A political upset in Virginia

On Tuesday, Virginia Republicans stunned their Commonwealth and the country by sweeping every statewide office. Shut out of the governor’s mansion since 2009, GOP businessman Glenn Youngkin, running on a platform that zeroed in on education, handily defeated former Gov. Terry McAuliffe.

Democrats saw a repudiation of liberal education policy, driven by an increasingly radical school curriculum and by teachers’ unions who helped keep schools in Virginia closed for eighteen months.

Youngkin, a Harvard graduate and former CEO of the Carlyle Group, ran a disciplined campaign, fusing the concerns of the populist Trump base with traditional conservatism. He didn’t resist Trump’s endorsement but didn’t go out of his way to cultivate Trump’s support. McAuliffe, the former governor running for a second, non-consecutive term, essentially ran on Trump, trying in vain to cast Youngkin as “Trump in fleece and khakis.” But apparently, the suburbs that ran away from the controversial former president in 2020 came back to the GOP column, with local issues superseding any lingering concerns about Trump.

What does this off-year election mean for the future of our politics? There is danger, of course, in reading too much into one state election, cast as it was in the shadow of COVID and with its unique set of candidates and local issues. Yet, it does seem to offer lessons for both parties. 

For Democrats, the lessons are unmistakable. President Biden’s narrow victory in 2020 was not a mandate for the kind of far-left policies his administration has pursued. And the failures in Afghanistan, the ongoing concerns of inflation and rising gas prices, and increasing frustration with the public-education bureaucracy turned out to be of more interest to voters than the pet issues often championed by the left-wing echo chambers on Twitter and in Ivy League faculty lounges. Biden was elected not to be an ideologue but to serve as a stabilizing force. What he’s done in office is the contradiction of the very premise of his campaign—that he would govern as a moderate. It would be fitting to interpret the decisive defeat of progressive candidates and causes across the nation as a pushback against his left-wing governance.

For Republicans, Youngkin’s campaign might show a way to win elections. He deftly appealed to the concerns of the populist base without nurturing their worst instincts, all the while appealing to the suburbs with messages on education and the economy. It turns out that while droves of moms in the suburbs abandoned the GOP in 2020, they don’t like being told by the elites that their concerns over closed schools and radical curriculums are unfounded. Parents, it turns out, don’t like being told they have no say in their kids’ education. Future Republicans would be wise to eschew uncivil behavior and instead speak to the real concerns of voters. This week revealed what voters really see as their priorities.

This election is proof positive of some of the most timeless political axioms. First, nothing is lasting in American politics. No party is ever dead, despite what the pundits might declare. And no party is forever ascendant, despite the boasts of winning campaign managers. The concerns of voters rise and fall, coalitions shift and change, and what was salient in the last election cycle is often stale by the time voters go back to the polls. Second, while our races are increasingly nationalized in an era of social media and nonstop cable news, well-disciplined candidates still matter and local issues can motivate voters.

Ultimately, we should care about politics as Christians because we should care about who governs our communities, states, and nation. We’ve been given a stewardship by God in this representative republic and should make the most informed decision we can about every election. And yet, we can hold both victories and losses loosely, knowing that while voter sentiment rises and falls, in triumph and in defeat, our hope is ultimately in the kingdom without end.