold his seat as governor of heavily Democratic New Jersey seems to indicate the latter. The state’s gubernatorial elections have in recent years been a precursor to midterm success, and Youngkin’s culture-warrior campaign - which, as Greg Sargent illustrated in The Washington Post on Tuesday, was carried out in lockstep with Fox News - could serve as a blueprint for Republicans as they try to win back Congress, and potentially the White House in 2024.ĭemocrats, meanwhile, will have to decide how much the defeat is due to McAuliffe, who doesn’t exactly inspire passion, and how much is the result of a broader rebuke of the party’s Biden-era direction. McAuliffe’s loss does not bode well for the party’s future in the state that President Biden won by over 10 percentage points last November, nor for the party’s prospects heading into the 2022 midterms. His defeat on Tuesday marks only the second time a Democrat has lost a race for governor in the state in the past 20 years, and the first since 2009. He’s long been considered a key fundraiser, had a stint as the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and even served as Virginia’s governor from 2014-2018. Youngkin’s win is a big blow to Democrats, especially the party’s establishment, of which McAuliffe had been a force for decades.
The MAGA movement is bigger and stronger than ever before.” “Without you, he would not have been close to winning. “I would like to thank my BASE for coming out in force and voting for Glenn Youngkin,” he wrote in a statement. Trump took credit for Youngkin’s victory hours before it was called early Wednesday morning. Youngkin has since said the election was on the level and that he would have certified the results, but he’s kept on surrogates who have claimed that election - and this one - were fixed. Youngkin disavowed the insurrection pledge the following day, but he has struggled to disentangle himself from the election fraud conspiracy theories that helped secure him the Republican nomination earlier this year. Steve Bannon, who was there in person, pushed the idea that the 2020 election was stolen, as did Trump, who called into the event. He also didn’t appear at an event intended to support his campaign last month during which attendees pledged allegiance to a flag flown on Jan. Trump wound up calling into a “tele-rally” for Youngkin on Monday night, praising him as a “great man,” a “wonderful guy,” and also a “fantastic guy,” who wouldn’t have any trouble making Virginia the “envy of the world.” Youngkin did not appear at the event himself.