The best predictors of 2022 are not the polls we’ve seen. It’s the election in Virginia in November. Virginia is one of a handful of states that holds its election for legislature and council of state in odd numbered years. With governors limited to a single term, every four years is a major midterm election for our northern neighbor.
For the past decade, the state has been trending solidly blue. After the state seemed to be shifting Republican in the 1990s, Democrats won three of the past four gubernatorial contests. In 2009, Republican Bob McDonnell won, presaging the GOP wave a year later. Similarly, the 1994 wave that swept Newt Gingrich into power and gave Republicans control of the North Carolina House for the first time in a century was preceded by a 1993 GOP sweep in Virginia.
This year, the Governor’s race in Virginia has Democrats on edge. Terry McAuliffe, who served as governor from 2014 to 2018, is apparently in a tied race with Glenn Youngkin. Cook Political Report rated it a tossup and a recent poll showed Youngkin leading. Democrats who thought the state was relatively safe are now in a panic.
Like elections mid-terms in even years, the races in Virginia are influenced by the national environment. The Biden administration has suffered six weeks of rough headlines. The Afghanistan evacuation, the Haitians on the border, and the rise in COVID cases has dominated the news. On the political front, the party can’t seem to get it together to pass legislation Biden proposed last spring. Voters are impatient and ready for life to get back to normal.
In response, McAuliffe is trying to make the race about the pandemic and the GOP’s lack of a response. He’s supporting vaccine mandates and trying to push Youngkin into a tough position. The public generally supports Biden’s recent moves on requiring either a vaccine or testing. Youngkin’s position is that he is pro-vaccine but believes it should be a personal choice.
The race may end up like California’s recall election. After months of hearing dire predictions about the success of the effort to recall Governor Gavin Newsome, the effort went down to a crushing defeat. As of today, Newsome has received more votes than he did when he was originally elected. However, if Youngkin wins, or even gets within a couple of points, Democrats need to watch out next year.
Still, I’m not convinced the bad headlines and bad poll numbers are indicative of what will happen in the mid-terms. If the economy is recovering and we don’t see any spikes in COVID next spring, then Democrats will do okay, even if redistricting costs them the House. However, if inflation is rampant and wages are stagnant and hospitals are overwhelmed next spring or summer, Democrats will face a lashing.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
I am a native Tar Heel who as resided in the Commonwealth of Virginia for nearly three decades and have owned a country weekly newspaper in a Southside Virginia county with many Trump supporters. I am worried about the ongoing gubernatorial race, but I do believe McAuliffe will win. I am counting on my neighbors in Northern Virginia to pull us through.
As to the midterms, and I do not say this hyperbolically, anyone anywhere who votes for a single Party of Trump member is nuts. No matter what the state of the pandemic and economy might be at the time of the election is irrelevant. The issue before is is whether we have a functioning and enduring democracy or a dictatorship like the Trump and his enablers across the country want us to have. That is only issue that matters to me. We have a national emergency that too many people simply don’t understand. The rug is being pulled out from beneath our democracy as too many of us pretend it is back to normal. How anyone could not vote to protect the democracy and not turn these dictator wanna-bes to the dustbin of history is a mystery to me. What has happened to us? We are already deep into this pit. When it is harder and harder for people to vote and then the votes don’t count if they don’t suit the Trumpists, we already have lost something pretty damn sacred.
I have voted for some Republicans in the past. I never will vote for another one.
Every voter needs to ask GOP candidates from the doghouse to the White House if they believe the Big Lie? Where to they stand on the sacred right to vote? Why are they afraid of the vote of the people?
I wish we could throw out the party labels, for at this very hour each of us is either for democracy or we are against democracy.
In “normal times” we should worry about the economy and even the spread of the virus. These are not normal times. For if we lose our democracy, our money will be taken from us and we already will be among the walking dead even if we have not been inflicted by COVID-19.