Va. race shapes up as test for Biden
Democrats on edge as post for governor coming down to wire
RICHMOND, Va. — The nation’s most closely watched off-year election wrapped up Tuesday in Virginia, where voters chose between Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin in a campaign that became partly a referendum on President Joe Biden’s first year in office.
Barely 12 months after Biden captured the state by 10 points, the governor’s race was supposed to be a comfortable win for Democrats. Instead, McAuliffe, a prominent figure in Democratic politics and a former Virginia governor, was locked in a dead heat with former business executive Youngkin as he tried to reclaim the post.
The bruising campaign centered on issues including Youngkin’s ties to former President Donald Trump, the future of abortion rights and culture war battles over schools. But voters saw the economy as the top issue, followed by the coronavirus pandemic, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of statewide voters.
Some 34% of Virginia voters ranked the economy as their No. 1 priority, compared to 17% saying COVID-19 and 14% choosing education. Those issues outranked health care, climate change, racism and abortion in the survey.
The final results, though, may ultimately be interpreted as an early judgment of Biden. The closeness of the race indicated just how much his political fortunes have changed in a short period. The White House has been shaken in recent months by the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, a sometimes sluggish economic recovery amid the pandemic and a legislative agenda at risk of stalling on Capitol Hill.
A loss in a state that has trended toward Democrats for more than a decade would deepen the sense of alarm inside the party heading into next year’s midterm elections, when control of Congress is at stake. But Biden expressed optimism going into the evening while acknowledging that “the off-year is always unpredictable.”
“I think we’re going to win in Virginia,” Biden said at a news conference in Scotland, where he was attending an international climate summit. “I don’t believe — and I’ve not seen any evidence that — whether or not I am doing well or poorly, whether or not I’ve got my agenda passed or not, is gonna have any real impact on winning or losing.”
Tuesday’s voting also featured a governor’s race in New Jersey, mayoral offices around the country and a major policing question in Minneapolis.
Elsewhere Tuesday, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy was trying to win reelection against Republican former State Assembly member Jack Ciattarelli.
Murphy has been leading in the polls, has a 1 millionvoter registration advantage and had more cash in his campaign coffers than Ciattarelli in the final days of the race. But the Republican has surpassed his predecessor four years ago in fundraising and has seen the gap in polls move in his favor — if only by a few points.
Polls showed Murphy got solid support for his handling of the COVID-19 outbreak, which hit New Jersey hard in early 2020 and resulted in the deaths of more than 25,000 people. About a third of those deaths occurred in nursing and veterans homes. But the state also excelled at getting people vaccinated and was quick to become one of the states with the highest percentages of eligible people to be fully vaccinated.
While a Ciattarelli win would send a jolt of surprise through state and national politics, a win by Murphy would also break some historical trends.
No Democrat has won reelection as governor in New Jersey since Brendan Byrne in 1977, and the party opposite the president’s has won the New Jersey governorship going back to 1985.
A ballot question in Minneapolis could reshape policing in that city, where the killing of George Floyd last year touched off sweeping demonstrations for racial justice across the nation.
Voters were deciding whether to replace the city’s police department with a new Department of Public Safety.
Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey was also in a tough fight for a second term, facing a bevy of opponents who have attacked him for his leadership in the wake of Floyd’s death. Frey opposed the policing amendment. Two of his leading challengers in the field of 17 candidates, Sheila Nezhad and Kate Knuth, supported the proposal.
Still, both Virginia candidates said the implications of the first major election since Biden moved into the White House would be felt well beyond their state.
At one of his final events of the campaign Monday, McAuliffe insisted “the stakes are huge.”
Youngkin said the election would send a “statement that will be heard across this country.”
In 2009, during President Barack Obama’s first year in office, Republican Bob McDonnell’s victory in Virginia previewed a disastrous midterm cycle for Democrats, who lost more than 60 House seats the following year.
But McAuliffe won the governorship in 2013, a year after Obama was reelected, marking the only time the state has picked a governor from the sitting president’s party since 1976. He’s trying to repeat that feat Tuesday.