Republicans may be celebrating Texas’ draconian new abortion law, but not Glenn Youngkin, the wealthy newcomer to politics trying to win over Virginia’s suburban women as he runs for governor.
Youngkin has been trying to change the subject since he was caught early in the campaign saying he had to moderate his views to win votes in the northern Virginia suburbs but “can start going on offense” to curb abortion rights after he won.
Now, Texas’ law has brought the race back to abortion and former Governor Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate, is hammering Youngkin on the issue, calling him an extremist who would bring the Texas law to Virginia. Youngkin is tossing the label back, calling McAuliffe “extremist” while falsely claiming he would allow taxpayer-funded abortions until the moment of birth.
The fight is being waged mainly through television ads, with McAuliffe’s latest showing Youngkin assuring a liberal activist posing as an anti-abortion voter, “I’m not going to go squishy on you… but I gotta win.”
Youngkin, who knows this isn’t favorable territory for him—he also told the activist in that video that “as a campaign topic, sadly, this in fact won't win independent votes”—is trying to change the subject. His latest ad focuses on crime, which he says is “skyrocketing” in the state while McAuliffe enjoys backing from groups that, Youngkin claims, want to defund the police, abolish ICE and close prisons in Virginia.
Republicans haven’t won a statewide race in Virginia for a decade, and “Youngkin with his business background offered a chance for Virginia Republicans to turn over a new leaf,” said Stephen Farnsworth, director of the Center for Leadership and Media Studies at the University of Mary Washington, “but between the former president and the governor of Texas, he may not get the chance.”
Republicans may have thought that they would always be chasing Roe, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion, but the Texas law, and the Supreme Court’s decision not to stay it for now, has upended that assumption. “Republicans have benefitted from 40 years of promising that one day they will make abortion illegal, but they never had to face the backlash of it until it actually happened,” says Farnsworth.
He calls the Texas law “too clever by half. Outsourcing enforcement of state laws to bounty hunters is not a good strategy for running a government or attracting business. Texas may rue the day they put this marker down. It makes Texas much less appealing to business.”
In a press conference in Richmond on Tuesday, McAuliffe said a Texas-like law in Virginia would be “devastating” to the economy: “No one wants to be in a state with these draconian laws.” In a familiar display of the salesmanship that McAuliffe is known for, the former governor said he had already called the “economic development people” to tell them to call the big corporations headquartered in Texas and invite them to Virginia. He named Dell, HP and American Airlines.
The Texas law and the Supreme Court ruling letting it stand “adds energy and brings clarity for swing voters about the consequences of electing somebody like Glenn Youngkin,” said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic consultant and Virginia native. “This is less a dream come true for Terry than a nightmare for Youngkin.”
The 54-year-old former co-CEO of The Carlyle Group entered the race as a blank slate, and tried to keep it that way, running a vacuous campaign on protecting “election security” and initially promising to end the state income tax. When he got blowback, he said his promise was “aspirational.” He has Donald Trump’s endorsement, a mixed bag since the former president is reviled in the vote-rich suburbs of northern Virginia that typically pick the winner.
Youngkin has been trying to walk that fine line between staying loyal to Trump and the base while straying enough to win over independents and more traditional Republicans. It’s not working, says Quentin Kidd, a political scientist with Christopher Newport University. “He doesn’t have arms that are long enough to embrace the base and cuddle up to suburban voters.”
The Virginia governor’s race is a bellwether election that gives the winning party bragging rights and sets the tone for next year’s midterms. Historically, the party in power in the White House loses, a curse that McAuliffe broke when he won his previous term in 2013 (the state is the only one that bars sitting governors from running for re-election) and that he will break again should he win in November. President Biden won the state by nearly 11 points and half a million votes, and by that measure McAuliffe should be a shoo-in. But Biden’s standing in the polls has cratered, and the 64-year-old McAuliffe needs something to energize the Democratic base, which the Texas law provides.
Polls show McAuliffe ahead by single digits, a close race because of the political environment, said Jessica Taylor with the Cook Political Report. A Change Research poll shows 59 percent of Virginians want abortion to be legal in most or all cases. “The timing of the Texas law gives Democrats an opportunity to put abortion front and center just when voters are starting to tune in,” said Taylor, noting that early voting begins on September 17th.
“Complacency is the biggest fear Democrats have in this race, and the abortion issue could motivate Democrats and independents,” said Larry Sabato, founder of the Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “Youngkin supports exceptions (for rape and incest), and he’s using that to project a moderate image, but people are too angry to buy that. He’s said enough for McAuliffe to use all the way to November 2.”
“If it comes down to social issues and in particular, abortion, Youngkin loses,” said Kidd, a prediction widely shared across the political spectrum.
Two months is an eternity in politics and Youngkin has pledged to put unlimited amounts of his own money into the race, but an uphill race for him became that much steeper when Texas’ bill went into effect. The women in northern Virginia suburbs who turned the state from purple to blue in reaction to Trump are not about to revert to a candidate like Youngkin who is on the record wanting to ban abortion in Virginia and defund Planned Parenthood.
