Meanwhile, while Democrats concede they face a difficult environment in the midterm elections, they remain confident in McAuliffe to hold off Youngkin and are optimistic that Biden will do his part to right the ship ahead of next year. “Youngkin should stop trying to distort McAuliffe’s record and actually answer questions about his total allegiance to Trump,” the Democratic Governors Association said Friday in a press release.
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This pattern is likely to repeat itself on a grand scale in 2022, with Democrats charging in campaigns for governor, House, and Senate, that their Republican opponents are no different than the former president. 'HE PUT HIMSELF AHEAD OF THE COUNTRY': CHRIS CHRISTIE RIPS TRUMP'S ELECTION CLAIMS “The enthusiasm behind his campaign is something Virginia hasn’t seen in years.”ĭemocrats are moving to overcome Biden’s slippage by tying Youngkin to Trump. “Simply put: Yes, Biden is a drag,” said Republican pollster Chris Wilson, who is advising Youngkin.
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A Republican victory in Virginia, a Democratic-leaning state where Biden defeated former President Donald Trump by more than 10 points just one year ago, would be a political earthquake, setting the tone for major GOP gains in next year’s midterm elections. But Republicans say their ace in the hole is Biden’s newly precarious standing, and that is what should concern Democrats elsewhere. The race took an especially bitter turn last week, when Youngkin ran an ad featuring a mother and GOP activist who eight years ago led an effort to ban “Beloved,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Black Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, from classrooms.To be sure, there are several factors influencing the Youngkin-McAuliffe campaign.
VIRGINIA GOVERNOR ISSUES DOMINATE AD WARS TV
Polls showed the race tightening after McAuliffe said during a late September debate that he didn’t think “parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” That prompted Youngkin to run hundreds of TV ads on the statement and to focus on his own pledges to make school curricula less “un-American” and to overhaul policies on transgender students and school bathrooms. Youngkin also proved perhaps most successful in deflecting McAuliffe’s efforts to tie him to Trump and the former president’s divisive political style. While McAuliffe pulled on the star power of a host of national Democrats, including former President Barack Obama and ex-Georgia governor candidate Stacey Abrams, Youngkin largely campaigned on his own, focusing on issues he said were important to Virginians. In recent months, it has become a catch-all political buzzword for any teaching in schools about race and American history. He also opposed mask and vaccine mandates, promised to expand Virginia’s limited charter schools and ban critical race theory, an academic framework that centers on the idea that racism is systemic in the nation’s institutions and that they function to maintain the dominance of white people. He opposed a major clean energy mandate the state passed two years ago and objected to abortion in most circumstances. Youngkin ran confidently on a conservative platform.
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Favoring fleece vests, Youngkin sought to cut the image of a genial suburban dad. The race was too early to call with votes still being tallied.īut no other contest in this off-year election season received the level of national attention - and money - as the governor’s race in Virginia, a state with broad swaths of college-educated suburban voters who are increasingly influential in swaying control of Congress and the White House.Ī former co-CEO at the Carlyle Group with a lanky, 6′6″ build that once made him a reserve forward on Rice University’s basketball team, Youngkin poured vast amounts of his personal fortune into a campaign that spent more than $59 million. But Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli posted a surprisingly strong showing, campaigning on issues including taxes and opposition to pandemic mask and vaccination mandates. Murphy was trying to become the first Democrat reelected to the office in 44 years. In the New Jersey governor’s race, incumbent Gov. The initiative would have replaced the police force with a Department of Public Safety charged with undertaking “a comprehensive public health” approach to policing. Minneapolis voters rejected a ballot initiative that sought to overhaul policing in their city, where George Floyd was killed by a white police officer on Memorial Day 2020, sparking the largest wave of protests against racial injustice in generations.