Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the governor’s race in Virginia that received a great deal of national attention. It is a major upset against the Democrats in a state that voted solidly for Joe Biden by double digits just one year ago.
According to the unofficial results posted by the Virginia Department of Elections, Youngkin won with 50.68% of the vote, while McAuliffe had 48.55% of the vote, with the remainder going to third party candidate Princess Blanding and write-ins.
The Associated Press also called the race for Youngkin, noting that President Joe Biden had won Virginia by 10 points against former president Donald Trump in 2020.
Additionally, Republican Winsome Sears won the election for lieutenant governor of Virginia against Democrat challenger Hala Ayala, becoming the first African-American female to be elected to the office. At press time, Republican challenger Jason S. Miyares held a slight lead over incumbent Democrat Mark Herring for the office of attorney general of Virginia.
GOP Congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York released a statement via email congratulating Youngkin on winning the race. “Hardworking Americans are fed up with failed, Far-Left politicians who are destroying our economy with Socialist tax-and-spend policies and infiltrating our classrooms with their radical agenda,” stated Stefanik in her emailed statement. Glenn Youngkin kicked off the 2022 Red Wave early, and Republicans are now more energized than ever to take back the House and fire Lame Duck Speaker Nancy Pelosi once and for all.”
The Obvious Lessons from the Virginia Elections
First, this was not a referendum on Trump, who lost to Biden in Virginia by 10 points. To the contrary, as much as Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe (and his surrogates, including President Biden and former President Obama) tried to make the race about Trump, Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin did the opposite.
And while Youngkin did not reject Trump’s endorsement or speak against him, he ran his own campaign as his own man, distancing himself from Trump. Pundits are now looking at Youngkin’s strategy as a potential winning Republican formula for 2022, robbing the Democrats of their ability to make each race an ongoing rejection of former President Trump.
Second, this was a referendum on Biden. Had Biden’s popularity not been plummeting ( a recent poll shows that 54% now disapprove of Bidens performance and a whopping 71% say the country is on the wrong track) and had the state of America been dramatically better than it is today, the outcome of the election might have been very different. In the words of New York Times writer Nate Cohn, “Biden has nearly the worst approval ratings of any president on record at this stage of his presidency
Third, the culture wars are real and parents have said enough is enough. Whether the issue was the dangerous, radical transgender agenda in children’s schools or a destructive, overemphasis on racism in school curricula, it appears that the voters spoke on these issues too.
The shocking news that the rape of a Loudoun County teenage girl in the girls’ bathroom by a boy wearing a dress was covered up by the local school board drew a sharp response from many parents. (And remember: the apparent cover-up was in the specific context of supporting transgender extremism in the schools.)
Parental outrage was only heightened when the concerned parents became the targets of a federal investigation in which they were viewed as domestic terrorists.
oupled with this was McAuliffe’s disastrous comment on September 29 that, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
Of course, some on the left want to make these elections into a matter of race, as if those voting for Youngkin were largely white supremacists who didn’t want their kids to learn the truth about slavery. But how do they explain the election of Winsome Sears to Lieutenant Governor, making her the first black woman to win a statewide office in Virginia? And how do they explain the gains made by Republicans in other state elections, where children’s education was not the major focus?
Whether headlines predicting that, “A Youngkin win in Virginia spells defeat for Democrats in 2022” prove true remains to be seen.
For now, it appears that: 1) America is not willing to move even further to the left and, 2) to the extent leftist policies fail, to that extent they will be rejected. Anti-Trump animus can only carry the Democrats so far