Election Watch 2021: The Battle for Virginia

by Justin Soutar

As some readers of this blog may be aware, I enjoy writing about off-year and midterm elections here in the United States. New Jersey and Virginia are the only two states in the country that elect their governors every four years in the year following a presidential election. Their gubernatorial election campaigns typically generate a fair amount of national media and public interest because both the pre-election surveys of likely voters and the actual election outcomes tend to offer a glimpse of the issues and concerns that matter most to Americans in general, as well as a preview of the results that may be expected in the nationwide midterm elections the following year. My adopted home state of the Commonwealth of Virginia is particularly interesting to watch because it is one of a handful of "bellwether" states whose election outcome offers a reliable indicator of the general direction the nation is heading. The fact that no governor of Virginia may serve two consecutive terms, which means the contest for governor is always an open race, only adds to the interest level.

Formerly a southern Republican stronghold, Virginia has been occupied by Democratic agents from the Clinton-Obama-Biden political cartel in recent years, who have poured millions of advertising dollars into the state to win it for Barack Obama in 2008 and to take control of all five statewide offices--governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and both U.S. Senate offices--from 2013 to the present. It's been a long eight years under Democratic Governors Terry McAuliffe and Ralph Northam as their corrupt and tyrannical administrations have imposed crushing tax burdens on Virginians, increased the number and complexity of business regulations, supported ObamaCare and the HHS mandate, imposed unconstitutional and economically damaging anti-COVID mandates, shoved gender ideology and critical race theory into the public schools, attacked our religious freedom, further liberalized our abortion laws, and even attempted to legalize infanticide. Furthermore, McAuliffe and Northam have given scandal by claiming to be Catholic while advancing public policies that violate natural law and Church teaching on the sanctity of life, marriage, and religious liberty.

A year ago at this time, few Virginians knew who Glenn Youngkin was. This unfamiliar contender for the office of governor shrewdly adapted the Donald Trump presidential campaign model of a successful businessman and political outsider taking on the corrupt establishment to his own primary campaign for the Virginia governorship, and it worked: by May, he had sufficiently overcome his lack of name recognition to secure the Republican nomination for governor. Since his Democratic opponent and former governor Terry McAuliffe galloped into the race with huge name recognition and fundraising advantages, it was no surprise that he was far ahead of Youngkin in the polls for months. Despite his considerable handicaps, however, Youngkin steadily gained momentum across the Commonwealth, and by late August, much to the alarm of the political establishment, he was actually tied in the polls with McAuliffe. But the momentum didn't stop there. On September 8, a WPA Intelligence survey showed Youngkin running slightly ahead of McAuliffe, 48 to 46 percent. The latest poll by the University of Mary Washington, released yesterday, showed Youngkin leading McAuliffe by a healthy margin, 48 to 43 percent.

This steady upward trajectory from obscurity to front-runner is remarkable considering that McAuliffe's campaign has been outspending Youngkin's campaign by a significant amount throughout the race. The fact that the Republican gubernatorial ticket includes the first African-American female candidate for lieutenant governor, Winsome Sears, and the first Cuban-American candidate for attorney general, Jason Miyares, has played a role in this climb out of the doldrums, as these two candidates are certainly pulling some minority voters away from the Democratic Party of Virginia. More significantly, however, Youngkin's surprise ascendancy indicates that increasing numbers of Virginia's likely voters are losing confidence in the unprincipled leadership of McAuliffe and Northam and are rejecting the radical liberal agenda of the incumbent Democratic Party. These two governors have been profoundly out of touch with the daily problems and concerns, not to mention the traditional religious and moral values, of the silent majority of ordinary Virginians. People want an honest and trustworthy governor who will truly advance the common good, not an establishment politician who will exploit the office for personal gain.

It looks like we're in for a repeat of 2009, when New Jersey and Virginia elected Republican governors one year after Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama carried both states. In fact, to the surprise of many observers, Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell won Virginia with 59 percent of the vote. This landslide rejection of the party controlling both houses of Congress and the White House by Virginia voters was a foretaste of the 2010 midterms, when Republicans regained control of the U.S. House of Representatives, expanded their strength in the Senate, and picked up many more state governorships. Virginians' mounting dissatisfaction with their Democratic governor reflects the increasing disapproval of American citizens with their illegitimate president Joe Biden, who stole the White House from President Donald Trump through massive organized vote fraud in violation of the U.S. Constitution and federal and state election law. They've already had more than enough of the Biden administration's executive overreach, fiscal recklessness, monetary inflation, tax hikes, pork-barrel spending, immigration irresponsibility, abortion expansion, vaccine mandates, and radical secularism. They're increasingly realizing that Biden is a puppet of the Chinese Communist Party whose treasonous agenda serves the interests of Red China, not those of the American people. 

If New Jersey and Virginia voters elect Republican governors by substantial margins in November 2021, then it is highly likely that Republicans will win many victories across the nation in November 2022. The Democratic political establishment knows this and is very fearful of losing its grip on power, which is why George Soros recently donated $250,000 to Terry McAuliffe's campaign for governor, and why Youngkin signs are being vandalized and stolen across the Commonwealth. McAuliffe and his Democratic cronies will use all the cash they can haul in and every dirty trick in the book from mudslinging to vote fraud to try to keep Glenn Youngkin out of the Governor's Mansion in Richmond, but their efforts seem doomed to failure. The citizens of the Old Dominion have apparently made up their minds to elect a Republican leader who will put their interests first and govern in accordance with the state constitution and traditional values grounded in natural law. If this is any indication of a national trend, tens of millions of American voters will follow suit next year, resulting in a "red wave" election that will return the U.S. Senate and House and other state governorships to the Republican Party.

In conclusion, it must be candidly observed that Virginia and the United States remain perilously divided. While great leaders such as Trump and Youngkin may gain large followings and unite millions of people in support of their philosophy, agenda, and accomplishments, a large minority of their people will remain their bitter enemies for ideological reasons. Virginia played a leading role in the founding of the United States of America on the basis of common religious and moral philosophy and values that are rejected and attacked by today's adherents of radical secularism. We need to pray for the conversion of these militant secularists in the Democratic Party, Hollywood, Big Tech, academia, the courts, and elsewhere who threaten to drag our country into a second civil war and to destroy our traditional American society and culture. May such a catastrophe be averted, and may we return to being "one nation under God" before it's too late.

Here's to Glenn Youngkin as the next Governor of Virginia!