Republican Glenn Youngkin wins Virginia governor’s race in blow to Joe Biden
- Republican win in Virginia a major political turnabout in a state that had been trending increasingly blue
- Result is sure to alarm to Democrats already nervous about next year’s midterm elections
With all but a few precincts reporting, newcomer Glenn Youngkin led Democrat Terry McAuliffe with 51 per cent to McAuliffe’s 48.3 per cent, according to Associated Press. The results highlighted a stunning collapse by McAuliffe, a former governor and Democratic Party chairman who led in the polls throughout the summer in a state that Biden won by 10 percentage points over former president Donald Trump just last year.
A harbinger of the parties’ prospects in next year’s midterm elections, the race was initially expected to be a comfortable Democratic win but instead became a toss-up in the closing days of the campaign.
A private equity multimillionaire who has never run for office defeating a former popular Democratic governor will be seen as a disaster for Biden going into the all-important 2022 races that will determine who controls Congress.
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“All right Virginia – we won this thing! How much fun!” Youngkin, who poured at least US$20 million of his own fortune into the race, told cheering fans after dancing onstage to Norman Greenbaum’s 1969 hit Spirit in the Sky.
Calling his victory a “defining moment,” he told the crowd: “Together, we will change the trajectory of this commonwealth. And friends, we are going to start that transformation on day one.”
The election, a neck-and-neck tussle for weeks, resonated nationwide as a proxy war between Biden and former president Donald Trump, who gave Youngkin his early backing.
Biden waded into the race, wrongly predicting a McAuliffe win.
Youngkin’s campaign will now likely become a blueprint for Republicans across the country as they strategise on how to leverage Trump’s base while avoiding becoming tainted by his toxic brand among moderates in the midterms.
The Democratic faithful had badly wanted the race to be a referendum on Trump but in reality he had little to do with the campaign and was never likely to prove the galvanising nemesis they had hoped for.
Early in the campaign, Youngkin accepted Trump’s endorsement and steered clear of criticising the twice-impeached former president.
But he also pointedly avoided standing next to the Republican leader, who is seen as beyond the pale among independents in much of Virginia, or presenting himself as a Trump acolyte.
McAuliffe’s loss will also almost certainly spook moderates on Capitol Hill and drive some away from supporting Biden’s stalled US$3 trillion vision for remaking the economy.
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The long delays on passing promised social welfare and infrastructure packages are an echo of 2009-10, when the Democrats suffered big losses amid gridlock in Washington.
Virginia’s gubernatorial election is often watched as a referendum on a president’s first year, since it’s one of the few significant offices up for grabs the year after presidential elections.
But Virginia also tends to punish the party in the White House. In the last 12 Virginia gubernatorial elections, the president’s party has won only once, by McAulliffe in 2013.
McAuliffe took an early lead in the race but his seven-point cushion evaporated in the final days, with a polling average by political analysis website FiveThirtyEight showing Youngkin ahead by one point on election day.
Leaning into his image as the establishment candidate, the 64-year-old McAuliffe sold himself as a former incumbent who brought back jobs after the worldwide financial crisis of 2008, and pledged to repeat the trick for the pandemic.
But nine months after Democrats added the US Senate to their victory in the White House, Virginians sought a fresh start, handing Youngkin 51 per cent of the vote and the Republican Party its first statewide office in the so-called Old Dominion in over a decade.
Agence France-Presse, Bloomberg and Associated Press
