The slap. Just a year after placing its trust in Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, with a 10-point lead, Virginia sent a strong message to the Democratic government on Tuesday night by handing over the post of state governor to a Republican, Glenn Youngkin, supported and dubbed by Donald Trump.
He is the first Republican to regain a key elected post in Virginia in 12 years.
With a turnout described as “very strong” by the electoral authorities, the Virginians thus refused to grant a second term to Democrat Terry McAuliffe who lost significant support in the southern suburbs of Richmond, the capital, but also in the south. -is Virginia, the Norfolk region, which has been Democrat for over 10 years.
The results of this local election, followed by the whole country because it was held on the sidelines of the first difficult months of the Biden administration, however, confirm a tradition in the state which for 44 years has elected a governor who has not not represent the ruling party in Washington.
Only one succeeded in breaking this logic in 2013: Terry McAuliffe, during his first mandate, under the administration of Barack Obama, came to support his campaign in the last days. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris also took part in the campaign, alarming voters about the risks of backsliding a Republican victory could represent.
Since 1865, Virginia has only once granted a second term to a governor.
Difficulties of the Biden government
“This election will be closely scrutinized by the Democrats who played against Youngkin the same anti-Trump strategy as during the presidential election,” comments political scientist Alexandra Reckendorf, specialist in voter behavior and political opinion at the Virginia Commonwealth University. Strategy which this time did not work.
According to her, the vote was certainly influenced in part by the difficulties encountered by the government of Joe Biden in delivering on its promises of social programs and ambitious environmental policies, and this, due to numerous legislative blockages coming from both the Republican camp and the his own party.
“For some voters, Democrats are unable to keep their promises,” she said. And their vote somehow takes away a confidence that the party in power no longer deserves ”.
The difficulty of containing the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in Republican states where mistrust of health measures and vaccination has raised the number of cases, deaths and compromised an economic return to normal, also played against the democratic candidate. 34% of Virginians said in a poll cited by AP that the economy was at the top of their minds in a country where inflation and rising gasoline prices are increasingly irritating.
Ultraconservative speech
Glenn Youngkin’s victory also marks that of the ultraconservative and moral discourse that the 54-year-old politician – a former high-ranking official of the Carlyle Group, an investment fund close to the Republican establishment – carried during his campaign. Openly opposed to vaccination or the wearing of compulsory masks for children, in the fight against COVID-19, the Republican has been the mouthpiece of parents worried to see critical theories on race and institutionalized racism reach school programs in public schools. This fear is not supported by the facts, however: these theories are not taught to children in Virginia.
He also promised to make access to abortion more difficult in his state, without however specifying how he was going to do it.
“Together, we will change the trajectory of [la Virginie], he said in the middle of the night, accepting the victory. And we’re going to start this transformation from day one. There’s no time to lose. Our children cannot wait. We will work within the real world time frame, not the government time frame. “
Supported by Donald Trump, Youngkin – who conveys the fanciful idea that the 2020 elections were fraudulent, at odds with the facts – however refused to appear in his presence throughout the campaign, in order to avoid comparisons. Comparisons that the opposing camp did not fail to highlight, calling the Republican candidate “alter ego” of the former president.
On Monday, in a written statement, Donald Trump said “get along very well” with Youngkin and assured that the two men “firmly believe in the same policies”. He also called on voters in Virginia to come out in droves to vote.
For the ex-representative of Virginia’s most populous Fairfax County, the Republican candidate’s ambivalence to the populist has paid off and should be replicated by others in the future, in anticipation of the mid-election. mandate in 2022. “You want to keep the people Trump brought into the party, but at the same time find new support in the suburbs,” he said in an interview with the Washington Post. “You don’t kiss him, but you don’t dump him either, because he’s still the heart and soul of the Republican Party. This, despite an attempted coup d’etat which inspired him on January 6, when his supporters stormed the Capitol in order to overturn the results of the presidential election which consecrated his defeat.
Paradoxically, while discrediting the American electoral system for more than a year, shouting about fraud, manipulation of the results and questioning the reliability of the postal vote, the Republicans in Virginia took advantage of an electoral framework very liberal, implemented by the Democrats since 2017. The state made postal voting accessible to all and imposed a period of 45 days for early voting, one of the longest in the United States. Mr. Youngkin has also called on voters to avail themselves of this right, yet pointed out by Republicans, wrongly, as a source of electoral fraud.
Elsewhere in the country, the race for governor of New Jersey was still tight in the middle of the night between Phil Murphy, surprisingly on the heels of in this heavily Democratic-focused state by Republican Jack Ciattarelli. This evening of local elections also quickly consecrated Democrat Eric Adams’ victory for mayor of New York, which shattered the dream of his Republican opponent, Curtis Sliwa, legend of the city, for having founded the citizen self-defense brigades. , the Guardian Angels, in the 1970s. Boston also elected city councilor Michelle Wu, who became the city’s first female mayor of Asian origin.
This report was partly funded with support from the Transat-Le Devoir International Journalism Fund.