The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Democrats win key elections in Va., N.J.
Winning candidates use Trump’s unpopularity to generate support.
RICHMOND, VA. — Voters in Virginia and New Jersey gave Democratic gubernatorial candidates large victories Tuesday, providing the party with two key wins a year after the election of President Donald Trump.
In Virginia’s hard-fought contest, Democratic Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam defeated Republican Ed Gillespie. In New Jersey, front-running Democrat Phil Murphy overcame Republican Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno to succeed unpopular GOP Gov. Chris Christie.
Northam rode to victory in part by tapping into voters’ frustration over Trump’s victory. Murphy had an easier pathway in New Jersey, where Guadagno contended with both Trump’s and Christie’s unpopularity.
Northam, the state’s lieutenant governor, repeatedly tried to tie Gillespie to the president. His victory was in large part due to a surge in anti-Trump energy since the president took office. Democrats said they had record levels of enthusiasm heading into the race.
Gillespie tried to rally the
president’s supporters with hard-edge attack ads focused on illegal immigration and preserving Confederate statues. They were not enough to block Northam’s path to victory.
The wins in Virginia and New Jersey are a morale boost to Democrats who so far have been unable to channel anti-Trump energy into success at the ballot box in a major election this year.
“If I could get rid of Trump, I would be even happier. I’ve never seen our state so miserable and I’ve never seen our country so miserable,” said John Holpp, an 88-yearold New Jersey voter who cast his ballot for Murphy.
In Virginia, Northam’s victory is another sign of the state’s shift toward a more liberal electorate. Democrats have won every statewide election since 2009 and now have won four out of the last five gubernatorial contests. Northam banked heavily during the campaign on his near-perfect political resume and tried to cast himself as the low-key doctor with a strong southern drawl as the antidote to Trump. “We need comfort food, Ralph is comfort food,” Del. John Bell told volunteer canvassers at a rally over the weekend.
Northam’s victory is a blow to Republicans, who were hoping that Gillespie could provide a possible road map for moderate Republicans to follow in next year’s midterm elections.
In both Virginia and New Jersey, voters rebuffed a wave of provocative ads linking immigration and crime, suggesting the limitations of hard-edge tactics in the sort of affluent and suburban communities that are pivotal in next year’s midterm elections.
Even though Republicans in the two states mirrored Trump’s grievance-oriented politics, they kept him at arm’s length: He became the first president not to appear for gubernatorial candidates in either Virginia or New Jersey since 2001, when George W. Bush shunned the campaign trail following the Sept. 11 attacks.
Northam’s victory also handed Democrats a stronger hand to block any Republican attempts at favorable redrawing of congressional districts after the next census. But more than that, his victory was a tonic to an anxious national party that has been reeling since Trump’s win last year and demoralized by losses in special House elections in Montana and Georgia.
A native of Virginia’s rural Eastern Shore who bears a Tidewater accent that reveals his rural roots, Northam, 58, was perhaps an unlikely vessel for the resistance-era Democratic Party. But the left overlooked the two votes he cast for George W. Bush before he entered politics and his otherwise sterling resume — he is a pediatric neurologist and Gulf War veteran — proved far more appealing to the state’s broad middle than Gillespie’s background as a corporate lobbyist.
The Democrats’ success here was all the more sweet to them because it came as Gillespie, trailing in the polls, turned to a scorched-earth campaign against Northam in the race’s final weeks. Gillespie, a fixture of his party’s establishment who had once warned against the “siren song” of anti-immigrant politics, unleashed a multimillion dollar onslaught linking his rival to a gang with Central American ties and a convicted pedophile who had his rights restored, while also assailing Northam for wanting to remove Virginia’s Confederate statues.
The strategy appeared to help Gillespie narrow the gap in the wake of the Charlottesville protests, but it was not enough to overcome the anti-Trump energy in an increasingly diverse state that has not elected a Republican to statewide office since 2009.
Gillespie, a former Republican National Committee chairman, found it difficult to balance appeals to the president’s unflagging supporters in rural Virginia while simultaneously attempting to win over Trump’s skeptics in the state’s population centers. He often would not say the president’s name, referring to “the administration” or last year’s GOP “ticket.”
Northam did not have to concern himself with any such political contortions running in a state that has backed the Democratic nominee for president in the last three elections, a striking role reversal from an earlier day here when Virginia Democrats had to distinguish themselves from their more liberal national party.
Indeed, support for Northam represented a vote for continuity. Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat barred by state law from seeking re-election, is broadly popular, as are the state’s two Democratic senators, Timothy Kaine and Mark Warner, themselves former governors. McAuliffe, who was elected in 2013, was the first person in 40 years to win a Virginia governor’s race who was in the same party as the president’s.
In New Jersey, the Democratic ticket established a decisive advantage early in the campaign season, and that lead never flagged. Murphy, a wealthy Democratic donor who served as ambassador to Germany under former President Barack Obama, ran on a message of rejecting both Trump and Christie, who is a politically toxic figure in the state. A cavalcade of major national Democrats marched through the state to back Murphy, including Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.
National Republicans virtually ignored the race, viewing their nominee, Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, as doomed by a hostile political environment and her association with Christie.