A new working draft of a Virginia Senate redistricting map is highlighting the question of what creating a fair map means. The working map was hammered out on Saturday in a closed-door meeting between the Democratic and Republican co-chairs, Democratic and Republican legal teams, and Democratic and Republican map-drawers.
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Glenn Youngkin’s tightrope walk between suburban moderates and hard-right Republicans seems to be paying off — on Friday the Cook Political Report (CPR) announced a rating shift in the gubernatorial contest from Lean Democratic to Toss Up. That matches with polling from a variety of sources that show an increasingly close race.
“We can no longer say this is a contest where the Democrat has the advantage. While many of the fundamentals favor [Terry] McAuliffe — and we expect he still has a slight edge — it’s Youngkin who seems to have the enthusiasm on his side,” CPR reported.
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Expectations for Virginia’s gubernatorial race have stayed stable – multiple experts rate the race as Lean Democrat. Still, Terry McAuliffe’s campaign is fundraising off of a June 7 FiveThirtyEight article that argues the GOP has a chance.
“With FEC reports releasing this week, there’s a lot going on, but we had to reach out with this news. Analysts at Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight are saying that Virginia is ‘the GOP’s best shot at flipping a Governorship in 2021,'” a Monday McAuliffe email states.
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by Fred Lucas Ed Gillespie, the Republican candidate who lost the 2017 Virginia governor’s race to Ralph Northam, said Virginia has much healing to do. “For Virginians, this is a very painful time to see these images splashed up on television screens and newspapers, and it doesn’t reflect the Virginia that I know and fellow Virginians know,” Gillespie said Thursday while attending the second annual Jay A. Parker Lecture and Reception at The Heritage Foundation. After Northam’s medical school yearbook surfaced from 1984, showing someone in blackface standing next to someone in a Ku Klux Klan outfit on Northam’s page in the yearbook, the governor denied he was either person, after initially apologizing. However, Northam, a Democrat, admitted to once dressing up in blackface to imitate Michael Jackson in 1984. This came days after he seemed to advocate infanticide of newborn babies in certain circumstances. During the gubernatorial campaign, a liberal group ran a racially charged political ad against Gillespie, tying him to neo-Nazis. The revelation of Northam’s past blackface resulted in bipartisan calls for the Democrat to resign, including from Kay Coles James, president of The Heritage Foundation. Gillespie—in the audience for the Heritage event—didn’t address whether Northam…
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by Robert Romano Republicans in Congress should be paying very close attention to the results in Virginia, where Ed Gillespie lost the gubernatorial race to Ralph Northam, and learn the right lesson for a change. Political parties serve very much as a function of their standard bearers, which is who voters will rally to. Right now, that standard bearer for Republicans is President Donald Trump, who one year ago was elected. And love it or hate it, the fortunes of Republicans in the House and to a lesser extent the Senate in 2018 will be tied to how successful Trump is at enacting his agenda in Congress. The formula for potential success is quite simple. Want to keep Congress in 2018? Enact the Trump agenda that won the day in 2016. The promises including cutting taxes, repealing and replacing Obamacare and building the southern border wall, among others. If the Republican Congress won’t implement the Trump agenda, how do we justify a Republican majority in Congress? It has been the failure to accomplish any major legislation in the first year that has driven down the approval of the Republican Congress. House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch…
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Virginia Rep. Dave Brat said Wednesday on “The Laura Ingraham Show” that Ed Gillespie’s run for governor in Virginia was a “disaster” because Gillespie refused to embrace fully the populist message President Donald Trump campaigned on in 2016. Brat, who pulled off one of the biggest upsets in congressional history when he ousted former House Majority…
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Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie slammed a new ad on Tuesday that plays on racial fears. “In Virginia, we respect civil discourse, and this is a new low in politics here,” Mr. Gillespie, a Republican, said on Fox News. “It’s a sad day. I was glad when a couple of the Democratic members in the House…
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