The pundits sure want it to.
The process of running for governor in Virginia seems designed to make politicos nervous. Since the mid-1800s, the state has held off-year gubernatorial elections. That means no drafting off some popular presidential nominee or superstar senator—you gotta build your own coalition. And since there aren’t many other elections to talk about, this race is guaranteed to get a lot of attention. You can’t hide from the strategists and journalists next door in Washington who are looking to divine meaning from your electorate. November’s gubernatorial race is between Democrat Terry McAuliffe, who served as governor of Virginia four years ago, and Republican Glenn Youngkin, who has never been elected to anything. The last time a Republican won statewide office was in 2009, but the right seems particularly energized this year—and that has Democrats worried. On Wednesday’s episode of What Next, I spoke to Ben Paviour, state politics reporter for VPM, about who’s up, who’s down, and what, if anything, Virginia can tell us about the national political mood going into 2022. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity. Mary Harris: For the last decade or so, there’s been a story political people have told themselves about Virginia. It goes like this: Suburban voters have been turning against ugly Republican talking points. As a result, an increasingly diverse and urbane place like Virginia is getting purpler and purpler. Just two years ago, Democrats were celebrating an immense victory: having flipped the state House of Delegates and state Senate. The governor and both senators were Dems too. It seemed like a turning point. But the tight margins in this year’s gubernatorial contest have made some people start to question that logic. Ben Paviour: The polls have become closer and closer. McAuliffe has around a 3-point edge in the average of polls. It, I think, is really going to come down to turnout. And so what we’re seeing is both candidates really trying to gin up enthusiasm, make sure people know there’s an election and just get them to the polls. The national mood is hugely important in Virginia. There’s a tradition stretching back 30-plus years that the party that won the White House loses Virginia’s off-year election the next year, they lose the governor’s race in Virginia the next year. The only person to break that streak was Terry McAuliffe in 2013. The fact that their candidate this year beat the odds last time around is one of the things giving Democrats hope. Governors in Virginia are prohibited from serving consecutive terms, which is why McAuliffe is running again after a four-year break. He’s been a party stalwart for decades. He was a fundraiser, head of the DNC for a stretch in the early 2000s. He was a fundraiser for the Clintons. Exactly. Tight connections to a number of high-profile Democrats. Staged his first run in 2009, didn’t win the nomination. Democrats ended up losing that year in Virginia. Ran again in 2013. Pulled off a narrow win against Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican who served for a stretch in the Trump administration down the road. And McAuliffe presided over a legislature that was heavily Republican, so he faced challenges in getting much done, and he spent a lot of his time focusing on economic development. He was all over the place trying to ink economic deals that would bring jobs and manufacturing and that kind of thing to Virginia. It sounds like such an old-school Democrat kind of vibe. Very much so. I mean, he’s somebody who backed the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, this big infrastructure project that was going to come through Virginia, which was canceled last year. He ran on that platform, as a centrist Democrat, which has played very well with the Virginia electorate in the last 20 years. And his tune has changed a little bit since then, but I think he is still running on what he did as governor, particularly his economic development and focusing on jobs, on the economy, those sorts of things. It seems to me the major selling point of Terry McAuliffe is his connection to D.C. But we’re at such a funny moment where Joe Biden is working like hell to get his agenda passed, but reaching a lot of roadblocks when it comes to Congress. How is McAuliffe handling that on the campaign trail? Recently, he has really stepped up calls for Congress to pass the $1.
