Virginia’s election is a battle over culture
In race for governor, Republicans focus on educational issues, Democrats on Trump.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. remains mired in a deadly pandemic, the economy is suffering from a bout of inflation and states face challenges from climate to transportation, but with only days left in their closefought race, the hottest issue dividing Virginia’s candidates for governor this week was the late novelist Toni Morrison.
The Republican candidate, Glenn Youngkin, who has steadily gained ground over the last two months, aired an ad featuring Laura Murphy, a parent who had campaigned years ago against the use of Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Beloved” in her son’s high school Advanced Placement English class.
In 2016 and 2017, thenGov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, vetoed a bill that Murphy helped lobby through the state Legislature. It would have required K-12 teachers to give parents advance notice of books with “sexually explicit content” and allow them to take their children out of class. “Beloved,” based on a true story of a woman who killed her child to save her from slavery, includes several graphic descriptions of sexual violence.
Youngkin accused the former governor, now seeking to return to the office, of wanting to “silence parents because he doesn’t believe they should have a say in their child’s education.”
McAuliffe fired back that Youngkin was “focused on banning award-winning books from our schools and silencing the voices of Black authors” such as Morrison. The Republican, he said, was engaged in “Trumpian dog whistles.”
For both candidates, the issue provided a chance to rally key audiences — conservative suburban parents on the one side, Black voters on the other — as the state hurtles toward an election Tuesday that, if polls are correct, could be among its closest in years.
President Biden and former President Trump both have a lot riding on the outcome.
A close race on Democratic turf
The Virginia election is everything that California’s recall turned out not to be — a test of whether Democrats can hold the allegiance of suburban voters stressed by nearly two years of COVID-19 restrictions and of whether Republicans can win a blue state despite Trump’s unpopularity.
Last year, Biden carried Virginia by 10 percentage points, and Democrats currently control all the statewide elected offices. The party took control of both houses of the legislature over the last four years, and Republicans haven’t won the governorship since 2009.
In short, while Virginia is not as deeply blue as California or New York, it’s a state Democrats recently have been able to count on. Right now, they can’t. Biden’s popularity in the state has tumbled, just as it has nationwide since this summer when the Delta variant of the coronavirus upended his optimistic forecasts about COVID-19.
A Monmouth University poll in mid-October found Virginia voters disapproving of Biden’s job performance, 52% to 43%, sharply down from an August poll.
The president’s slumping polls are a big problem for McAuliffe, creating “head winds” for him, as the candidate told supporters last month.
He faces several other difficulties: With Democrats having run the state for the last eight years, they’re naturally the target of voters seeking a change. And McAuliffe, as a former governor trying to make a comeback — Virginia doesn’t allow governors to run for consecutive terms — wouldn’t be a likely change candidate in any case. As a 64-year-old white, male, longtime political figure, he’s not the type to inspire huge enthusiasm among young voters or progressives.
Youngkin focuses on school discontent
Youngkin, a first-time candidate, has skillfully positioned himself. He’s seized on discontent over schools to take control of an issue on which Democrats have long had an advantage.
The Monmouth poll showed that education had risen on the list of top voter concerns and that Youngkin had pulled even with McAuliffe as the candidate voters thought could best handle the issue.
Overall, Youngkin has momentum on his side. The Monmouth poll was one of several recently that found the two candidates dead even — a big accomplishment for the Republican, who this summer trailed by around 7 points.
A Fox News poll released Thursday evening showed Youngkin moving into the lead among likely voters.
Democrats have dominated early voting, which the state has greatly expanded, but both parties expect Republicans to show up in large numbers to vote in person Tuesday.
Youngkin, the former chief executive of Carlyle Group, the big private equity firm, has poured at least $20 million of his own money into the race, allowing him to keep pace with McAuliffe, a prolific fundraiser.
He’s used that money for a barrage of television ads that depict him in classrooms, pledging to raise teacher pay — stealing a page from the Democratic playbook.
At the same time, he has closely identified himself with parents angry over unresponsive school bureaucracies — a sentiment that has boiled over in many parts of the country.
Youngkin has used education issues to mobilize conservatives, pledging to ban teaching of critical race theory in Virginia.
It’s unclear that the academic theory, which analyzes the outcomes of systemic racism, is taught anywhere in the state’s K-12 schools, but the idea that it might be has become a rallying cry on the right.
That, plus Trump’s endorsement, has solidified his Republican support.
Education also has given him an entree to less ideological voters in the state’s large suburban regions. In recent elections, those voters increasingly have turned against the GOP, but many are deeply frustrated over the last year and a half of COVID-related school disruptions.
In the California recall election, Republicans had hoped that tapping into parental anger could give them the boost they needed to defeat Gov. Gavin Newsom. That failed, in large part because the top Republican candidate, Larry Elder, lacked credibility with swing voters.
Youngkin has avoided Elder’s habit of creating controversies. Instead, it was McAuliffe who inadvertently helped his opponent with illchosen words.
During a candidate debate in September, as he explained why he had vetoed the so-called “Beloved” bill, McAuliffe said, “I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions.”
Then, he added: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
Youngkin has heavily featured that line in his ads.
McAuliffe leans on Trump as motivator
McAuliffe’s campaign eventually responded with an ad in which the former governor expressed respect for parents, but the damage was done.
On top of the reasons that may cause some swing voters to switch this year, McAuliffe also faces a turnout problem, according to Democratic strategists close to his campaign: After the drama of last year, many Democratic voters are exhausted with politics. Republicans, by contrast, are highly motivated to avenge their recent losses.
To counter apathy, McAuliffe has depended heavily on Democrats’ chief motivator — Trump.
In speeches and advertisements, he constantly links his opponent with the unpopular former president.
So do his surrogates, including Biden.
“I ran against Donald Trump. And Terry is running against an acolyte of Donald Trump,” Biden said Tuesday during a campaign rally with McAuliffe in northern Virginia.
Former President Obama, Georgia’s Stacey Abrams and other leading Democrats who have come into the state to campaign have stressed the same point.
Trump, in his usual way, has not been able to resist the urge to get involved. On Wednesday, his spokesperson put out a statement saying that Trump “and his MAGA movement will be delivering a major victory to Trump-endorsed businessman Glenn Youngkin.”
McAuliffe’s campaign went into overdrive to ensure the statement was widely seen.
With the contest appearing so close — tight enough that the winner might not be known until final ballots are counted late this week — there’s one forecast that’s clear: Whichever candidate wins probably can thank Donald Trump.
‘I ran against Donald Trump. And Terry is running against an acolyte of Donald Trump.’ — President Biden, on former Virginia Gov. Terry
McAuliffe, who is in a close contest to regain the position