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Glenn Youngkin, a first-time candidate with vast wealth, will deliver a pro-business message intended to win over suburban voters. Democrats plan to portray him as a Trump devotee.Republican voters’ choice for Virginia governor, a deep-pocketed first-time candidate who plans to run as a business-friendly political outsider, will offer a major test in the post-Trump era of the party’s ability to win back suburban voters who have fled over the past four years.Glenn Youngkin, who won the Republican nomination on Monday night, had walked a line between his party’s Trump-centric base and appeals to business interests in a crowded field, defeating two rivals who more aggressively courted supporters of former President Donald J. Trump.After years of Democratic advances in the state thanks to suburban voters who adamantly rejected anyone linked to the Trump G.O.P., Mr. Youngkin, 54, a former private equity executive, has warned that “we can kiss our business environment away” if Democrats retain power in Richmond.During the nominating fight, he criticized the current governor, Ralph Northam, and his predecessor, Terry McAuliffe, for creating business conditions that cause college-educated residents (read: suburbanites) to move away.But even as Mr. Youngkin tries to focus on kitchen-table issues, Democrats signaled on Tuesday they would aggressively seek to fuse the nominee to Mr. Trump, by reminding voters of hard-line positions he took in fending off six Republican rivals — including on voting rights, Medicaid expansion and culture-war topics like critical race theory.Mr. McAuliffe, the polling leader for the Democratic nomination, said in a statement on Tuesday that Mr. Youngkin “spent his campaign fawning all over Donald Trump,” adding that he would “make it harder to vote” and be “a rubber stamp for the N.R.A.’s dangerous agenda.”Mr. Trump stayed out of the G.O.P. race while the field jockeyed for position, with Mr. Youngkin ultimately emerging as the winner after roughly 30,000 voters cast ranked-choice ballots at 39 locations around the state on Saturday. But the former president jumped in on Tuesday with an endorsement of Mr. Youngkin, although it was primarily an attack on Mr. McAuliffe, a former fund-raiser for Bill and Hillary Clinton, who as a private citizen was in business with Chinese investors.“Virginia doesn’t need the Clintons or the Communist Chinese running the state,” Mr. Trump said, “so say no to Terry McAuliffe, and yes to Patriot Glenn Youngkin!”But Mr. Youngkin might consider such effusions unwelcome in a state Mr. Trump lost by 10 percentage points in November. Mr. Youngkin, 54, was raised in Virginia Beach and has lived in Northern Virginia for 25 years. He defeated two rivals who appealed more directly to the Trump-centric base: Pete Snyder, a technology entrepreneur, and State Senator Amanda Chase, a hard-right supporter of the former president who was censured in a bipartisan vote of the state’s General Assembly for referring to the rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6 as “patriots.”Mr. Youngkin’s appeal to Republicans was at least twofold: He is a political blank slate, with no record in elected office for Democrats to attack. And his private wealth — reportedly more than $200 million after he retired as co-chief executive of the Carlyle Group — will allow him to compete financially against Mr. McAuliffe, a prolific fund-raiser.Mr. McAuliffe raised $36 million for his 2013 election campaign and more than $9.9 million during the past two years, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. Mr. Youngkin has already spent $5.5 million of his own money since entering the race in late January.Republicans have not won a statewide election since 2009, and Democratic dominance of the once-purple state accelerated under Mr. Trump, with Democrats taking control of both houses of the General Assembly in 2020 for the first time in a generation.They used their dominance of state government to pass sweeping progressive priorities like more restrictive gun laws and a ban on capital punishment.But the trend is not irreversible, as some election analysts see it. In the pre-Trump era, Mr. McAuliffe won his first governor’s race in 2013 by just 2.5 percentage points against a hard-right conservative, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II. Rural regions of southern and southwest Virginia have grown redder even as the populous northern and central suburbs are bluer. There is a theoretical path to statewide Republican victory for a candidate who rouses rural Trump voters, appeals to suburban independents and benefits from lower overall Democratic turnout without Mr. Trump as a motivator.And Mr. Youngkin has signaled that he would run against the very legislation Democrats have passed, accusing his opponents of pushing Virginia far to the left of most voters’ preferences.Mr. McAuliffe may be the clear polling leader for the Democrats, but he is conspicuous as the lone white candidate in a field with three Black contenders, in a party whose base is heavily African-American.In four years in office, Mr. McAuliffe governed as a pro-business Democrat, and he began his campaign for a second term in December on a pro-education note, pledging to raise teacher pay and offer universal pre-K. (Virginia governors cannot serve two consecutive terms.)Though Mr. Youngkin is not as unrelenting a supporter of Mr. Trump as some of his Republican opponents, he declined the chance at a recent candidates’ forum to distance himself from Mr. Trump’s lies about a rigged 2020 election. Asked about “voter integrity,” he launched into a five-point plan to “restore our trust in our election process.”During the nominating race, he also pledged to restore a state voter identification law and to replace the entire state board of education. He also said he would create the “1776 Project,” an apparent reference to a curriculum of patriotic education proposed by a commission established under Mr. Trump that has been derided by mainstream historians.Last month, Mr. Youngkin said it was “a sad thing” that Virginia had expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, though he acknowledged the clock couldn’t be turned back.As Mr. Youngkin likely spends generously on TV ads to forge a more soft-focus identity as a pro-business outsider, Democrats are sure to try to keep his earlier positions in front of voters.“Make no state mistake about it, we are going to point out every step of the way the right-wing extremism of Glenn Youngkin,” Susan Swecker, chair of the Virginia Democrats, said on Tuesday. More
Mr. Youngkin, a wealthy newcomer to politics who walked a line between the Trump base of the G.O.P. and business interests, will look to test Democrats’ strength in the blue-leaning state in November.Glenn Youngkin, a wealthy first-time candidate who walked a line between his party’s Trump-centric base and appeals to business interests, declared victory in the Republican nominating contest for governor of Virginia on Monday. He heads into a general election in one of only two states choosing their governors in 2021, in the latest running of an off-year race often viewed as a referendum on the party holding the White House.The Republican Party of Virginia had yet to announce a winner, but Mr. Youngkin’s last remaining rival, Pete Snyder, conceded the race. “I send my heartfelt congratulations,” Mr. Snyder wrote on Twitter. “He + the ticket have my 100% support.”The results were being tabulated by Republican officials two days after roughly 30,000 voters cast ranked-choice ballots at 39 locations around the state. Mr. Snyder conceded after more than 12 hours of vote counting, in which five candidates were knocked from contention, one by one, and their supporters’ next-choice votes were allocated to others still in the running. In the sixth round of counting, Mr. Youngkin passed the required 50 percent threshold.“Virginians have made it clear that they are ready for a political outsider with proven business experience to bring real change in Richmond,” he said on Twitter. The unusual nominating process came after an internal party squabble in which Republicans rejected holding a primary, which would have drawn a larger and more diverse group of voters. Former Republican officials from an era before the party fell hard from power in Virginia criticized the nominating process as likely to increase the G.O.P.’s marginalization.But neither of the two candidates who most closely aligned themselves with former President Donald J. Trump — who did not endorse anyone — prevailed, raising Republican hopes for the November election.Mr. Youngkin, who is likely to run as an outsider businessman, fueled by a large fortune from private equity, will face the winner of the Democratic primary next month. In that race, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe has held a significant lead in fund-raising as well as in recent polls over four rivals.Mr. Youngkin said at a recent G.O.P. candidates’ forum that “the last eight years have been crushing” for Virginians, and he warned that if Mr. McAuliffe were given another term, Democrats would end the state’s right-to-work law that prohibits compulsory union membership. If that happens, “we can kiss our business environment away,” he said.Mr. McAuliffe governed as a pro-business Democrat in his four years in office, and he began his campaign for a second term in December on a pro-education note, pledging to raise teacher pay and offer universal pre-K. (Virginia governors cannot serve two consecutive terms.) Mr. Youngkin said last month it was “a sad thing” that Medicaid was expanded in Virginia under the Affordable Care Act, one of the signature achievements of the current Democratic governor, Ralph Northam. He acknowledged the clock couldn’t be turned back.In a statement, Mr. McAuliffe compared Mr. Youngkin to other Republicans who “fawn all over Donald Trump” and “fully embrace his extreme, right-wing agenda,” adding, “Now, Glenn Youngkin has paid enough to purchase the Republican gubernatorial nomination so he can run Donald Trump’s dangerous playbook here in Virginia.”Republicans have not won a statewide election in Virginia since 2009, a reflection of the state’s changing demographics as well as the party’s tendency in recent years to nominate candidates who fanned divisive social issues, rather than appealed to suburban voters on kitchen-table priorities.The thumping that Mr. Northam administered to his Republican rival in 2017 was both a rejection of Mr. Trump and a catalyst in further pushing Virginia, a once-purple state, out of the Republican orbit. Mr. Trump lost Virginia by 10 percentage points in November.Still, Republicans believe they have a better chance of winning statewide this year than at any time in the last decade, after Democrats, who took full control in Richmond in 2020, passed sweeping liberal legislation on gun restrictions, raising the minimum wage and other issues.Mr. Youngkin, 54, was raised in Virginia Beach and has lived in Northern Virginia for 25 years. Besides defeating Mr. Snyder, a technology entrepreneur, he also outlasted State Senator Amanda Chase, who was censured in a bipartisan vote of the state’s General Assembly for calling the rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6 “patriots.” Supporters of Ms. Chase accused Snyder partisans in the state party of rejecting a primary and engineering Saturday’s “disassembled convention” to hurt her chances. Ms. Chase had said that if he became the nominee, she would run as an independent. There is no indication she intends to do that with Mr. Youngkin heading the party’s ticket, which will also include nominees for lieutenant governor and attorney general.Many G.O.P. insiders heaved a sigh of relief that the nomination for governor was not won by Ms. Chase, believing that her general-election candidacy would have been likely to go down in flames given how deeply unpopular Mr. Trump is in Virginia.Mr. Youngkin’s appeal to Republicans was at least twofold: He is a political blank slate, with no record in elected office for Democrats to attack. And his private wealth — reportedly more than $200 million after he retired as co-chief executive of the Carlyle Group — will allow him to compete financially against Mr. McAuliffe, a prolific fund-raiser. Mr. McAuliffe raised $36 million for his 2013 election and over $9.9 million during the past two years, according to the Virginia Access Project. Mr. Youngkin has already spent $5.5 million of his own money since entering the race in late January.At the recent candidates’ forum, Mr. Youngkin aligned himself with Mr. Trump’s lies about a rigged 2020 election, declaring “voter integrity” a top issue and referring to Dominion voting machines — the subject of conspiracy theories on the far right — as “the most important issue” of the campaign.He pledged to restore a state voter identification law, to replace the entire state board of education and to institute the “1776 Project,” a curriculum of “patriotic education” proposed by a commission established under Mr. Trump that has been derided by mainstream historians.Although Mr. Youngkin is expected to pivot to reach independent voters, Democrats are sure to remind them in the fall of his most Trumpy declarations from the nominating race, and that he campaigned this month with one of his endorsers, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a bête noire of the left. More
Once again, the state is shaping up to be a case study in the complexities around the politics of race and power.Two years ago, when a racist blackface picture emerged from the 1980s that appeared to include Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia, the blowback was swift and severe. There were mounting calls for his resignation.But in the end, polls showed that most voters said he shouldn’t step down — and some of his most unwavering support came from Virginia’s Black voters. He weathered the scandal, and he’s still on the job.There are now exactly two months until the Democratic primary election that will most likely determine Northam’s successor, as the state has become decidedly blue (the Democratic candidate has won all 13 statewide elections there since 2012). And once again, Virginia is shaping up to be a case study in the complexities around the politics of race and power.Northam, who continues to enjoy widespread approval, particularly from Black voters, on Thursday endorsed Terry McAuliffe, a former Virginia governor and one of the two white candidates in a five-person Democratic field. McAuliffe directly preceded Northam in the governor’s mansion and now wants to succeed him, too.In a statement, Northam portrayed McAuliffe as a strong steward of the economy during his four years in charge. “It’s critical that our next governor has the plans and experience to continue the fight to rebuild Virginia into a stronger, more equitable future,” he said. “That’s why I am so proud to support Terry McAuliffe to be our next governor.”A former banking executive, prolific Democratic fund-raiser and onetime chair of the Democratic National Committee, McAuliffe was prevented from running for re-election in 2017 because Virginia does not allow its governor to serve consecutive terms.There’s been scant polling in this race, but McAuliffe is regarded as a clear front-runner, partly because of his formidable connections and résumé, and partly because his challengers have similarities — albeit some superficial — that could split their support. Aside from Lee Carter, a 33-year-old Marine veteran and member of the House of Delegates, the three other candidates — Jennifer McClellan, Jennifer Carroll Foy and Justin Fairfax — are Black, younger than McAuliffe and generally to his left.Like Northam four years ago on the crooked road of the Virginia campaign trail, and Joe Biden last year in the presidential race, McAuliffe has been deliberate about outflanking his less-established Black opponents. He has emphasized his ties to the Black elite in Virginia politics, and from the day he announced his candidacy he has ensconced himself in endorsements from Black officials.But on Tuesday, in a televised debate, McAuliffe faced attacks from a unified team of rivals, and things boiled over when Fairfax, the state’s lieutenant governor, criticized him for calling in 2019 for Fairfax’s resignation. As Northam was engulfed in his own scandal, two women publicly accused Fairfax of sexual assault. Fairfax denied the allegations and, like the governor, managed to remain in office, mostly by just moving on.At the debate Fairfax went all the way after McAuliffe, reminding voters of the long and disgraceful history in America of false accusations and violence by white people toward Black men. “He treated me like George Floyd, he treated me like Emmett Till — no due process, immediately assumed my guilt,” Fairfax said. “I have a son and I have a daughter, and I don’t want my daughter to be assaulted; I don’t want my son to be falsely accused. And this is the real world that we live in. And so we need to speak truth to power, and we need to be very clear about how that impacts people’s lives.”But even before that, Fairfax had partly undercut his own argument by pointing out that it wasn’t just McAuliffe: All of his Democratic rivals onstage had called for him to resign in 2019.Besides, as the Times reporter Astead Herndon observed on Twitter, “‘what happened to me is like what happened to George Floyd and Emmett Till’ is not a thing a living person can say.”McClellan, a state senator, picked up on the theme of racial justice but went after McAuliffe on substantive policy grounds. She said he had underfunded the state’s parole system as governor, and called him a latecomer to the movement for justice reform.McAuliffe pushed back by pointing to his order restoring voting rights to more than 200,000 felons in 2016, and said he supported equipping all police officers in the state with body cameras — two major goals of civil rights advocates.For now, Fairfax has been unable to define his candidacy aside from the allegations against him, leading some close observers to anticipate that the next few weeks will be a face-off between McClellan and Carroll Foy, a former state delegate. If one emerges as the clear alternative to McAuliffe, it would most likely be because she persuaded enough major funders to come out of the woodwork to back her campaign and provide much-needed advertising dollars.As one Democratic insider in Virginia put it to me in a phone chat on Thursday: “McClellan has a track record to sell. Carroll Foy has a track record and an approach to sell. But if they’re only selling it on Twitter, then Terry McAuliffe will be the nominee.”On Politics is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More
At a debate for Virginia governor, Mr. Fairfax, the state’s lieutenant governor, denounced Mr. McAuliffe for urging him to resign after women accused Mr. Fairfax of sexual assault in 2019.Terry McAuliffe, the leading candidate in this year’s Democratic primary for Virginia governor, faced a flurry of attacks from his rivals at a debate on Tuesday night as they aimed to diminish his broad support from Black voters. In the most extraordinary broadside, the state’s Black lieutenant governor, Justin Fairfax, accused Mr. McAuliffe of treating him like George Floyd or Emmett Till after Mr. Fairfax was accused of sexual assault by two women in 2019.Mr. McAuliffe, a white former governor of the state who has the backing of many of the state’s top Black elected officials, issued a public call that year for Mr. Fairfax to resign.Mr. Fairfax’s remarks on Tuesday — in which he compared himself to two Black people killed in episodes of white violence — were the most pointed attempt by one of the three Black candidates in the race to draw a racial distinction between them and Mr. McAuliffe, who is aiming to reclaim the office he held from 2014 to 2018.The accusation came at the end of the debate, the first for the five Virginia Democrats running for governor. Responding to a question asking the candidates to envision the future of law enforcement in Virginia, Mr. Fairfax said theoretical descriptions were unnecessary because he was a living embodiment of the harm that false accusations and a rush to judgment can produce.“Everyone here on this stage called for my immediate resignation, including Terry McAuliffe three minutes after a press release came out,” Mr. Fairfax said. “He treated me like George Floyd, he treated me like Emmett Till, no due process, immediately assumed my guilt. I have a son and I have a daughter, and I don’t want my daughter to be assaulted, I don’t want my son to be falsely accused. And this is the real world that we live in. And so we need to speak truth to power and we need to be very clear about how that impacts people’s lives.”Mr. McAuliffe did not respond to Mr. Fairfax on the debate stage. His spokesman declined to address the remarks.In February 2019, amid a concurrent scandal involving a medical school yearbook photograph of Gov. Ralph Northam in blackface, two women accused Mr. Fairfax of sexually assaulting them in separate episodes — allegations that Mr. Fairfax has always denied. Mr. Fairfax faced a torrent of calls for his resignation. Weeks later, in a speech on the floor of the Virginia Senate, he compared himself to lynching victims.Mr. Fairfax was not the only candidate on Tuesday night to try to cleave Black voters from Mr. McAuliffe. The scant public polling of the race has found Mr. McAuliffe holding sizable leads over his four opponents, and no survey has shown him with less than a two-to-one advantage over his closest rival.Jennifer McClellan, a state senator who is running for governor, accused Mr. McAuliffe of underfunding the state’s parole system, cutting deals with the National Rifle Association during his term as governor and being a late advocate for racial justice.“Racial justice is about more than criminal justice reform,” said Ms. McClellan, who is Black. “It is embedded in every system we have in government, and I did not need George Floyd’s murder or the Unite the Right rally to teach me that.”Mr. McAuliffe, during his turns to speak, emphasized his relationships with Mr. Northam and President Biden, two Democrats who both owe their offices to strong relationships with and support from Black voters. He highlighted his move to restore the voting rights of 206,000 felons in the state and said every police officer in the state should wear a body camera “so we can see what’s going on.”“Thank goodness we had all those individuals there who had those cellphones when George Floyd was murdered,” he said.Mr. McAuliffe barely mentioned his rivals during the debate, except to remind the audience that Ms. McClellan was a frequent partner of his when he was governor. But Mr. Fairfax, by the debate’s end, sought to define himself as the chief rival to the loquacious former governor.“There appears to be two sets of rules up here, one where the governor can talk as long as he wants to and do whatever he wants, and one for everybody else,” Mr. Fairfax said. “I think that’s part of the issue, that we do have so many disparities in our society.” More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTerry McAuliffe Faces All-Black Democratic Primary in Virginia Governor’s RaceMr. McAuliffe, who was governor from 2014 to 2018, says he wants to take “Virginia to the next level and to lift up all Virginians.”Terry McAuliffe at a campaign rally for Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Norfolk, Va., in March.Credit…Samuel Corum/EPA, via ShutterstockDec. 9, 2020, 12:57 p.m. ETTerry McAuliffe, the former governor of Virginia, on Wednesday entered the contest for his old job, simultaneously offering himself as both a trusted steward during an economic and public health crisis and someone prepared to fight against “the old way of doing things.”“I am running for governor again to think big and to be bold and to take the Commonwealth of Virginia to the next level and to lift up all Virginians,” Mr. McAuliffe said in a brief speech outside a public school in Richmond, the state capital.Mr. McAuliffe, 63, formally began his campaign surrounded by four senior elected officials, all of whom are Black. The setup was a nod both to the relationships he nurtured during his governorship from 2014 to 2018 and the complex nature of the state’s 2021 primary, in which three Black candidates have already announced their candidacies for the Democratic nomination.Mr. McAuliffe’s 2021 campaign has for months been an open secret in Virginia — at a March campaign rally, Joseph R. Biden Jr. called him “the once and future governor” — and Mr. McAuliffe’s allies have made the case that his coalition would look a lot like Mr. Biden’s, with core support from Black voters and suburbanites who sent Mr. Biden to the White House.“We need him to lift the Black community from the crippling pandemic, because he knows that it has hit the Black communities, Black communities and brown communities harder than anyone else,” L. Louise Lucas, the Virginia State Senate president, said while introducing Mr. McAuliffe on Wednesday. “We need his experience and tested leadership, tested leadership, tested leadership.”Virginia’s contest for governor will serve as a first test of the post-Trump Democratic coalition. For four years, culminating with the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, the party’s voters prioritized electability, choosing more moderate candidates who faced liberal firebrands in nearly all competitive races.Mr. McAuliffe is the fourth Democrat to enter the 2021 race for governor, joining three Black candidates who have been campaigning for months: Jennifer McClellan, a state senator; Jennifer Carroll Foy, who on Tuesday resigned her seat in the House of Delegates to campaign for governor full time; and Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax.But unlike in the presidential contest, in which Mr. Biden sold his electability against President Trump, whichever Democrat emerges from Virginia’s June primary will be a heavy favorite against the Republican challenger.Virginia has become increasingly Democratic since 2009, the last time Republicans won a statewide office. The party won control of the state legislature in 2019, and Mr. Biden carried the state by 10 percentage points last month.The Republican field already appears fractured, with Amanda Chase, a Republican state senator who models herself after Mr. Trump, announcing last weekend that she would run as an independent candidate rather than seek the Republican Party’s nomination at a state convention next year. Kirk Cox, a former speaker of the House of Delegates, is seeking the Republican nomination and Pete Snyder, a wealthy marketing executive, may also join the G.O.P. primary race soon.At the same time some Virginia liberals have pronounced themselves eager to elect Ms. McClellan or Ms. Carroll Foy, either of whom would be the nation’s first Black woman governor. Virginia has never elected a woman to be governor and has not elected a woman to statewide office since 1989.Ms. Carroll Foy, at 39 the youngest candidate in the field, was not shy about attacking Mr. McAuliffe as a creature of the past.“Career politicians like Terry McAuliffe are interested in maintaining the status quo,” she said in a statement Tuesday night. “But Virginians are calling for change. They want someone who understands their problems as I do because I’ve lived them. While I respect Terry McAuliffe’s service, he doesn’t understand the problems Virginians face. A former political party boss and multimillionaire, Terry McAuliffe is simply out of touch with everyday Virginians.”Ms. McClellan, while not attacking Mr. McAuliffe directly, cited her own “life experience” as evidence she would be the best governor in the field in a statement released Wednesday.Mr. McAuliffe said Wednesday that he would center his campaign on helping the state’s economy recover from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, pledging Virginia’s largest investment in public education and appealing to Black voters in the Democratic primary in June.Mr. McAuliffe campaigned alongside former President Bill Clinton in Charlottesville, Va., in 2013.Credit…Khue Bui for The New York TimesHe also leaned heavily on his past tenure as governor, citing fights with Republicans who at the time controlled Virginia’s General Assembly. In the same breath, Mr. McAuliffe promoted his record as governor and called for a new approach to running the state government.“The old Richmond approach just doesn’t work anymore,” he said. “Folks, it is time for a new Virginia way. I know that old way of thinking because I fought against it constantly as governor, time and time again.”Mr. McAuliffe is a longtime fixture in Democratic politics, both nationally and in Virginia. He is close enough to former President Bill Clinton that the two men speak daily, and he claims to make more than 100 phone calls every day. A former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Mr. McAuliffe has run for Virginia governor twice, losing a bitter 2009 primary before winning in 2013. He also weighed a 2020 presidential campaign but bowed out in April 2019 once it became clear that Mr. Biden would seek the Democratic Party’s nomination.He spent the rest of 2019 campaigning and fund-raising for Democrats running for Virginia state legislative seats, helping the party seize control of both the State Senate and House of Delegates for the first time in a generation.Virginia’s current governor, Ralph Northam, a Democrat, is forbidden by state law from seeking a second consecutive term. Mr. McAuliffe is vying to be the second Virginia governor since the Civil War to be elected twice, following Mills Godwin Jr., who was elected as a Democrat in 1965 and as a Republican in 1973.Virginia’s contests for governor, coming the year after presidential elections, have for decades been considered an opportunity for the party that just lost the White House to take control of a large state government. Mr. McAuliffe’s 2013 victory over the Republican Ken Cuccinelli is the only time since Mr. Godwin’s 1973 election that the party that held the presidency also won the Virginia governor’s mansion.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
