Virginia election: A harbinger for midterms?
As a tight governor’s race nears the finish line, all eyes in the political world are riveted on Virginia, said Ken Thomas and Catherine Lucey in The Wall Street Journal. Former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe has held an edge in the increasingly blue state for months, but polls show him and Republican Glenn Youngkin, a former private-equity investor, now in a dead heat. Youngkin’s surge has sparked panic among Democrats. If McAuliffe loses in a state where Biden beat Trump by 10 points, said Democratic strategist Mark Longabaugh, it will be a strong indication that “what was going to be a tough ’22 could be very bad.”
There’s a third name on the ballot, said Dan Merica in CNN.com: Donald Trump. Youngkin has walked a tightrope between courting the Trump base while holding the divisive former president at arm’s length, while McAuliffe has relentlessly sought to portray Youngkin as a Trump “acolyte.” That focus “has turned the race into the biggest test yet for whether Trump still motivates Democratic turnout in big numbers.” It’s also a test of whether Republicans who hemorrhaged suburban voters during the Trump years can “stop the bleeding,” said Elena Schneider in Politico.com. Youngkin is running on “an issue set made for battle in the suburbs,” stressing taxes, inflation, and “education and the role of parents in the public schools,” a culture-war issue Republicans hope will be a winner for them in 2022.
The notion that Virginia is a bellwether “is being oversold,” said Alex Shephard in NewRepublic.com. Since 1977, gubernatorial candidates from the party holding the White House have lost every election there but one. And former DNC chair McAuliffe is “a backroom type who is not exactly a natural when it comes to retail politics,” so his struggle to generate excitement is “not especially surprising.” Still, Virginia voters are about to “send a message,” said E.J. Dionne in The Washington Post.
If Youngkin wins, it will show Republican moderates “they can simultaneously embrace” Trump to activate his base and “playact moderation” to win over suburban swing voters. If Youngkin loses, it will suggest that embracing Trumpism is a “doomed wager.” The fact is, “as long as Republican politicians refuse to break with Trump, his name will be on every ballot.”