Copyright Deadline
The off-year elections unusually are a footnote in the overall direction of the country, but Tuesday’s races will provide the first significant glimpse at voter sentiment since Donald Trump returned to the White House. They will provide some indicators for next year’s midterms and, as NewsNation’s Chris Stirewalt notes, these elections will set the stage for the “invisible primary,” as candidates position themselves for the plunge into the 2028 presidential race. In New Jersey’s governor’s race, Democrat Mikee Sherill is facing Republican Jack Ciattarelli. In Virginia’s gubernatorial contest, Democrat Abigail Spanberger is facing Republican Winsome Earle-Sears. In the highest profile contest, enough to earn a Saturday Night Live cold open, Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani is facing independent Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa. In California, Proposition 50 asks voters to redraw congressional maps, at the expense of Republicans, as Democrats respond to mid-decade redistricting in other states like Texas. Governor Gavin Newsom, the chief champion of the proposition, stands to have a big victory under his belt as he looks to the 2028 race. Stirewalt is political editor for NewsNation and The Hill and anchor of The Hill Sunday. Along with Chris Cuomo, Elizabeth Vargas and Leland Vittert, he will co-anchor the network’s Decision Desk 2025 coverage from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET on Tuesday, with NewsNation Now’s Connell McShane and Nichole Berlie hosting a two-hour special at 10 p.m. ET. From Georgetown University, the network will feature Decision Desk HQ with their independent election results and race calls. Stirewalt spoke to Deadline late last week about what to expect during the night. DEADLINE: In terms of attention, how do you think Tuesday’s election compare to past off years? CHRIS STIREWALT: In 2021, the normal life cycle of politics asserted itself, and we saw what we expected to see in 2021, which is the party out of power did well, won Virginia, and did better than expected in New Jersey. We like Virginia and New Jersey because they’re pretty good core samples of what’s going on in the rest of the country. Right now, Donald Trump’s approval rating in both of those states is pretty much the same as it is the nation as a whole. It’s got a useful and interesting demographic breakdown. It’s not like you are having a mayoral election in New York City. We won’t learn very much about the country from New York City, because New York is not very much like the rest of the country, but you look at New Jersey and Virginia, and you get a pretty good mirror to hold up to the electorate as a whole. So in ’21 we got what we expected, which is the party out of power tends to do well, and it tends to be a harbinger of what’s coming in the next cycle. I think there is a lot more, this time around, question about whether that is still true, whether normal politics and normal rhythms in politics, are still in place or, is this time really different? And I think that increases the interest, or how much people are paying attention to these races. DEADLINE: Why is this time different? STIREWALT: Well, I don’t think it is different. Every cycle, every generation, there is a relearning of the truths of living in a democratic republic. And if you think back just four years ago to where we were, this was a period of extraordinary confidence and … the Democrats believing that Joe Biden wasn’t going to be a caretaker president. This was going to be a transformative presidency. We were talking about the Green New Deal, and we were talking about big changes and big things that were going to go on because Democrats believed that their majority was, if not permanent, very durable. And there is always and everywhere a tendency to believe in nonexistent mandates and a tendency to believe that your political circumstances are exempt from the normal vicissitudes of politics and public opinion. Both Republicans and Democrats right now wonder, has something fundamentally switched? Is something different here? The return of Donald Trump, the first non-consecutive president since the 1880s. And certainly Donald Trump is different from other presidents, and even very different than he was in his first term. And so I think both parties either excitedly believe or worriedly wonder whether or not … the Republicans now have a permanent or very durable majority. I think anticipation and tension is high around these races. DEADLINE: What signs will you be looking for to see if this is an off year election that is a repudiation of Trump? STIREWALT: New Jersey is a very politically elastic state, and has a lot more play in the line than there is in Virginia. Virginia is a pretty inelastic, pretty politically stable state. It went Democratic in 2008, and unlike Indiana and North Carolina, which were both states that hadn’t gone Democratic since 1964, Virginia didn’t go back. Virginia moves much more incrementally for a variety of reasons. In Virginia, who wins these elections? Was it a repudiation of Joe Biden when Glenn Youngkin won in Virginia? Yeah, it’s true, but was it a repudiation of Barack Obama when Bob McDonnell won in 2009? So it’s like it’s just a rhythm of life in Virginia that they almost always…has gone for the party out of power. Virginia has a one term governorship. If you’re talking about repudiation, or you’re talking about sending the strongest message, you don’t want to look just at the governorships. There are key races in Pennsylvania that we will be watching as well, local races both in Erie and Northampton County in the opposite corners of the state that are both bellwether districts. So if you’re looking for the evidence of what’s happening in the electorate, you can’t stop at Abigail Spanberger and Mikee Sherrill. You have to say, ‘Okay, what? How far down [the ballot] did the wave go? In Virginia, for example, Jay Jones — a bad candidate for attorney general and wasn’t a great candidate for attorney general before the texts came out. Is there enough Democratic support to just carry him over the line anyway, over the incumbent Jason Miyares. And so we’ll look at those local elections. We’ll look at legislative elections. DEADLINE: What indicators will you be looking at to see if that has had an impact the government shutdown? STIREWALT: The administration did not help Jack Ciattarelli in canceling the Gateway project in New York City. It is not directly related to the shutdown. It’s punitive. It’s a punishment for Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries. But the Gateway project faces New Jersey. It was really going to serve New Jersey commuters more than New Yorkers, and that sort of brought it into the race there. In Virginia, I think a good way to think about the shutdown is Democrats are losing by less. They’re being they’re being harmed, slightly less than Republicans. But if you’re a furloughed federal worker in Northern Virginia, do you want Democrats, your senators, to continue to hold out and to refuse to vote to reopen government in service of Obamacare subsidies? Some of them probably do. A lot of them probably just want the government reopened, right? A lot of them probably just want the anxiety and insecurity of this moment to pass. Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s clean. I don’t expect to see, but we’ll look for obvious signs that the shutdown has either had a backlash effect on Democrats or is a multiplier effect that is hurting Republicans. DEADLINE: Want to shift to New York Mayor. Lots of focus on the right on this election and what it says about Democrats. [Zohran Mamdani] is leading in the polls. But what will you be watching for? STIREWALT: Zohran Mamdani, in the post primary part of this campaign, has spent a lot of time reaching out. He went on on Fox News. He went to a conservative Jewish congregation. He did a lot to say, ‘I’m not a radical.’ In fact, his closing ad talks about Fox News and says, ‘I’m not what they say I am.’ Now it makes me wonder if you’re Mamdani, in order to deliver the kind of radical change that you and your core supporters want, you need a pretty decisive mandate, right? You need to win, not by 10 points. You want to win by 20 points. You want to run up the score. Mamdani has brought Kathy Hochul to heel, has brought Hakeem Jeffries to heel and said, ‘I’m the nominee, you’re coming with me, and if you oppose me on this, it’s going to hurt you with younger voters who you need in the primary, and so you better get in line.’ And they have. … He wants to ring the bell so that he can say, ‘I’m backed by a broad coalition, and I have a mandate to implement big change.’ DEADLINE: Do you see any signs that the race is tightening? I’ve seen some polls, but I’m wondering if it’s if it’s definitive. STIREWALT: How would you like to poll New York? The result of the primary was surprising, but it was not surprising that the New York polls were off. New York is hard to poll, and you have a big population in a geographically compact area with a lot of people who aren’t going to vote, and making a good guess in a New York mayoral election about what turnout is going to be like is very hard. If you look back at like, how Bill de Blasio and other progressives did it, it wasn’t like a huge turnout election. So the note of caution for Mamdani is, he didn’t do as well with lower propensity voters in the primary. So he does white, affluent, the same sort of voters who catapulted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Sort of a barista adjacent community. He does great with white progressives, particularly young people. But if you’re [Andrew] Cuomo, your hope is that there’s going to be a surge in turnout in the outer boroughs, and that non-white voters and working class voters, people without college degrees, are going to turn out in droves. And they could blow up the models for this race in a second. In a city that big and geographically compact, they could blow up all the polling models for this in a heartbeat. I would be surprised if Cuomo won, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the polls were wrong. DEADLINE: Proposition 50 out in California. What has surprised you about how this campaign has played out? STIREWALT: California remains the leading sinkhole for Republican money in the United States. Not even Beto O’Rourke and Texas Democrats are able to waste money that California Republicans can do. It’s a doozy. Kevin McCarthy, the former Speaker of the House, wanted to help his homies, right? Wanted to help California Republicans, because they’re the ones who are going to get nuked in the redistricting, and they’re going to raise all this money and they’re going to fight back. And for a minute, it was like, ‘Well, you know, we don’t know.’ Thirty seconds later, it was like, ‘Ah, never mind. We always knew we were going to lose, and we don’t care.’ There was a quote from a House Republican strategist where he basically said that for Trump and the Republican Party, those those guys are just expendable, that Trump is focused on the number, not the individual. So if you are like those guys who have been hanging around in southern and central California, they’re going to get nuked, but the Republicans figure they can make it up elsewhere. So they push them out on the ice flow to to go live with the walruses. That’s pretty tough. It’s also, of course, significant, because Gavin Newsom — We assume he’s going to have a good night. Anything can happen. But I am at least as certain that Prop 50 will pass as I am that Zohran Mamdani will win in New York. We have watched [Pennsylvania Governor] Josh Shapiro, who does have races going on in Pennsylvania. He has a big statewide judicial race. He also has these local races that are important. But we have also watched other potential 2028 Democratic contenders try to get in the mix, show up in Virginia, show up in New Jersey. Gretchen Whitmer from Michigan and other Democrats, like Pete Buttigieg, Democrats with 2028 ambition, have tried to get into the story. But Gavin Newsom gets to be a winner, right? He’s not running for it. He gets to say he’s not trying to get into story. He is part of the story, and that will be a big help for him…. The invisible primary for president will take place from Tuesday, to a year from Tuesday. That’s the year that you have to get organized and really start figuring out who your donors are, what is your team, locking people down. As you know, 33 seconds after the midterm election concludes, the primary is no longer invisible. Now people start running and really start getting in the race, and the first declaration starts to come out, and the elbows get a lot sharper. If this turns out as polling indicates that it will, this gives Gavin Newsom a win, a presence, and the ability to say, honestly, ‘Donald Trump tried to stop me. Republicans tried to stop me. They threw a bunch of money at me, and we crushed them.’ … We spend a lot of time thinking about the ideological direction of parties when they’re in the wilderness, but we should remember what the voters really want to do. They really just want to win right now. They would like to win under certain circumstances, or they believe that certain ideologies will help them to win, but what they really want to do is win, and as Donald Trump proved within the Republican Party, ideology is a lot more flexible than ambition. And if Gavin Newsom looks like a winner and a guy who can get it done, it may allay the concerns of a bunch of progressives who think that Newsom is too slick and too much of a people pleaser. DEADLINE: What if the scenario is Mamdani wins by a significant margin, and then you have Democratic wins in New Jersey and Virginia. Doesn’t that mean the tension between the the liberal and moderate wings just continue in the Democratic Party?
