Joe Biden and the Democrats tremble: the Republicans triumph in Virginia where a year after the presidential elections the effect has already evaporated. After taking the state ten points clear of Donald Trump, the Democrats lost the race for new governor twelve years after the last time. Republican Glenn Youngkin, 54, Harvard masters, politically incorrect millionaire manager, was able to break every democratic taboo by about three points above the Dem Terry McAuliffe.
Over three million voters: more than half a million compared to 2017. And if Biden had thought of frightening the electorate, warning that “every vote in Youngkin” would be “one given to Trump”, it had the opposite effect: the referendum was won by the former president. Youngkin, who dismissed transgender issues and promised to put aside educational programs critical of race theory, intercepted the anger of the students’ parents, perplexed about the vaccination requirement. The Republican sided in favor of the vaccine, but against the obligation for public employees: he used less violent language than Trump’s, but he never distanced himself from the former president.
In fact, he showed the conservatives a third way: Trumpian but not too much. Angry, but not with swollen neck veins. The rest was done by the Democrats, who seemed unexciting as to motivate voters to pour into the seats as they did a year ago for the presidential elections.
On the other hand, the word Virginia does not evoke good feelings in the White House: if the centrist Senator Joe Manchin arrives from West Virginia, who has jeopardized the Biden agenda on Welfare and climate, the negative signal has arrived from Virginia that everyone they feared. And that could give Trump the push towards his great goal: to reapply for the 2024 presidential elections, aware that he has not lost contact with his base.
To complicate the picture for the president is also New Jersey where, with the ballot still in progress, the Democrat Phil Murphy is behind the Republican rival Jack Ciattarelli. The vote in the two states, and especially in Virginia, is considered a referendum on the first year of Biden’s presidency and on the work of the Democrats, as well as being a thermometer of the 2022 mid-term elections. Super Tuesday instead gives Democrat Eric Adams the title of mayor of New York. The former agent beats Curtis Sliwa and is preparing to become the second African-American mayor of the Big Apple. “We will put New York on a new direction,” he said cheering at the victory at the polls, which also saw the triumph of Alvin Bragg elected prosecutor of Manhattan. The 48-year-old, the first African American to hold that position, will inherit the investigation into Donald Trump and his family business. In Boston, voters make history and choose Michelle Wu, 36, children of Taiwanese immigrants, is the first female mayor and the first Asian-American to lead the city. Wu’s election shows the social evolution of Boston, where whites are now a minority. Also in Pittsburgh the polls give a turning point with the election of the first African American mayor, Ed Gainey. After deciding to run following protests over George Floyd’s death, Gainey beat Republican Tory Moreno at the polls.