The 54-year-old Youngkin's defeat of Democrat
The election was the first major test of voter sentiment since Biden took office, and the results were a stern warning sign for the president's own support. His administration has been shaken repeatedly in recent months, beginning with the chaotic withdrawal from
Youngkin, a political neophyte and former private equity executive, was able to take advantage of apparent apathy among core Democratic voters fatigued by years of elections that were seen as must-wins. He successfully portrayed McAuliffe, a former
Perhaps most significantly, Youngkin prevailed in a task that has stumped scores of
During the campaign, Youngkin stated his support for “election integrity,” a nod at Trump's lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, while also focusing on education and business-friendly policies. He never campaigned in person with Trump, successfully challenging McAuliffe's effort to cast him as a clone of the former president.
That approach could provide a model for
In addition to the stinging loss for the
Meanwhile, mayoral contests from
But no other contest in this off-year election season received the level of national attention — and money — as the governor's race in
A former co-CEO at
Youngkin ran confidently on a conservative platform. He opposed a major clean energy mandate the state passed two years ago and objected to abortion in most circumstances.
He also backed a business-friendly approach to the state’s economy, opposed mask and vaccine mandates, promised to expand Virginia’s limited charter schools and ban critical race theory, an academic framework that centers on the idea that racism is systemic in the nation’s institutions and that they function to maintain the dominance of white people. In recent months, it has become a catch-all political buzzword for any teaching in schools about race and American history.
McAuliffe tried to energize the Democratic base by highlighting abortion, denouncing a new
Youngkin didn't discuss abortion much publicly, and a liberal activist caught him on tape saying the issue couldn't help him during the campaign. He said an election win would allow the party to “start going on offense” on the issue.
While McAuliffe pulled on the star power of a host of national
Youngkin proved perhaps most successful in deflecting McAuliffe's efforts to tie him to Trump and the former president's divisive political style.
Even Biden, who made his second trip of the 2021 campaign to suburban
“Extremism can come in many forms. It can come in the rage of a mob driven to assault the
Former Vice President
Polls showed a tight race after McAuliffe said during a late September debate that he didn’t think “parents should be telling schools what they should teach." That prompted Youngkin to run hundreds of TV ads on the statement and to focus on his own pledges to make school curricula less “un-American” and to overhaul policies on transgender students and school bathrooms.
Asked about issues more generally, voters saw the economy as most important, followed by the coronavirus pandemic, according to AP VoteCast, a statewide survey. Some 34% of
The race took an especially bitter turn last week, when Youngkin ran an ad featuring a mother and GOP activist who eight years ago led an effort to ban “Beloved,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Black Nobel laureate
McAuliffe accused Youngkin of uncorking a “racist dog whistle," but Youngkin dismissed that as exaggerated rhetoric from a Democratic campaign rendered “desperate" by polls. He said
“America is watching
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