By Dave Andrusko
When, at approximately 10:30 this morning, pro-abortion Terry McAuliffe conceded to pro-life Glenn Youngkin, it was a stunning turnabout from what appeared to be an easily victory for the former governor less than two months ago. With a turnabout of well over three million Virginians determining the Commonwealth’s next governor, Youngkin defeated McAuliffe 50.7% to 48.6 % — 1,674,550 to 1,603,010.
The Virginia Society for Human Life (VSHL) was all-in for the Youngkin, pro-life Winsome Sears, who became the first black Lt. Governor, and pro-life Jason Miyares, who became the first Latino Attorney General.
VSHL has 3 million impressions with their digital ads, over 500,000 automated phone calls, and sent out 72,000 emails.
National Right to Life’s State Political Committee was also heavily involved in the Virginia race. NRL’s State PAC reached out to 380,000 identified pro-life households as well as utilizing telephone, e-mail, digital ads and social media to reach hundreds of thousands of voters across the state. Pro-life efforts certainly paid off as evidenced by the CNN exit poll which showed that for 8% of Virginia voters, abortion was the top issue and that 60% of them voted for pro-life Glenn Youngkin.
Completing a clean sweep at the top of the ticket, pro-life Republicans took back the Assembly, thanks in no small part to VSHL.
McAuliffe ran on the abortion issue, pounding the issue over and over, calling Youngkin (what else?) an “extremist.” Yet it was McAuliffe, trying to win back the position he held for four years, whose position was wildly out of sync with the public. He embraced a policy of abortion on demand, supported the use of taxpayer funds to pay for abortions, and called a bill that would have allowed infants who survive abortions to be denied life-saving medical treatment “common sense.” He was assured by the media that this was a winning position.
But as John McCormack shrewdly pointed out, “McAuliffe was leading Youngkin by 5.2 points in the RCP polling average on the day the Texas [Heartbeat] law took effect.”
McAuliffe ran hard on abortion—hitting the issue in TV ads, speeches, debates. Media and McAuliffe said the issue could sink Youngkin after Texas’s 6-week ban took effect on September 1. McAuliffe even campaigned at an abortion clinic.
That’s extremist posture by any measure—and a losing one at that!
Here are five takeaways from a race in a state carried by President Biden by ten points just one year ago.
1. Smear politics didn’t work. McAuliffe lambasted Youngkin on issues that are not within our purview. But McAuliffe (and his horde of media supporters) simply doubled down, misrepresenting Youngkin’s positions to the very end.
2. Positive campaigning beat negative campaigning. Youngkin was a novice at politics, McAuliffe’s political history reaches back to the Clintons. From the jump, Youngkin was the most upbeat and optimistic, and a fervent believer that Virginia’s better days are still ahead.
3. Youngkin fearlessly campaigned in Democrat strongholds. He cut into McAuliffe’s advantage, doing far better in, say Fairfax, than anyone thought possible. He also flipped some areas outstate, traditionally Republican, that had voted Democrat, or narrowly Republican, in recent election. Also “Democratic candidates continue to sink to new lows in rural areas,” as POLITICO observed.
4. President Biden, as the votes came in, insisted what took place in Virginia was independent of was happening in Washington, D.C. Not so, according to the reliable Democrat and pro-abortion Lisa Lerer of the New York Times:
But in a state where elections tend to be interwoven with national politics because of proximity to Washington, it’s hard to separate Mr. McAuliffe’s defeat from worsening views of the administration. In the week before Election Day, likely voters in Virginia disapproved of Mr. Biden’s job performance by 53 percent to 46 percent, according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll. Forty-four percent of voters in the state strongly disapproved of the president’s performance, compared with only 21 percent who strongly approved.
5. This is one I cannot prove, although I strongly suspect it is true. Fairfax County is a treasure-trove of Democrat votes. It is the kind of place where Republicans were convinced, when it came to counting votes, that Democrats were dealing from the bottom of the deck.
Thanks to a change in the law, all mail-in votes had to be counted by 8pm (except for those which were postmarked by Election Day and received by Friday). While Fairfax County election officials immediately said they could not meet the deadline, the counting did not stretch out until deep into Wednesday morning.
Congratulations to Gov.-elect Youngkin, Lt. Gov.-elect Sears, and Attorney General-elect Jason Miyares.