My home state, the Commonwealth of Virginia, marches to it’s own beat when it comes to statewide offices in Richmond. A rhythm that’s one count off from pretty much everywhere but New Jersey.
Our elections for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General fall on the odd year right after national Presidential elections, unlike pretty much everybody else (except for New Jersey) who mostly line up with the standard two and four year cycles for national elections.
As such, we get a bit of national attention, since we’re seen as a bellwether for next year’s mid-terms; a predictor of the country’s attitudes toward the newly elected President; so goes Virginia, so goes the Nation or some such nonsense. I guess it makes sense, as we’re a fair representation of the national population as a whole; not perfectly, but enough to be interesting, in any case.
We’ve just wrapped primary season for those particular offices; earlier this year, the Republican party had a weird distributed convention/primary thing (the most interesting thing about it to me was that it used ranked choice voting, which I think ought to be used way more often), nominating Glenn Youngkin, a pretty typical rich guy/MBA Bro, who I guess is at least better than other possibilities, like my State Senate “representative” Amanda Chase). On Tuesday, we had our Democratic primary, where we nominated former Governor and 90s Clinton Bro Terry McAuliffe.
And, I guess, Terry will be um…fine.
Of course, I didn’t vote for him on Tuesday; not when we had a couple of pretty great, forward-looking, progressive, younger candidates on the ballot, like Delegate Jennifer Carroll Foy and State Sen. Jennifer McClellan, either of which I think would have been better choices than the guy who was governor before the current one (you can be Governor more than once here, but not for consecutive turns), and either would have been significant as the first female governor of the Commonwealth (and both being other than white is also a bonus).
Similar establishment-vs-upstart races were in play for down-ticket offices (the current AG won against a younger progressive legacy, though LG will be more interesting), and in general, the establishment candidate got the nod over the more progressive ones.
And, like I said, it’ll be fine, though I’m struggling to summon up enthusiasm for a couple of old white guys (though again, Hala Ayala for LG definitely progress). I didn’t vote for any of them, picking the #2 in all three races; Carroll Foy (GenX progressive activist), Sam Rasoul (son of Palestinian immigrants endorsed by Liz Warren) and Jay Jones (not Mark Herring).
I am aware that I skew to the left of center, and honestly, left-of-left in terms of my personal politics, but I’m also a realist and recognize that I don’t always line up with mainstream Democrats, and that’s fine. The current guy, Northam, in spite of being the more moderate candidate four years ago, has done a pretty damned good job, even if he stumbled a bit out of the gate, especially since the Dem-led state legislature has kept him on track. McAuliffe did some pretty good things his first time around, particularly in terms of voting rights.
So, I’m going to do what I can to get the current ticket elected, even if they weren’t my first choices; they’re a much better option than the 45-endorsed other guys, and although you’d never know it by looking around my particular corner of the state, 45 is deeply unpopular here. There are a ton more liberal urban professionals than there are rural red-hats voting, so I feel pretty good about our chances.
And, once we get Terry in, we’ll hold his feet to the fire to keep progressive things happening and not let him fall into his old 90s “Third Way” habits.
We’re fine.
