Episode 47: What happened?
Virginia's 2021 Election Day has come and gone. And Republican Glenn Youngkin will be the next governor of Virginia. Not only that, but it looks like Democrats have lost their majority in the Virginia House of Delegates. So what happened?
To answer that question, our crew from Bold Dominion joined up with the crew from the podcast Transition Virginia for a special crossover episode.
Machine-generated transcript:
Nathan Moore 0:00
This is Bold Dominon, a state politics explainer for changing Virginia. I'm Nathan Moore. Well, election day has come and gone. And it looks like Republican Glenn young king will be the next Governor of Virginia. Not only that, but Democrats seem to have lost their majority in the House of Delegates. It looks like we're gonna have a 51 to 49 Republican majority in the House. So what happened? To answer that question, our crew from Bold Dominon joined up with the guys from transition Virginia for a crossover podcast episode. In this episode, we hear from Michael Pope, and Thomas Bowman from transition Virginia, as well as Katherine Hansen and Aaryan Balu from Bold Dominon. And, you know, me too.
Michael Pope 0:43
So open question to the panel for anyone that wants to take this jump ball. Why did this happen? Republicans swept all three seats. How did this come about?
Nathan Moore 0:55
You know, Michael, before we totally jump into why, I think just a little bit more of what, you know, so we did see Glenn Younkin, witness by about two percentage points that is very different from last year when Biden won the state by what nine points, and very different from, you know, four years ago when Northam beat Ed Gillespie quite handily by a whole lot of points as well. Um, but, you know, the other thing that happened here is that the General Assembly is going to switch hands. So it's not just that the Governor and Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General are all we're all won by Republicans, but also that the General Assembly has gone from a 55 to 45 Democratic majority to probably a 5149 GOP majority. And so we're going to have, you know, half of the legislature and the governor's mansion both in Republican hands here. The other thing that I want to talk about just a little bit about what happened is the turnout was enormous. This is the highest turnout in a gubernatorial election going back 30 years. And so that was kind of the wild thing when I was looking up some of the numbers on this is that, you know, Terry McAuliffe, this is not a matter of Democrats staying home. 200,000 more people voted for Terry McAuliffe than voted for Northam four years ago. But Glenn Younkin. On the other hand, 500,000 more people voted for Glenn Younkin, than who voted for Ed Gillespie in 2017. I mean, even 2017, the Republican candidate for governor got 1.1 million votes this year is 1.6 million. That is an enormous increase. Now, why
Thomas Bowman 2:23
I say two big flaws in Terry's campaign strategy. One, he didn't give Democrats a reason to come out and vote for him specifically. And related to that everything he did, in his advertisements mentioned Glenn Younkin by name, which is a huge, no, no, no, this is not my assertion. This is campaign basics. 101. You never mentioned your opponent by name. And what he ended up doing is doing all of Glenn's work for him tying him to the base, defining him as a base candidate, which meant that Glenn was free to just go after independence and moderates.
Aaryan Balu 3:03
Totally, totally agreed. It seems I mean, Terry McAuliffe didn't provide an affirmative position. When Younkin did even if those positions are are things I don't find good, like sort of the the railing against critical race theory, charter schools, a lot of stuff that focused on children, which is worth diving into as well. But he got people excited to vote in a way that McAuliffe didn't. And the Trump thing was a play that absolutely didn't work.
Michael Pope 3:37
So Thomas said he didn't really give voters a reason to vote for McAuliffe other than Trump. And I certainly agree that that's how people perceived it. I will say that the McAuliffe campaign did try to make the argument about increasing the minimum wage and paid sick leave and family and medical leave and hazard pay. And you did hear McAuliffe talk about that quite a lot on the campaign trail that did not pierce through to voters. He actually did have a message out there somewhere. But it got lost in all this talk about Trump.
Thomas Bowman 4:13
What he didn't get to do was frame everything the way he wanted to frame it, because as soon as he said that parents shouldn't have a say in their child's education. It rallied up a lot of parents who didn't understand the nuance of that. And, you know, Glenn capitalized on it, and education is always one of the top three issues in state politics. And
Michael Pope 4:38
Democrats are super, super upset that they feel like Republicans stole their issue. You know, when I was I was at the Democratic event out of McLean. And that was kind of the theme of the night was, hey, wait a minute, education is our issue. How did they end up winning on education?
Nathan Moore 4:55
That's because it wasn't really education is the issue, Michael? It was this wasn't about funding for schools. It was a story about race. Right? Well,
Michael Pope 5:04
yes and no. So you said it's not necessarily about funding for schools. Keep in mind that in Glenn younguns victory speech, he did promise, the largest ever education budget in the history of Virginia. He promised to expand school choice by having more charter schools. So I mean, there is a policy dimension to this, too. I mean, people got caught up in the, in the racial element of it and banning a law school concept from public schools that's not taught there. So I mean, it's easy to ban something that's not being taught. It was a meaningless discussion about a topic that had no policy dimension to it. But when Younkin actually takes office, he does there are some policies there that he's going to pursue, or at least he's promising to in his victory speech.
Nathan Moore 5:50
So Michael, here's the thing that I like, like more money for charter schools in Virginia did not drive half a million people to vote for Glenn Younkin. fear about teaching black authors and fear about about trans bathrooms fear about all the stuff that leads to aggrieved white suburbanites, turning up to the polls. That's what drove half a million more people to vote for Glenn Younkin. What Wait
Michael Pope 6:11
a second, I would agree with you that the all of the dust up about Tony Morrison definitely drove a lot of voters. I'm not distracting from that. Although, you say the charter schools didn't really drive parents. And maybe that's true. But keep in mind, the perception in the minds of voters to hearing Terry McAuliffe said say he didn't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach. And there was this, this feeling among many parents, that those Democrats and their big government bureaucrats and all this woke ism is sort of dominating schools. And you know, there's the mask mandates and the vaccine mandates and they want more control. The parents want more control.
Thomas Bowman 6:59
School choice is a dog whistle, like it's a race dog whistle. The reason that they advanced school choice is so that they don't have to send their kids to integrated schools. This has been a talking point since the Brown v Board decision. This is not new information. School choice is a racist dog whistle. And so the fact that it's in young kins list of promises is just one more reason tying youngins education plan to racist dog whistle reaction.
Michael Pope 7:29
We haven't heard from Katherine Hanson yet. Let's turn the microphone over to Katherine, what did you make of the results of the election this week?
Katherine Hansen 7:36
From my understanding, just sort of doing work with Bold Dominon? I saw it as distrust in current Democratic leadership. I don't think people are content with what's happening in Afghanistan, the general state of the economy and how uncertain future inflation might be. And it's sort of a similar sentiment to Donald Trump, where you're a little bit tired of a Democratic politician and you you want a businessman, you want to shake things up?
Michael Pope 8:01
Yes, I think that's actually a really good way to look at the results. Because you know, one thing that I always keep coming back to is the Virginia does have this very long history of having elections for Governor following the presidential year and doing the opposite thing that actually dates all the way back to 1977. When Virginia after the election of Jimmy Carter, when Virginians put Republican John Dalton in office, and ever since then, it's been this trend. So there's this long history of doing the opposite thing of what happened in the presidential election with, of course, one exception, and that's after the re election of Barack Obama, Virginia voters chose Terry McAuliffe Democrats, of course, we're hopeful that he would be able to do that same trick again. But there's headwinds. So after a new president is elected, there's always always this period, and that first year when things fall apart, and things don't go according to plan, and you don't get the build back better plan. And there's a reaction to that. And as Catherine was just saying, there's reaction to Afghanistan, and there's a sort of an unease and a tiredness of with what the Democrats are doing. Add on top of that. The fact that Virginia has seen all of this sweeping change in recent years and that sweeping change, a lot of people are probably uneasy and reacting to that.
Nathan Moore 9:23
Yeah, I think there is something to what you're saying, Michael, I think I take it as a from a slightly different angle. But But Katherine's definitely on to something here with with this race being very, very nationalized. You know, and we saw that, like, so many things that drove people to the polls, and that drove the votes this time around. weren't really issues specific to Virginia. It's like if the issue was about the economy, I mean, our economy's not in the dumps. Why is younger than the guy for the economy? If the issue is, you know, I think you're right, this sort of malaise with national Democrats and cinema and mansion holding up the build back better plan. Flipping the Afghanistan withdrawal. I think these are things that impacted the Virginia election even though they're not Virginia Pacific specific issues in any particular way. I think the other one, though, and this is kind of getting back to what Thomas was saying earlier, the terrible campaign choice that McAuliffe made to use Trump as a boogeyman all the way up until like, Monday, you know, I mean, I saw a sign here in Charlottesville that literally said, like, Younkin equals Trump, and I'm like, well, that's weird. Why do they have a young can said, Oh, it's young people's Trump. It's like, why is that the message going out there? It's doing the work to build that base for junk and, and, you know, Bob Lewis over the Virginia Mercury had a great line about this. He said, You know, if you're trying to rouse the villagers to go fight, Grendel, you know, what happens when Grendel is not there anymore? You know, then you have to have a positive vision of proactive vision of what your state is going to be. And Thomas, you, you talked, or I'm sorry, Michael, you talked about some things that McAuliffe said and some speeches and stuff. But honestly, the message I got over and over was like, hey, things were pretty good when I was governor. Let's do that again. And I think what you're seeing, though, and this is Michael, I think where I do tend to agree with what you're saying is if we look at the political values of a lot of people in Virginia, I think a preeminent political value in Virginia, is politeness and also sort of a sense of incrementalism and status quo. We don't want to be the last in the pack, at least not since Loving v. Virginia. We don't really wanna be the first either. And so that sense of kind of being somewhere in the middle of the pack and being sort of level headed about things that plus politeness seems to really be what resonates with people, Northam, polite guy, you know, he was gonna be level headed Biden Plagueis, even a little head. Nothing would call us not but but I think you had Younkin, who was writing that sort of backlash and white lash into office because of national reasons. So he's sort of like a Trump light. And so I think that drove a lot of things, especially as they as they pounded home with a sledgehammer. A lot of these culture war issues over and over
Aaryan Balu 11:56
and over. Trump broke politics for four years. Right. And like this uniquely hateable figure in his effect just as much as in his policy for whatever he calls policy. And that was that worked to elect Joe Biden nationally. because not that many people were super excited about Joe Biden except in opposition to Trump, Terry McAuliffe, his campaign tried to pull that a year later. And shockingly, the sort of oppositional politics doesn't didn't work. It turns it because because exactly because Younkin is not Trump, as much as they tried to do it. He didn't rile people up, the sort of suburban, suburban white leader, they might be liberal, they may be moderate. He didn't write the people open the same way, and just didn't get out as many people to vote.
Michael Pope 12:48
Well, so I'm curious. All right. So let's say just for purposes of a thought experiment, that the McAuliffe campaign was not singularly focused on Trump. And instead, they tried to build a messaging campaign around raising the minimum wage paid sick, leave family medical leave hazard pay, what would that have looked like? Would that have been a successful message?
Nathan Moore 13:13
So Michael, I think that's a it's interesting that you frame it that way, because democratic priorities do tend to take on this form of a grab bag of policy list items like a grocery list. And honestly, I think that's a to the detriment of a lot of Democrats would it needs to be better for Democrats to win and to thrive is to have a vision for like a proactive vision of a society where we, where we have shared prosperity or everybody can thrive. And the details kind of work themselves out. You don't see Republicans introducing a plan with like getting into the weeds of the details. What you see is like they're appealing to values, Democrats need to appeal to those values, of fairness of an America where everybody has a shot of a place where where we all can thrive together.
Aaryan Balu 13:59
So here's the thing. Michael, you asked if if McAuliffe had made those claims, that the sort of promises wouldn't have worked? I think it would have gotten better. But here's the problem is that you've got McAuliffe is the sort of Clinton ally incrementalist. You know, we Younkin was the CEO of Carlyle Alia McAuliffe donated a bunch are like invested in Carlyle Group, he is part of that group. And so you know, I don't think people buy it. You look at you talk about minimum wage, you talk about paid leave. You look at Democrats right now they failed on the $15 minimum wage, they are currently paid family and medical leave is out of the bill back better plan, like these things are not getting done. So I mean, I don't know if people would have bought it because it's not happening right now.
Nathan Moore 14:46
Hey, I want to switch around just a little bit if you don't mind y'all and actually ask Aaryan and also Catherine a little bit more about kind of the take you're hearing from today's college students and young folks. I mean, y'all are in your early 20s joining us relative oldsters. Catherine, we'll start with you like, what are you hearing from from 20 year olds right now about about this race and kind of what you saw at UVA during all this?
Katherine Hansen 15:08
You know, from what I've seen, it seems to be sort of carrying out in this culture war between, you know, groups like university Democrats and university Republicans, and then this ideologically conservative group, Young Americans for freedom. So it all sort of came to a head via social media last night, where and when the results came out. It was a little heated, but to be perfectly honest, today was was almost kind of quiet in the aftermath. I think the biggest question that's being asked right now, and this might not be representative of the population, because I'm a 20 year old woman, is just what's going to happen to women's reproductive rights in the future. I think that a lot of young people are sort of looking towards Texas and wondering what that's going to mean for our state
Nathan Moore 15:56
are in what are you hearing from your peers,
Aaryan Balu 15:59
the general what I've seen from at least internet circles, and those I kind of check in with there, a lot of it is sort of this was similar to what I've been talking about in terms of this campaign talking about Trump didn't do it. You know, there's a lot of sort of playing defense, because all of the current takes you'll probably see on CNN and and sort of the lesson that the Democratic Party will somehow take from this is that McAuliffe and or Biden somehow went too far left, despite sort of the aforementioned build back better getting gutted McAuliffe, I think, explicitly saying that he wouldn't repeal right to work. So most of what I'm seeing is sort of defensively like preemptively saying, that is not sort of the problem here.
Nathan Moore 16:46
Thanks, you all and I wanted to take it back to Katherine. So as we kind of look towards what's next, in all this, Catherine thinking about about women's reproductive rights issues, and the generation still has a lot of years to live through it. What what are you concerned about? What do you what do you what do you think comes next from this?
Katherine Hansen 17:09
I'm not entirely sure. I mean, from what I understand of Glenn Youngkin’s politics, it really sort of I hear the the culture war issues, you know, the critical race theory, things we've talked about. I had a friend who, when we found out that Glen Younkin, when asked what was she like, we were just kind of chatting and someone asked, What do you think's going to happen next, and everyone was just sort of like, I don't really know, everyone is unsure about what it means. And so we're looking towards, she know, we look towards what's happening in Texas right now with women's reproductive rights specifically. And we're using southern states and trying to figure out what our future is going to look like based on what theirs look like right now.
Nathan Moore 17:49
You're listening to our post election analysis here on Bold Dominon. It's a state Pellentesque explainer for changing Virginia, visit us online at Bold dominon.org. Have a friend who's trying to get into state politics, well tell them about this show. And then subscribe. You can find us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and wherever find podcasts are served up. Hey, and while you're there, go ahead and leave us a five star review. We'd love those. Bold Dominon is a member of Virginia audio collective online at Virginia audio.org. Check out all the podcasts from the collective from science to history, to music to community affairs, we amplify the voices of people in our community, and help them tell stories that matter. You can listen and subscribe at Virginia audio.org. And now we return to our conversation with Michael Pope, and Thomas Bowman from transition Virginia, as well as Aaryan Balu. And Katherine Hansen from Old Dominion. And this is maybe where we can turn it back to some of our Richmond insiders, Michael and Thomas, because we do still have in Virginia, a state senate that has a majority of Democrats, the state senators were not on the ballot this time around. And we also have Republican House, that's only going to be a one or two seat majority. So what do you see coming down the pike with all this?
Thomas Bowman 19:02
Well, I think past is going to be prologue. And when the when, when the Republicans had the house before you had a Senate that comparatively was a very liberal Senate, and they passed a lot of very liberal bills, you know, cynically, you might say because they knew it wouldn't pass the House and there was no political consequence to doing so. But and notice that it didn't necessarily go that way. When the Democrats gained control of the House and they had to kill everything. So what I think is you'll just see them go back to the way they were is like the Senate will be in control. The house will be in disarray, because, you know, looking ahead, there's really only this one session and any specials that get called next year, then there's going to be redistricting and we have no idea what these districts are going to look like because the Supreme Court is going to draw,
Michael Pope 19:53
you know, when I'm in Richmond covering the General Assembly, I usually end up spending most of my time in the Senate because that's where all the news happens. And that is going to be even more the case in this situation where you've got a Republican governor and a Republican House. And guess who's going to stand in the way of the Younkin agenda, the Virginia State Senate, the Democratic lead, Virginia State Senate, is going to take on a huge importance that it did not previously have even. And it's ironic, because in the era of democratic control, there was a lot of angst and progressives being very upset with conservative Democrats in the Senate, standing in the way of things like the assault weapons ban, overturning right to work, collective bargaining for state workers. These are things that conservative Democrats stopped, and that those are parts of the progressive agenda, that did not happen because of these conservative members of the Senate. And they took a lot of incoming for all of that. So it's ironic that those same conservative Democrats will now be the firewall for, for the Democratic Party to stop the Republican agenda. And it's going to be tight because they no longer have the lieutenant governor to break their ties. And they've got this one very slim, one vote majority in the Senate. So they're going to need all of their votes, including one particular senator, who is going to emerge as probably the most important guy in Richmond, because he's so willing to change his vote on any given issue. I'm speaking about Senator Joe Morrissey, and you are going to want him to vote your way because he's going to end up being the swing vote on just about everything that goes through the General Assembly.
Nathan Moore 21:39
So what do you that is actually this is fascinating to see, you know, the state senate is gonna You're right. There's gonna be a lot more news stories about that about the conflicts that are there. With the Republican led house, I'm thinking back to when Terry McAuliffe was in office, and had at least one house in in Republican hands through most if not all of his term. I'm thinking 2014 2015 2016
Michael Pope 22:03
Yeah, the house was Republican controlled for the entire time. McAuliffe was right. That's right. That's right.
Nathan Moore 22:07
So he was trying to get things done, and really just couldn't I mean, the Republicans were just the party of no right for all those years. Is that what's coming where the Democrats become the party of no,
Thomas Bowman 22:16
the Democrats becoming the party of no, in the Senate? Maybe?
Nathan Moore 22:20
That's what I mean. Yeah.
Thomas Bowman 22:21
So the house. So here's what's coming, at least for the house. The house is always far more parochial than the Senate is. And it always will be. And so you're you have a lot more dynamic and potentially extreme personality in the house, on both the Republican and the Democratic side, the progressives got a lot of the attention in the house be under the Democrats because of how bold their agenda was, and you saw a lot of very bold things come out of the house that couldn't pass the Senate. Well, guess what the exact same thing happens when Republicans are in control. It's just very, from my perspective, extreme right wing bills from the other side. And so not only is the Senate going to be that backstop, because it'll be kind of like when Bob McDonnell was in charge, when the Republicans had full control of everything, except for the Senate. That it all falls to the Senate to broker every single deal, which means you got to keep not just Jim Morrissey. But Chad Peterson, happy to. And the house is going to be the house, which means the people who get to be in the room are going to be the speaker, the Republican Speaker, Dix as law and Tommy Norman. And of course, whoever the governor's representative is to broker all these deals, which means it's all going to look more Republican. So the probably the best outcome for the next four years is for the Senate to just stop everything.
Nathan Moore 23:57
I'm curious. You know, we saw a little bit of this with Terry McAuliffe, when he was facing Republican majorities in in the house all those years, where he ended up just trying to do some things just on his own. But you know, what do we know about the powers that the governor has here in Virginia, just as far as what Younkin without law being passed? What can young can actually do? I mean, he certainly can veto other laws, but that's less going to be a thing this time then than otherwise?
Michael Pope 24:24
Well, governor's actually have way more power than most people think that they do. Especially the Virginia governor has a particularly powerful set of things that he or she is in control of, which is why they've got that one term limit. Virginia is the only state in the country that has this one four year term limit. So huge powers, but it is limited. So you know on we hear Glenn Younkin always talking about his day one agenda on day one. He can't ban quote unquote, critical race theory. I mean, I mean, this is Law School a concept that's not taught in public schools. But even if he wanted to, quote unquote, ban this law school concept from public school classrooms, he actually would need to go to the General Assembly and have them be part of it first, right? I mean, he's not a king.
Nathan Moore 25:15
Right? So what tell me more about the powers and the things that he can just kind of carry out? I mean, he could appoint new people to the State Board of Education. He could appoint new judges. When there's an opening. I mean, what what kinds of things does the governor have all this power he's talking about?
Michael Pope 25:30
Well, one is one of his campaign promises is to get rid of the parole board. I think we can see that coming down the pike here.
Thomas Bowman 25:36
Yeah, the one I'm kind of losing sleep over. Well, are two things one Coronavirus. The COVID policy, I'm very worried is going to look a lot more like DeSantis is then Ralph Northam, who in my opinion, wasn't even, like, doing it perfectly. And so now, I'm worried things get worse. But also think back to January six, when nobody was going to stop what was happening on the Capitol. It was Ralph Northam, who sent out the Virginia National Guard. Is Glenn Younkin going to deploy the Virginia National Guard in the next time?
Michael Pope 26:12
Sure. And yeah, and what about the next wave of Coronavirus? Is he going to require masks in schools? Is he going to require teachers be vaccinated? I mean, these are all things that could play out
Thomas Bowman 26:23
or fight it. Yeah.
Nathan Moore 26:25
We're getting into the really, shockingly core issues around public health and sort of health of democracy to you know, the the kind of power of the state is pretty substantial, and that the executive is the one who makes those calls. All right. Are you all ready for takeaways?
Michael Pope 26:44
I'll start going back to this thing I said before about Virginia being a counterpoint, I think it should not be overlooked, that Virginia always does this. It reacted to the era of Bill Clinton by giving us George Allen and it reacted to George W. Bush by giving us Mark Warner, this is a thing that Virginia does. It says we see your presidential election. And we're gonna do the opposite thing. And that almost always happens with only one exception. And I think people forget about the magnetic pole of that.
Thomas Bowman 27:15
All right, my takeaway on this one is you cannot win by appealing to the other party. The McAuliffe campaign tried to position itself as the moderate safe choice that some Republicans could vote for. But guess what, that was a campaign plan for the nominee being Amanda Chase. They never switch it up every election as a base election. So if people are going to get juiced up to vote for you, and you're a Democrat, you need to run like one, you need to have issues like you're a Democrat, you need to talk like it. And none of that happened.
Aaryan Balu 27:48
My takeaway is that, exactly, you have to run like a Democrat. But honestly, the Democrats have not been running the way the Democrats need to for a while. And they need to do something different. They need to buck the trends that Mike was talking about, because we are frankly, running out of time to learn this sort of lesson that we're learning with McAuliffe and the the legislature right now, like we need to do something different and better. And Nathan, what's your takeaway?
Nathan Moore 28:13
Yeah, I mean, you know, I've got a bunch of them. But But really, I think there's there's a few things here. And one is a very old truth about politics in America, which is that if you can make white people in America feel aggrieved or afraid or stressed out, they're going to choose a right winger, and they're going to do it in large numbers. Another sort of takeaway from all this, I think, is that really the technocratic management model of democratic politics. And this is much like what y'all were saying, that model that's kind of grew out of the Clinton era and that McAuliffe represents is tapped into. I don't think it's a winning strategy for the long haul. What we need is a politics that's built around people's needs, and his movement driven and built on relationships, not on technocratic management. And then the last bit really is just, you know, as we look through, I'm always trying to get a handle on figure out what are the values that are driving people here in Virginia? If you want to do anything in public life, what is it that you can speak to that's going to make this work? And I think there are some shared values here. I do, though, think there's a real keen interest in treating people right and being fair. But also above that even being polite, and kind of like not rocking the boat too hard. And I feel like that not rocking the boat too hard. And being polite is what really ran ran the show this week on Election Day.
Michael Pope and Thomas Bowman host transition Virginia. You can find them online at transition va.com thanks to them for joining us this week. Thanks also to our editor this week, Catherine Hanson. She was also one of our panelists alongside for Bold Dominon Producer Aaryan Balu. My name is Nathan Moore, and I'm the host of Bold Dominon can find us online at Bold dominon.org. And don't forget to subscribe. It's just a click away.