Dem takes Va. in slap to Prez
VIRGINIA Democrats notched a victory Tuesday in the racially charged and hotly contested race for governor.
Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam soundly defeated GOP candidate Ed Gillespie after months of campaigning in which the Republican used anti-immigrant rhetoric and attack ads.
With 99% of precincts tallied, Northam (inset) had secured 54% of the votes to Gillespie’s 45%.
Virginia was the only Southern state President Trump lost in the 2016 presidential election, so its gubernatorial contest was widely seen as an early referendum on his first year in office.
Trump threw his support behind Gillespie with robocalls, but after his candidate lost, quickly tweeted that the GOPer “did not embrace me or what I stand for.”
Northam’s path to victory — one that Democrats hope to replicate in upcoming mid-terms — centered on big margins in the northern Virginia suburbs.
He also made inroads in the rural counties that tilted for Trump in 2016 and against Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Democrat Justin Fairfax beat Republican state Sen. Jill Vogel in Virginia’s lieutenant gubernatorial race, with 53% of the votes to her 47%.
Fairfax is only the second African-American to be elected to statewide office in Virginia.
State Attorney General Mark Herring, a Democrat, also held onto his office with 53% of votes over Republican John Adams’ 48%.
Virginia also elected its first openly transgender candidate in its House of Delegates.
Democrat Danica Roem, 33, a former journalist, defeated GOP legislator Robert Marshall, who refused to debate her and called himself Virginia’s “chief homophobe.”
Roem won 54% of the vote to Marshall’s 46%.
Marshall, a social conservative first elected in 1992, also ran ads referring to Roem by her birth gender. Roem was not the only transgender candidate to win Tuesday night. Minnesota Democrat Andrea Jenkins secured a seat on the Minneapolis City Council with 73% of the vote.
Another surprise win in Virginia came in the 12th district, where Democrat Chris Hurst defeated Republican incumbent Joseph Yost, 54% to 46%.
Hurst, 30, a former broadcast journalist, was the boyfriend of TV reporter Alison Parker when she and cameraman Adam Ward were fatally shot by a former co-worker during a live report on Aug. 26, 2015.