virginia governor national issues ad wars

While top Democrats in Washington work out how best to deploy Biden himself in the home stretch, operatives and elected officials have called on Barack Obama, First Lady Jill Biden, and Stacey Abrams to campaign for McAuliffe, in part because they acknowledge his loss would create waves of commentary about Democrats’ electoral struggles in the Biden era. It’s all made for an appropriately portentous preview of the next year of American politics, where every semi-competitive race is now treated as if it holds the secret key to long-term electoral success. Meanwhile, he’s been pitching the final weeks of his campaign as an effort to save Virginia’s schools from, as one local GOP leader put it to me last week, “critical race theory, wokeness, and political correctness.” Glenn Youngkin - the Republican private-equity exec who was so little-known locally that early campaign stories had to use old news photos of his appearances in Davos - is, on the other hand, contorting himself to avoid invoking Trump in front of moderates and suburbanites, while at the same time appearing with conspiracy-spewing Trump allies such as Seb Gorka. Terry McAuliffe, the former governor running for his old job, has been talking about what he accomplished in Richmond but has recently spent an increasing amount of his time and ad budget focusing on his opponent’s ties to Donald Trump. From Richmond to Virginia Beach, it is Democrats who are working to nationalize the campaign despite President Biden’s dipping approval ratings and Republican optimism about next year’s midterms, a move Biden’s White House has dialed into in recent weeks, while right-wingers are trying to turn voters’ focus toward the hyperlocal. But with three weeks until Virginia votes for its next governor, the electoral equation has been scrambled. Usually, when Washington is at a decisive consensus that one party is in disarray - that its next election cycle will be messy, that its wings can’t agree, that voters aren’t convinced by its standard bearer - its candidates follow a simple formula: Ditch the national party and focus instead on local issues. Republicans will have to learn to play by Democratic rules.Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer Photos: Getty Images/Shutterstock If Gillespie had uncovered and used the yearbook, he would probably be Virginia’s governor today. Probably because Gillespie is above searching for this kind of largely irrelevant (to the fair-minded) ancient dirt. It would also be interesting to know why Northam’s Republican opponent in the gubernatorial race, “Easy” Ed Gillespie and his campaign team did not discover Northam’s med school yearbook (I assume it didn’t discovery it). In that regard, it would be interesting to know how many Virginia delegates and senators have one or more racist (or racially tinged, to use the popular weasel words of today) antic in their past. I suppose Virginia’s delegates and senators could ignore the state constitution and impeach/remove Northam simply because they want to. Constitution’s standard, for that matter). The Virginia constitution is clear that impeachment is limited to cases where an official has offended “against the Commonwealth by malfeasance in office, corruption, neglect of duty, or other high crimes or misdemeanor.” An offensive yearbook page from 1984 doesn’t meet this standard under any fair analysis. However, there’s a substantive difference between the two constitutions on what amounts to an impeachable offense. The House of Delegates can bring impeachment charges and the state Senate can remove the governor. As to the second, the Virginia constitution apparently has an impeachment procedure similar to the one applicable to the U.S. I don’t know the answer to either question. Will Northam stick to his guns and refuse to resign? If so, will he be able to keep his job? He’s also into infanticide, if anyone cares about that. So now we can be reasonably confident that Northam was a racist in 1984 and is a liar today. Interviews with EVMS alumni indicate that students were each given a half page and submitted their own photos to be published on those pages. The Virginia Pilot researched the burning question of how pictures found their way on to student pages of the 1984 yearbook of the Eastern Virginia Medical School. Nor can how explain how he got the nickname “Coonman.” Recognizing that an apology isn’t going to cut it, Northam now claims, contrary to an earlier admission, that he isn’t in the offending picture that appeared on his yearbook page. Demands for Northam’s resignation are pouring in.

Virginia governor national issues ad wars