RESULTS: Virginians vote in high-stakes gubernatorial contest between Terry McAuliffe and Glenn Youngkin
Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post via Getty; Win McNamee/Getty; Shayanne Gal/Insider
- Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin are facing off in Virginia's governor's race.
- McAuliffe served as governor for one term and Youngkin is a businessman and first-time candidate.
- The high-stakes election is a key test for both the Democratic Party and Biden.
What's at stake:
Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin are facing off in Virginia's gubernatorial election. The race is the biggest test of President Joe Biden and his party's strength since Democrats won back the White House in November 2020 and the Senate in January.
McAuliffe, a longtime fixture of Democratic politics, got his start raking in eye-popping sums as a fundraiser for former President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s. After stints as chair of the Democratic National Committee and co-chair of Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, McAuliffe served one term as Virginia's governor from 2014 to 2018.
Governors can only serve one term at a time under the Virginia constitution, meaning current Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam is termed out and McAuliffe is now seeking his second term. State politics are increasingly nationalized across the country, and particularly in Virginia, which neighbors the US's capital.
McAuliffe, for his part, has acknowledged that the fate of his campaign is closely tied to Washington Democrats. He recently urged Democrats to do "whatever it takes" to pass their domestic policy agenda, including the bipartisan infrastructure bill, and bemoaned Biden's sinking approval rating.
Youngkin, a wealthy former private equity executive and co-CEO of the Carlyle Group, is a political newcomer and has self-funded much of his campaign. The Virginia native was chosen as the GOP nominee by a select number of party members in a May 8 ranked-choice party convention, instead of competing in a primary election. So, unlike McAuliffe, he's never faced voters before. Youngkin has depicted himself as an economic conservative and largely avoided discussing former President Donald Trump, who lost Virginia by double-digits in 2020.
With Youngkin having no real political record of his own, McAuliffe has aggressively tried to tie him to Trump. McAuliffe has labeled Youngkin a "Trump wannabe" and Democrats argue that the political neophyte's policy positions are virtually indistinguishable from Trump's.
While Youngkin welcomed the former president's endorsement, he conceded in recent months that Biden was elected fairly and "there wasn't material fraud" in the 2020 election. Prior to securing the nomination, though, Youngkin refused to say whether Biden won the election.
Still, he's campaigning on "election integrity," a platform that signals Youngkin's embrace of the GOP's election fraud conspiracy theories without explicitly endorsing Trump's false claims about the 2020 election.
In his efforts to appeal to key suburban voters, Youngkin has cast himself as an advocate for parents who oppose vaccine mandates and racial justice efforts in public schools. In a late October campaign ad, Youngkin promoted a Fairfax County parent who fought to remove Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1987 novel "Beloved" from her son's high school curriculum. As governor, McAuliffe vetoed a bill mandating that schools notify parents about sexually explicit content their kids are being assigned and allow children to opt-out of the schoolwork.
When McAuliffe defended schools and said "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach" at a recent debate, Youngkin accused him of denying parents any say in their kids' education.
The latest polls of the race have shown education and the economy supplanting the COVID-19 as the most important issues to Virginia voters, giving Youngkin a boost in the final days of the campaign. McAuliffe and Youngkin are locked in a very close race, with Youngkin just one percentage point ahead, according to an average of polls created by FiveThirtyEight.
from Business Insider https://ift.tt/3pZcSu3
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