US politics: Virginia governor’s race offers first test of Biden

At a corn maze and pumpkin patch in northern Virginia this month, former Carlyle chief executive Glenn Youngkin set out his stall.

Dressed in a Nantucket red fleece vest, navy khaki trousers and a white collared shirt, the private equity boss turned politician confidently told hundreds of supporters that next month, he would be elected Virginia’s next governor.

“We stood up, and we said, you know what? We are going to absolutely reject this left, liberal, progressive policy agenda,” Youngkin said to cheers.

Youngkin, 54, is a Republican, running in a southern state where Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by more than 10 points in last November’s presidential election. Virginia is a state — officially called a “commonwealth” — that many pundits had written off as “blue” Democratic territory. In 2017, Democrat Ralph Northam defeated Republican Ed Gillespie in the governor’s race there by nearly nine points, driven in large part by a swell of support in affluent suburban areas outside of Washington, DC, that had historically trended Republican yet rebuked Trump’s presidency.

But now, four years later, with Biden’s approval ratings falling precipitously, the rare “off-year” governor’s election in Virginia is widely seen as too close to call. Pollsters and non-partisan analysts are billing the race as a “toss up” — and warning that a victory for Youngkin on November 2 could spell disaster for Democrats in next year’s midterm elections, when control of the US House of Representatives, Senate and dozens more governor’s mansions will be up for grabs.

Whatever the outcome, the Virginia contest will be seen as an important barometer of US political sentiment one year on from Biden’s victory — and a key test of whether the spectre of Trump still looms large in the minds of voters.

For Democrats the election comes at a crucial time, when Biden’s presidency has been plagued by public discontent over the lingering Covid-19 pandemic and rising consumer prices, as well as Democratic party infighting that has stalled the president’s ambitious legislative agenda.

Republicans, meanwhile, see the Virginia race as an opportunity to regain ground lost during the Trump era, and chart a path for more victories in next year’s midterms. For Youngkin, that means mobilising Trump’s ever loyal supporters while also trying to appeal to the moderate suburban voters whose rejection of the former president was a main driver of Democrats’ recent successes at the ballot box.

“Virginia was a deep blue state in the Trump era,” says Ben Tribbett, a veteran Virginia-based Democratic strategist. “I don’t think anyone knows what our identity is . . . post-Trump.”

The latest statewide poll…