virginia governor issues dominate ad wars

#VIRGINIA GOVERNOR ISSUES DOMINATE AD WARS DRIVER#

Youngkin was helped in that effort by a comment McAuliffe made during a debate exchange over parental involvement in school reading material. “This has been the conundrum that Republicans haven’t been able to solve in the Trump era.” “I think what it does effectively for him is that it speaks to the Trump base while at the same time being somewhat persuasive with independent suburbanites,” Holsworth said. To close out the campaign, Youngkin seems to be going “all in” on culture-war messaging around education, Holsworth said, and an argument parents have been shut out of decisions about how public schools should be run. 6 Capitol riot, abortion bans, COVID-19 mandates, book banning and conservative furor over thorny discussions of race and equity in K-12 education.

Here’s what they’ve done.īut in campaign messaging this year, state policy issues have mostly taken a backseat to more incendiary national topics like Trump’s false election fraud claims and the Jan. At the state level, Virginia Democrats pushed Republicans into helping them expand Medicaid in 2018, won majorities in 2019, then passed legislation to make voting easier, restrict access to guns, raise the minimum wage, broaden anti-discrimination laws, abolish the death penalty, legalize marijuana and begin tackling climate change.ĭemocrats have controlled Virginia government for two years. To some extent, this year’s elections are a referendum on how Democrats have used their newfound power in both Richmond and Washington. On Wednesday, Trump released a cryptic statement saying he would be in Virginia “soon.” It was unclear what that meant. Though Trump has endorsed Youngkin, he has not campaigned with him in Virginia, a state Trump lost to President Joe Biden by 10 percentage points. And the Republicans benefit from the fact that he’s not on Twitter every 15 minutes.” “The dilemma is that the Democrats are perceived as the incumbents now and not Trump,” said veteran Virginia political analyst Bob Holsworth. If Virginia’s elections four years ago were a national indicator of how strong the anti-Trump reaction would be, this year’s contests are widely seen as an early sign of how far things could swing in the other direction. The Trump era brought an electoral bloodbath for Virginia Republicans as Democrats rode suburban backlash against the GOP to sweeping gains in the General Assembly and lopsided victories in statewide races. Recent polls have shown the race in a statistical dead heat, giving Republicans hope Youngkin could be the candidate to break their decade-long losing streak and flip the state red, despite the party’s steep numerical disadvantages in deep-blue Northern Virginia. The two men were echoing both major parties’ closing arguments as they cast ballots early in Chesterfield County outside Richmond, the type of suburban battleground that could decide the closely watched gubernatorial contest between Democrat Terry McAuliffe, a former governor and prodigious political fundraiser, and Republican Glenn Youngkin, a wealthy former private equity executive making his first run for office. We’re worried about feelings,” Williams said of the mindset he sees in Loudoun. He pointed specifically to a recent controversy in Loudoun County, where school officials are under fire for allegedly mishandling a female student’s report of a sexual assault in a high-school bathroom during a politically contentious local debate over transgender-inclusive bathroom policies.

#VIRGINIA GOVERNOR ISSUES DOMINATE AD WARS DRIVER#

Wes Williams, a 44-year-old truck driver who said he voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 but switched to Trump in 2020, said he voted for the Republican ticket this year out of opposition to a “crazy” Democratic agenda he sees as increasingly detached from common sense. And they want to find a way to get this guy back in there.” “The people that are running that are Republicans still want to institute his policies. “I disagree with how they’re allowing this stuff with Trump to just fester and keep going on. And it’s the lingering specter of Trumpism on the right that led him to vote for Virginia’s Democratic ticket this year.

But he was never on board with the “madness” of former President Donald Trump. Donald Hillard, a 49-year-old retired military veteran, says he identifies as a Republican and voted for George W.

Virginia governor issues dominate ad wars