“I’m gonna be really honest with you - the short answer is, in this campaign I can’t,” Youngkin says in the recording. In July, video of Youngkin - taped by an activist at a fundraiser - showed him saying he cannot win the governor’s race if he talks about abortion too much. Similarly, on abortion, McAuliffe highlighted previous comments by Youngkin. Terry McAuliffe at a debate with Youngkin in Grundy, Va., on Thursday. McAuliffe forced his opponent to admit he does not want to mandate vaccines even for nurses in hospitals taking care of immunocompromised patients, and the McAuliffe campaign released audio of Youngkin telling college students to fill out an exception form “for whatever reason” if they don’t want the vaccine.ĭemocratic gubernatorial candidate and former Virginia Gov. Trump protested this action, saying, “Our culture is being destroyed.”Īnd McAuliffe did a capable job of putting Youngkin even further on the defensive by pointing out ways he has tried to appeal to the right wing of the Republican Party. You’re trying to erase history.” A statue of Lee, who led Confederate forces in and around Virginia during the Civil War, was recently removed and chopped up in the capital city, Richmond. Republican Corey Stewart, who narrowly lost the 2017 Republican primary for governor to Gillespie, said then, “You should never take a monument down, because at that point you’re trying to sanitize history.
That last point was a major concession on the issue of race and history, since many Republicans have accused those who have advocated for taking Confederate statues out of public squares and into museums of wanting to “erase history.” Lee should be placed in museums after they are taken down from places of honor. Youngkin was at pains to demonstrate to moderate voters in northern Virginia that he is for the vaccine, he is against the Texas abortion law recently passed by the Republican Legislature there, he does not think Virginia elections have been tainted by fraud in the past, and Confederate statues like that of Robert E. But the showdown also illustrated the ways in which he is on the defensive when it comes to many of the issues likely to move votes in northern Virginia: abortion, COVID vaccine and mask mandates, voting rights and elections, and racial issues.
The first of three debates between the two candidates, on Thursday night, showcased Youngkin’s stylistic strengths. Youngkin at a campaign event in Fairfax, Va., on Aug. Biden’s popularity has been trending downward amid the rise of the Delta variant of the coronavirus, increased fears of sustained inflation and the chaotic U.S. Trump is no longer president, and Northam is prevented from running for reelection due to term limits. There are plenty of Republicans in northern Virginia, but not many Trump Republicans.īut 2021 is not 2017. In short, Northam’s landslide win was driven by one thing: loathing for Trump among northern Virginia voters, who are largely college-educated and racially diverse. And support for Gillespie went down in that same area by about 14,000 votes. Northam got 100,000 more votes in northern Virginia than McAuliffe got four years earlier. Northam beat Republican Ed Gillespie in 2017 by just over 200,000 votes, and about half of that margin came from the northern Virginia suburbs, just outside D.C. Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin tries his hand at being a cashier during a campaign stop at a supermarket in Woodbridge, Va., on Wednesday. Terry McAuliffe, it will likely be taken as a sign that the Republican Party is bound for big wins in the 2022 midterm elections, with control of the House almost certain and control of the Senate within its grasp. Once a reliably red state, Virginia has voted for every Democratic presidential candidate since 2008.Īnd so if Youngkin beats his Democratic opponent, former Gov. The state has not elected a Republican statewide since 2009, and President Biden beat Trump by 10 points in the commonwealth last year. The 2021 election in Virginia is often framed as an uphill battle for the Republican candidate, Glenn Youngkin, a former private equity CEO with the Carlyle Group. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, was the first time voters had registered their displeasure with then-President Donald Trump and foreshadowed the big wins Democrats would have in the 2018 midterms, as well as Trump’s defeat in 2020. The eyes of a polarized nation are about to turn to Virginia, as the commonwealth’s upcoming statewide elections - for control of the governor’s mansion and also the state Legislature - will be used as an interpretive lens to predict where the country is headed politically.įour years ago, the win by Virginia’s current Gov.
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