“We need leadership as governor, not trying to be a Trump wannabe and doing the talking points,” McAuliffe said while attacking Youngkin over vaccine mandates.
Youngkin has been endorsed by Trump and has accepted his endorsement, but bristled when McAuliffe raised the former president on the stage, accusing him of trying to take attention away from state issues. “There’s an over and under tonight on how many times you are going to say ‘Donald Trump,’ and it was 10,” Youngkin said Tuesday night. “And you just busted through it. You are running against Glenn Youngkin.”
The debate was held in vote-rich Northern Virginia, an area that would be key to any potential Democratic victory. The sprawling region is one that heavily favors McAuliffe and is emblematic of the shift of suburban voters throughout Trump’s tenure in the White House.
And Democrats’ surrogates ahead of the debate also point to the type of voters they are trying to keep in their camp with Trump out of the White House — squishy suburbanites who broke away from the GOP due to Trump. The state party held a press availability ahead of the debate, trotting out former Republican state Del. David Ramadan and Bill Kristol, the longtime neoconservative never-Trump pundit, and McAuliffe shouted out both men on stage.
“Northern Virginia, if not the state overall, is still in my opinion, a third, a third and a third,” said Ramadan, referencing a third for either party and a third independent. “Both parties are going to bring out their bases, right? But what it comes down to here is, are the independents going to come out?”
The question is, however, how much of that swing toward Democrats has stuck with Trump out of office. Public and private polling has suggested that this race will be closer than Biden’s blowout win in 2020. The latest sign was a poll from Monmouth University released on the eve of the debate that had McAuliffe up 5 points over Youngkin among registered voters — a narrow yet stable lead compared to an earlier August poll from the university.
Republicans are hoping that with Trump gone, they can claw back some ground. And Democrats have relentlessly been trying to turn the November election into a referendum on Trump’s sway on the commonwealth, casting Youngkin as an acolyte of Trump.
For his part, Youngkin — a former private-equity executive — tried to stick to his core message, focused on the economy and crime. He hit McAuliffe for saying he would support a bill repealing the state’s “right-to-work” law.
“This bill is going to come to his desk, and Terry McAuliffe will sign it. He said that, and the minute he said he would sign it, every union in America endorsed him,” Youngkin said. “It will be the death blow for Virginia’s business climate. This is why every business organization in Virginia that has offered an endorsement so far has given it to me. Not to you, Terry, but to me.”
McAuliffe, who had previously said…
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