Did McAuliffe backtrack on his strategy to tie Youngkin to Trump in
This weekly column on the next race for the White House usually zeroes in on the burgeoning contest for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
But with former President Donald Trump – the overwhelming front runner right now in the next Republican nomination race – front and center in Tuesday’s closely watched Virginia gubernatorial election, we’ll start with the high profile 2021 statewide showdown with national implications.
After repeatedly linking GOP nominee Glenn Youngkin to Trump for months, former Democratic Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe told reporters this weekend that the election is “not about Trump.”
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McAuliffe’s comment during a gaggle with reporters in Virginia Beach on Saturday comes after the former governor who’s running to win back his old job has rarely missed an opportunity to tie Youngkin to Trump at his campaign events, in his ads, and in his interviews.
Virginia Republican gubernatorial nominee Glenn Youngkin speaks during a campaign event in Old Town Alexandria’s Farmers Market in Alexandria, Virginia, U.S., October 30, 2021. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
(Reuters)
The strategy’s simple: Opposition to Trump sparked heavy turnout by Democrats during his presidency, helping to fuel the blue wave that enabled the Democrats to convincingly win back the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterms and help propel now-President Biden to victory over Trump in last November’s election.
Now, with Trump more than nine months removed from the White House, McAuliffe’s battling a voter enthusiasm gap among Democrats in a race that most of the latest polls indicates is all tied up – in a state where Republicans haven’t won an election for governor, lieutenant governor, or attorney general in a dozen years. And those same polls indicate that Trump, who lost Virginia by 10 points to Biden in last year’s presidential election, remains very unpopular among Democrats and independent voters.
When pressed by Fox News’ Rich Edson about saying that the Virginia race is not about the former president, McAuliffe said “Trump is not liked here in the commonwealth of Virginia…People want to be lifted up; Trump is hate and division.”
And McAuliffe said that Trump “wants to run again in 2024” and suggested that the former president wants to use the 2021 election “as a launch pad for that.”
Trump remains very popular with Republican voters in Virginia and across the country, and extremely influential with GOP politicians, as he continues to play a kingmaker’s role in the party and repeatedly teases another presidential run in 2024. And his endorsement of Youngkin in the spring helped the first-time candidate and former private equity CEO, who hails from the business wing of the party, win Virginia’s heavily contested GOP nomination.
At the…
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