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Virginia’s deadlocked gubernatorial battle between former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin is firmly in the national spotlight.
The commonwealth, a onetime general election battleground that’s still very competitive between the two major parties, is one of only two states that hold races for governor in the year after a presidential election, guaranteeing outsized attention from coast to coast. And the state’s gubernatorial contest is seen as a key barometer ahead of next year’s midterm elections, when the Democrats will be defending their razor-thin margins in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
“On Tuesday, people will be looking at it as a bellwether of what is to come,” Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, the number-three House Democrat, said last weekend as he campaigned with McAuliffe.
THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT VIRGINIA’S CLOSELY WATCHED GUBERNATORIAL ELECTION
The latest polls indicate a margin-of-error race between McAuliffe and Youngkin, a first-time candidate and former private equity CEO, in a state that President Biden carried by 10 points last November and where Republicans haven’t won statewide in a dozen years.
But Virginia’s election for governor is just one of many interesting showdowns in the 2021 ballot from coast to coast.
Virginia’s down-ballot races
The commonwealth’s two other statewide contests are also expected to be close.
Democratic state Del. Hala Ayala is facing off against former Republican state Del. Winsome Sears in a battle for lieutenant governor that’s guaranteed to make history. Whichever candidate wins on Tuesday will become the first female elected lieutenant governor in Virginia. Ayala would also become the first Afro-Latina and Sears the first Black woman, to hold the second most powerful position in the one-time capital city of the Confederacy.
Virginia Democratic lieutenant governor candidate Hala Ayala (left) and Virginia Republican lieutenant governor…
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Source : foxnews
