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Opinion: Virginia’s gubernatorial election is a referendum on the government shutdown Republicans hoped President Donald Trump’s strong 2024 performance would bode well for Earle-Sears’ chances of becoming the first woman to hold the state’s governorship. Instead, Trump’s government shutdown led to widespread fury among Virginia’s more than 320,000 struggling federal workers. Now, Earle-Sears is performing the worst of all GOP statewide candidates and trailing Spanberger by roughly seven percentage points. Ouch. Tuesday’s election is nothing less than a referendum on Trump’s shutdown and his disdain for the federal workers who make up the backbone of the Commonwealth’s economy. Virginia’s Trump-enabling Republican leaders have earned the drubbing voters are likely about to hand them. Read more from Max here: That’s where Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat who first won election to the House in the anti-Trump wave of 2018, and GOP businessman Jack Ciattarelli are running for governor in one of the most closely watched contests on Tuesday. Ciattarelli came within three percentage points of beating outgoing Gov. Phil Murphy (D) in 2021, and some polls have shown this year’s contest coming down to the wire. And it’s also where the popularity of President Donald Trump after 10 months in office will be most keenly tested. Trump made real gains in New Jersey in the 2024 election, losing the historically blue state by just six points. Read more from Laura here: And that is precisely what worries some Democrats on the national stage as Zohran Mamdani’s surging mayoral campaign nears the finish line. For the progressive left, a Mamdani win would be a signal achievement, catapulting a self-identified democratic socialist to one of the most prominent public offices in American politics. It would cap off a decade of gains — from Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) presidential campaign against Hillary Clinton, to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s improbable 2018 congressional win, to moving the entire party to the left. In New York, his supporters are lapping it up. But in Washington, Democrats are uneasy. “Mamdani has run a joyful campaign that has offered many tactical lessons for Democrats,” Caitlin Legacki, a Democratic strategist, told MSNBC. “But it would be a grave mistake to think you could run somebody with these policy positions anywhere outside of America’s most liberal city.” “A Mamdani victory is a serious political problem for those in the party who believe, as we do, that our primary focus must be on flipping red and purple seats blue, expanding the map for Democrats, and creating a path back to Congress and the White House,” Matt Bennett, executive vice president of center-left think tank Third Way, told MSNBC. “The [Democratic Socialists of America] platform — which Mamdani has not repudiated — hands a potent set of weapons to Republican ad makers eager to tie Mamdani-style politics to Democrats running in much tougher places than deep blue New York.” Read more from Zack and Nnamdi here.
