The battle for control of Virginia’s legislature will serve as the first major test of Youngkin’s political success in office.
Leesburg, Va.—Two years after his Election Eve “Parents Matter” rally in Loudoun County helped propel him to the governor’s mansion in November 2021, it’s here in blue-leaning Northern Virginia where Governor Glenn Youngkin concluded his party’s months-long campaign for unified Republican control of Richmond in Tuesday’s state elections.
The races are competitive. With 140 General Assembly seats up for grabs in this cycle’s off-year elections, the popular GOP governor is hoping his campaign’s push for early and absentee voting will help Republicans hold the house of delegates and flip the Democrat-controlled state senate.
“We learned in 2021 how to win elections,” an energetic Youngkin, clad in his trademark red vest, told a crowd of supporters in Leesburg, Virginia, Monday evening. “How do you win elections? Get more votes than the other guy.”
Republicans are messaging heavily on job growth, tax relief, public safety, and of course, parental involvement in K-12 schools. “No day will be more vividly held in my mind than when I sat on those steps in our capitol, and I signed that bill that said that parents will decide if your child wears a mask in school,” Youngkin told the crowd Monday evening. “Children belong to parents, not to the state.”
The GOP governor and his K-12 centric agenda remain popular in blue-leaning Virginia, a state Biden carried by ten points three years ago. But even still, Republicans are no longer campaigning in the pandemic-era political environment—i.e. K-12 school closures and mask mandates—that rocketed Youngkin to victory two years ago. And as elections predictor Sabato’s Crystal Ball put it last week, “this year doesn’t seem to have the ‘feel’ of 2021 in Virginia, when Youngkin and Republicans won the statewide offices and flipped the state House.”
Republicans can feel it too. “This election’s gonna come down to 500 votes,” businessman and Loudoun-area state senate candidate Juan Pablo Segura told the crowd Monday evening.
Meanwhile Virginia Democrats are betting Tuesday’s state legislative elections will serve as a major bellwether for how abortion plays at the ballot box now a little more than a year after the Supreme Court struck down Roe. v. Wade.
Youngkin has encouraged down-ballot Republicans to campaign on his consensus proposal that would prohibit abortion beyond the 15-week mark with exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother. It’s an attempt to flip the script from the 2022 midterm elections, when many Republican candidates running competitive seats shied away from the issue or went too hard to the right, losing many independent and suburban voters at the ballot box as a result. If swing-seat Virginia Republicans perform well Tuesday evening, Youngkin’s 15-week standard could serve as a blueprint for Republicans running tough races across the country in 2024.
Democrats are spending millions characterizing Republicans as extremists on the issue. “What the other side has been doing is getting billionaires from places that you don’t even know to come in and dump money in for their opponents who do nothing but tell lies,” Youngkin said Monday evening in a reference to many Democratic ads that suggest GOP candidates want to ban abortion full stop. “You can’t help but watch these ads and shake your head because they say things that are so untrue.”
Youngkin is not on the ballot but might as well be. Given Virginia prohibits governors from serving consecutive terms, many deep-pocketed donors dissatisfied with the non-Trump GOP presidential field are hoping that if there’s a red wave Tuesday evening, Youngkin might announce an eleventh-hour bid for the White House in 2024. “He appears to be leaving the door open. And if Republicans win in Virginia, maybe we can talk him into it,” Spirit of Virginia donor Thomas Peterffy told the Washington Post in September.
That’s a very conditional “if.” Youngkin has not explicitly ruled out a 2024 White House bid, though he’s maintained in recent interviews that his focus is Virginia. And at this stage in the race declared candidates have spent months lining up endorsements and blanketing early state airwaves with advertising. Not to mention many presidential filing deadlines have also already passed.
As Youngkin weighs his own political future not even halfway through his first term, the Republican shadow race for the governor’s seat is already underway. Earlier this summer, sources close to Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears and Attorney General Jason Miyares began teasing prospective 2025 gubernatorial campaigns. Both candidates have kept public discussion of their looming gubernatorial bids to a minimum in the lead-up to Election Day.
For now, Republicans are hoping Youngkin’s 2021 model still has enough juice to win them unified control of Richmond two years later. “That year, we did the unthinkable. We set a precedent for the country that is known in many places,” Virginia GOP Chairman Rich Anderson told the crowd Monday evening. “This year is the year when we flip the Senate, hold the house, and save the Commonwealth.”