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      What you missed: results from five US races on Tuesday

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      US newsWhat you missed: results from five US races on TuesdayWhile Virginia’s gubernatorial election caught national attention, the results of these local votes across four states are worth noting Gloria Oladipo@gaoladipoWed 3 Nov 2021 18.35 EDTLast modified on Wed 3 Nov 2021 19.02 EDTTuesday was a busy day for voters across the country, as millions of Americans voted on local issues ranging from police reform to increasing voter accessibility.While some races garnered national attention – Glenn Youngkin’s win in the Virginia gubernatorial election, for example – other ballot questions remained more local.Here are five race results worth spotlighting from Tuesday.Republican Glenn Youngkin wins Virginia governor’s race in blow to BidenRead moreVoting reform referendums in New York StateIn New York, voters decided ‘no’ on two voting reform measures that would have allowed for same-day voter registration and no-excuse absentee voting, a practice already implemented in dozens of states and during the coronavirus pandemic.On the question of same-day voter registration, 49% of people voted ‘no’ while 38.93% voted ‘yes’, according to City & State.While Democrats and voting rights groups were in favor of the proposals, Republicans, on the whole, opposed the attempts at increasing voter expansion, citing familiar claims of voter fraud from the 2020 presidential election, noted NPR.Alvin Bragg elected Manhattan DAAlvin Bragg, a former federal prosecutor, was elected the district attorney of Manhattan, the first Black person to be in the influential role, reports the New York Times.Bragg, who campaigned on ensuring fair treatment for all defendants while also maintaining public safety, was one of seven Democrats who ran for the nomination after incumbent Democrat Cyrus R Vance Jr did not run for reelection.A large feature of Bragg’s campaign was his experience with the criminal justice system, one that he said informed his career and differentiated him from other candidates.“Having been stopped by the police”, said Bragg in an interview with the Times. “Having a homicide victim on my doorstep. Having had a loved one return from incarceration and live with me”.‘Prop A’ Police Staffing Plan in Austin, TexasVoters in Austin, Texas overwhelmingly rejected ‘Prop A’ on Tuesday, a plan to hire hundreds of police officers despite city officials saying that significant budget cuts elsewhere would be needed to do so, reports the Austin American-Statesman.Of the more than 155,000 votes submitted, 68% voted against ‘Prop A’ with only 31% in favor of the proposition.The vast rejection of ‘Prop A’ came as a surprise to some who thought the results on the referendum would be tighter.Throughout the campaign, opposition came from multiple sides for the plan. Labor unions for Austin firefighters and EMS expressed their concerns about the plan, worried that jobs would be cut in those sectors to finance more police officers. Additionally, 10 out of 11 Austin council members were against the proposition.After the early voting election results, Austin mayor Steve Adler tweeted a statement of celebration about the measure’s failing.This election reaffirms our community’s belief that public safety for all requires a comprehensive system that includes properly staffing our police, but also our fire, EMS, and mental health responses as well.— Mayor Adler | Get vaccinated! (@MayorAdler) November 3, 2021
      State Senate President Race in New JerseyIn New Jersey, Edward Durr, a Republican truck driver who apparently spent approximately $153 to finance his campaign, will probably defeat incumbent Democrat state senate president Steve Sweeney, who has held the second most powerful political position in New Jersey for almost 12 years, reports NBC.While an official winner has not been called, with more than 99% of precincts reporting, Durr has received 52% of the vote while Sweeney received only 48%.In a YouTube interview, Durr said he entered the race after being denied a conceal carry permit despite having an unblemished record.Durr, who identifies as a “constitutional conservative”, said he was also sensed a growing distrust in Sweeney because of the Covid-19 pandemic and Sweeney’s inability to “challenge” New Jersey governor Phil Murphy’s Covid-19 executive orders, a shift in public opinion that Durr says contributed to his success as a candidate.In addition to opposing mask mandates and abortions, Durr also pledged to create a business friendly environment in New Jersey by cutting corporate, income, and other state taxes as well as property tax.Marijuana support in PhiladelphiaA referendum in Philadelphia that asked voters if they supported the legalization of marijuana overwhelmingly passed, signaling to Pennsylvania lawmakers where residents fall on the issue.With 96% of precincts reporting, about 72% of people voted ‘yes’ to urge the Pennsylvania state legislature to legalize marijuana, according to Philly Voice. The ballot question is not legally binding and doesn’t automatically make weed legal in the state, but symbolizes that the majority of voters want marijuana legalized.While Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf supports the legalization of recreational marijuana as a means of economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, drug legalization has faced opposition from Pennsylvania’s Republican legislature.Weed was decriminalized in Philadelphia in 2014, but recreational use of marijuana in Pennsylvania remains illegal. Two previous bills introduced in 2019 to legalize marijuana have failed.TopicsUS newsElections 2021US politicsPhiladelphiaNew YorkNew JerseyTexasnewsReuse this content More

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      How did Republicans turn critical race theory into a winning electoral issue?

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      US politicsHow did Republicans turn critical race theory into a winning electoral issue?Glenn Youngkin won the race to be Virginia’s governor having exploited concerns over teaching about race in schools David Smith in Washington@smithinamericaWed 3 Nov 2021 14.28 EDTLast modified on Wed 3 Nov 2021 15.34 EDTWhat is critical race theory?Developed by the former Harvard Law professor Derrick Bell and other scholars in the 1970s and 80s, critical race theory, or CRT, examines the ways in which racism was embedded into American law and other modern institutions, maintaining the dominance of white people.CRT argues that racism is not a matter of individual bigotry but a systemic issue that creates an uneven playing field for people of colour.Body blow for Biden as voters in Virginia and New Jersey desert DemocratsRead moreKimberlé Williams Crenshaw, a law professor widely credited with coining the term, told the New York Times: “It is a way of seeing, attending to, accounting for, tracing and analyzing the ways that race is produced, the ways that racial inequality is facilitated, and the ways that our history has created these inequalities that now can be almost effortlessly reproduced unless we attend to the existence of these inequalities.”A year or so ago few people had heard of it, yet Republicans have whipped up a moral panic that CRT is being rammed down the throats of schoolchildren. They caricature it as teaching Black children to internalise victimhood and white children to self-identify as oppressors.Is it taught in schools?No, it is not a part of the secondary school curriculum. The National School Boards Association and other education leaders are adamant that CRT is not being taught in K-12 schools, which teach students from five to 18 years old.But Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and other rightwing media have turned it into a catch-all buzzword for any teaching in schools about race and American history. They loosely apply it to concepts such as equity and anti-bias training for teachers.Patti Hidalgo Menders, president of the Loudoun County Republican Women’s Club in Virginia, told the Guardian last week: “They may not call it critical race theory, but they’re calling it equity, diversity, inclusion. They use culturally responsive training for their teachers. It is fundamentally CRT.“It’s dividing our children into victims and oppressors and what’s a child supposed to do with that?”Efforts to weaponise CRT were reinforced by former president Donald Trump and a rightwing ecosystem including influential thinktanks. Last year Christopher Rufo, a conservative scholar now at the Manhattan Institute, told the Fox News host Tucker Carlson that CRT was a form of “cult indoctrination”.In January the Heritage Foundation hosted a panel discussion where the moderator, Angela Sailor, warned: “Critical race theory is the complete rejection of the best ideas of the American founding. This is some dangerous, dangerous philosophical poisoning in the blood stream.”What role did CRT play in Virginia’s election?Winning Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin’s signature issue was education. He hammered government schools on “culture war” issues such as race and transgender rights and falsely claimed that his Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe, called his friend, President Joe Biden, and asked the FBI to silence conservative parents.Youngkin said he would ban the teaching of CRT in Virginia classrooms. At a campaign event in Glen Allen last month, the candidate said to applause: “What we won’t do is teach our children to view everything through the lens of race. On day one, I will ban critical race theory.”McAuliffe was forced on to the defensive and had to engage with the issue. He accused Republicans of using the Trump playbook of division and deceit, a message that did not cut through in the same way.Why did the issue resonate with voters?This can be seen as a rightwing backlash to last year’s Black Lives Matter protests and conversations about structural racism that followed the police murder of George Floyd, an African American man in Minneapolis. It also can be seen as a response to America’s changing demographics, specifically the increase in the minority population.It also comes after lengthy school closures during the pandemic infuriated many parents. School board meetings in Virginia and elsewhere have turned ugly, even violent, and protest signs calling for bans on masks and CRT are sometimes almost interchangeable.This week conservatives targeted school board elections nationwide over masking rules and teaching racial justice issues. In Virginia, 14% of voters listed education as a top issue, and about seven of 10 of those voted for Youngkin.McAuliffe did not help himself when, during a debate, he said, “I don’t believe parents should be telling schools what they should teach” – a line that was constantly replayed in Youngkin attacks ads.Youngkin also highlighted a high school bathroom sexual assault case in affluent Loudoun county, in northern Virginia, to argue against allowing transgender students into their chosen restrooms.Is it just Virginia?No. Officials in Republican-controlled states across America are proposing numerous laws to ban teachers from emphasizing the role of systemic racism. Legislation aiming to curb how teachers talk about race has been considered by at least 15 states, according to research by Education Week.Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, has described CRT as “state-sanctioned racism”.Brad Little, the governor of Idaho, signed into law a measure banning public schools from teaching CRT, which it claimed will “exacerbate and inflame divisions on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or other criteria in ways contrary to the unity of the nation and the wellbeing of the state of Idaho and its citizens”.Red states are also targeting the 1619 Project, a series by the New York Times which contends that modern American history began with the arrival of enslaved people four centuries ago and examines that legacy.Republicans are expected to use the Youngkin formula to woo suburban voters in next year’s midterm elections for Congress.TopicsUS politicsRepublicansRaceDemocratsVirginiaexplainersReuse this content More

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      Body blow for Biden as voters in Virginia and New Jersey desert Democrats

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      US politicsBody blow for Biden as voters in Virginia and New Jersey desert DemocratsGovernor’s races bring more bad news for president whose domestic agenda hangs in the balance Lauren Gambino in Washington@laurenegambinoWed 3 Nov 2021 12.04 EDTLast modified on Wed 3 Nov 2021 15.33 EDTLess than a year after taking control of the White House and Congress, Democrats were reeling on Wednesday from a shocking defeat in Virginia and a too-close-to-call governor’s race in New Jersey as Joe Biden’s popularity sinks and his domestic agenda hangs in the balance.Democrats suffer disastrous night in Virginia and a tight race in New Jersey – liveRead moreIn Virginia, a state that had shifted sharply left over the past decade and that Biden won by 10 points in 2020, Republican Glenn Youngkin, a political newcomer, defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe, the state’s former governor. And in New Jersey, the Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, was struggling to turn back a challenge from Republican Jack Ciattarelli, an unexpected turn of events in a state that is even more reliably Democratic.“Together, we will change the trajectory of this commonwealth and, friends, we are going to start that transformation on day one. There is no time to waste,” Youngkin said, addressing jubilant supporters in the early hours of Wednesday.Republicans’ resurgence after five years of stinging defeats during the Donald Trump era offers a stark warning for Democrats already wary of next year’s midterm elections. Their wins have echoes of 2009, when Republican victories in Virginia and New Jersey presaged their stunning takeover of the House in the 2010 midterms.“In a cycle like this, no Democrat is safe,” said Tom Emmer, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. On Wednesday, the group announced it was expanding its list of Democratic targets for the 2022 midterms following Youngkin’s victory.The final weeks of the governor’s race in Virginia were dominated by education, as Youngkin, a 54-year-old former business executive, sought to harness parents’ frustration over school closures, mask mandates and anti-racism curriculum.Exploiting the nation’s culture wars over race and education, Youngkin repeatedly promised to outlaw “critical race theory”, an academic concept about the effects of systemic racism that is not taught in Virginia schools but has nevertheless galvanized conservatives across the country.McAuliffe, 64, worked relentlessly to tie his opponent to Trump in an attempt to revive the backlash to Trump that powered Democratic gains in recent years. But the effort was in vain.Exit polls showed Biden was nearly as unpopular as Trump in Virginia, with Youngkin outperforming the former president in counties across the commonwealth. His success offered Republicans a strategy for how to mobilize Trump’s most ardent supporters while appealing to moderate voters in the suburbs who felt alienated by the former president.Tuesday’s elections were the first major test of the national mood since Biden took office in January, and the results were deeply disappointing for the president and his party as they try to keep control of wafer-thin majorities in Congress.Democrats were not well served by Biden’s sagging poll numbers, which have slumped to near-historic lows after months of infighting among Democrats over his nearly $3tn legislative agenda on Capitol Hill, a devastating evacuation from Afghanistan and the ever-present threat of the coronavirus.“This election is a warning for all Democrats,” Guy Cecil, chair of the Democratic political group Priorities USA, said in a statement. “While DC Democrats spent weeks fighting each other, Republicans were focused on mobilizing their base and peeling away voters from the Biden coalition using deceptive, divisive tactics.”It remains unclear whether the defeat in Virginia will spur Democratic lawmakers to action on a shrunken version of Biden’s agenda – or if it will cause them to retreat from the sweeping plans.On Wednesday, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, signalled that Democrats were prepared to charge ahead as planned. She announced that the rules committee would hold a hearing on the $1.75tn domestic policy and climate mitigation bill, paving the way for a vote on the legislation and a companion $1tn infrastructure measure.“Today is another momentous day in our historic effort to make the future better for the American people, for the children, to Build Back Better with women, to save the planet,” Pelosi wrote in a letter to Democrats on Wednesday.Arriving at the Capitol on Wednesday morning, Pelosi brushed off any suggestion that McAuliffe’s loss changed the outlook for their agenda. “No, no,” she told reporters.But in the wake of Tuesday’s elections, some Democrats expressed fresh doubt about the party’s resolve to enact both pieces of Biden’s agenda. Centrist lawmakers said the defeat was reason to swiftly pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill, regardless of what happens with the larger spending measure, amid concern that the effort would further alienate moderate and suburban voters who were critical to Biden’s victory in 2020 but shifted back toward Republicans in Virginia on Tuesday.But progressives argued that abandoning their ambitious policy proposals would only spell further doom for their party, in desperate need of an economic message.“The lesson going into 2022 is that Democrats need to use power to get big things done for working people and then run on those accomplishments. Period,” the Progressive Change Campaign Committee said in a statement.“Democrats won’t win simply by branding one opponent after another as a Trump clone, and then hoping to squeak out a razor-thin win. When Democrats fail to run on big ideas or fulfill bold campaign promises, we depress our base while allowing Republicans to use culture wars to hide their real agenda.”Democrats have only a five-vote margin in the House and are tied in the Senate, relying on the vice-president’s casting vote. Historically, the party in power in the White House almost always loses seats in Congress.Elsewhere across the US, it was a night of historic firsts for Asian American candidates, a sign of the growing political strength of the AAPI community amid a rise in anti-Asian hate.Michelle Wu became the first woman and person of color elected to be mayor of Boston in the city’s 200-year history. Wu, a progressive Democrat endorsed by her former Harvard law professor, the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, defeated fellow city councilor Annissa Essaibi George, who ran as a pragmatist with the backing of the city’s traditional power players.In Cincinnati, Aftab Pureval, the son of immigrants from Tibet and India, defeated the former Democratic congressman David Mann. In Dearborn, Michigan, voters elected Abdullah Hammoud, a state lawmaker, as its first Arab American mayor.In New York City, Democrat Eric Adams, a former NYPD police captain, was elected mayor of the nation’s largest city. He will be the second Black mayor in the city’s history.TopicsUS politicsVirginiaDemocratsJoe BidenUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesNancy PelosinewsReuse this content More

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      What Youngkin's Win in the Virginia Governor Race Means for Democrats

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      Less than a year after taking power in Washington, the party faces a grim immediate future, struggling to energize voters without a presidential foil and losing messaging wars to Republicans.The menacing thunder couldn’t get much louder for Democrats.Few in the party had high hopes that their era of rule in Washington would last beyond the midterm elections next year. But the Republican resurgence on Tuesday in Virginia — a state that President Biden won by 10 percentage points last year — and surprising strength in solidly blue New Jersey offer a vivid warning of the storm clouds gathering as Democrats look warily to the horizon.For five years, the party rode record-breaking turnouts to victory, fueled by voters with a passion for ousting a president they viewed as incompetent, divisive or worse. Tuesday’s results showed the limitations of such resistance politics when the object of resistance is out of power, the failure of Democrats to fulfill many of their biggest campaign promises, and the still-simmering rage over a pandemic that transformed schools into some of the country’s most divisive political battlegrounds.The Republican Glenn Youngkin, a former private-equity executive, defeated the Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the race for Virginia’s governor.Melissa Lyttle for The New York TimesIn Virginia, the Democratic nominee for governor, Terry McAuliffe, was beaten with relative ease by Glenn Youngkin, a Republican private equity executive and political newcomer.In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, faced a stunningly close race after being expected to coast to victory. In Minneapolis, voters rejected a ballot measure pushed by progressives that would have replaced the Police Department with a public safety department.Perhaps most strikingly, the crushing setbacks for Democrats in heavily suburban Virginia and New Jersey hinted at a conservative-stoked backlash to the changing mores around race and identity championed by the party, as Republicans relentlessly sought to turn schools into the next front in the country’s culture wars.For Democrats, the results on the nation’s single biggest day of voting until the midterms next year raised alarms that the wave of anti-Trump energy that carried them into power has curdled into apathy in a base that is tired of protesting and is largely back at brunch. Or, in what would be even more politically perilous, that the party’s motivation has been replaced by a sense of dissatisfaction with the state of a country that has, despite all of Mr. Biden’s campaign promises, not yet returned to a pre-Covid sense of normalcy.Virginia Shifts Right in Race for GovernorThe Republican candidate for governor, Glenn Youngkin, received much stronger support in every corner of the state than President Trump did in 2020. Mr. Youngkin defeated former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, the Democrat, according to The Associated Press. More

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      Terry McAuliffe Concedes in Virginia Governor's Race

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      Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate for governor in Virginia, conceded on Wednesday morning to his Republican opponent, the businessman Glenn Youngkin, as the Republican Party claimed the state’s governorship for the first time in more than a decade.“While last night we came up short, I am proud that we spent this campaign fighting for the values we so deeply believe in,” Mr. McAuliffe said in a statement.He added, “While there will be setbacks along the way, I am confident that the long-term path of Virginia is toward inclusion, openness and tolerance for all.”With his victory, Mr. Youngkin, 54, presented his party with a formula for how to exploit President Biden’s vulnerabilities and evade the shadow of Donald J. Trump in Democratic-leaning states. A wealthy former private equity executive making his first run for office, he elevated education and taxes while projecting a suburban-dad demeanor to demonstrate he was different from Mr. Trump without saying so outright.With Mr. Trump out of office, Mr. McAuliffe struggled to generate enthusiasm among liberals at a moment when conservatives are energized in opposition to Mr. Biden.The Associated Press called the race for Mr. Youngkin shortly after 12:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, hours after the polls closed on Tuesday night.Mr. Youngkin’s surprise victory in Virginia represents the starkest warning yet that Democrats are in danger. It was likely to prompt additional congressional retirements, intensify the intraparty tug of war over Mr. Biden’s agenda and fuel fears that a midterm electoral wave and Mr. Trump’s return as a candidate are all but inevitable.“The MAGA movement is bigger and stronger than ever before,” Mr. Trump said in a statement Tuesday night. More

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      Catch up on Election Day results from around the United States.

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      The governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey and the New York City mayoral election were among the highlights.After voters elected President Biden and pushed Republicans fully out of power in Washington, the party rebounded with a strong election night on Tuesday, highlighted by Glenn Youngkin’s victory in Virginia’s governor’s race.Here is a run-down of election results from some of the closely watched races around the country on Tuesday.Virginia governor’s raceBusinessman Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, defeated former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat who struggled to generate enthusiasm among liberals at a moment when conservatives are energized in opposition to Mr. Biden.The victory by Mr. Youngkin, a first-time candidate in one of only two gubernatorial races before next year’s midterm election, may provide his party with a formula for how to exploit President Biden’s vulnerabilities and evade the shadow of former President Donald J. Trump in Democratic-leaning states.New Jersey governor’s raceFormer Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli, a moderate Republican, surprised many analysts with a strong showing in the race for governor in New Jersey against Gov. Philip D. Murphy, a Democrat seeking a second term who was ahead in most public polling before Tuesday’s contest.The race was too close to call early Wednesday.New York CityIn the city’s mayoral race, Eric Adams, a former police captain and Brooklyn borough president, easily dispatched his long shot Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, to become only the second Black person elected mayor in the city’s history.And Alvin Bragg was elected Manhattan district attorney. He will become the first Black person to lead the influential office, which handles tens of thousands of cases a year and is conducting a high-profile investigation into former President Donald J. Trump and his family business.Boston mayor’s raceMichelle Wu easily defeated City Councilor Annissa Essaibi George to become the first woman, first person of color and first person of Asian descent to be elected mayor in Boston. The city has been led by an unbroken string of Irish American or Italian American men since the 1930s.Minneapolis police ballot itemMinneapolis residents rejected an amendment that called for replacing the city’s long-troubled Police Department with a new Department of Public Safety, The Associated Press projected.The ballot item emerged from anger after a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd last year, galvanizing residents who saw the policing system as irredeemably broken. More