Va. race shapes up as test for Biden
Democrats on edge as post for governor remains up in the air
RICHMOND, Va. — Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin were locked in a fierce battle for Virginia governor Tuesday night, the most closely watched contest in an off-year election that could prove a referendum on President Joe Biden’s first year in office.
The race was too early to call, but Youngkin held an early lead.
The bruising campaign pitted McAuliffe, a prominent figure in Democratic politics and a former Virginia governor, against Youngkin, a political newcomer and former business executive. The two have spent months fighting about everything from Youngkin’s ties to former President Donald Trump to 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 COVID19 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, who captured Virginia last year by a 10-point margin. The closeness of the governor’s race indicated just how much his party’s 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.”
Elsewhere Tuesday, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy was trying to win reelection against Republican former State Assembly member Jack Ciattarelli. The race was too close to call.
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.
In New York City, Democrat Eric Adams has been elected mayor, defeating Republican Curtis Sliwa in a contest far easier than his next task: steering a damaged city through its recovery from the pandemic.
Adams, a former New York City police captain, will become the second Black mayor of the nation’s most populous city. David Dinkins, who served from 1990 to 1993, was the first.
Sliwa, who founded the Guardian Angels anti-crime patrol four decades ago, ran a campaign punctuated by his penchant for stunts and his signature red beret, part of the Guardian Angels uniform.
Adams, 61, will take office Jan. 1 in a city where more than 34,500 people have been killed by COVID-19, and where the economy is still beset by challenges related to the pandemic.
Meanwhile, 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.