Gubernatorial Unease

In Virginia, former Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe, running to get his job back, suddenly finds himself neck and neck with Republican opponent Glenn Youngkin despite the state trending more to the Democrats.  In New Jersey, incumbent Democratic governor Phil Murphy has seen his once-big lead over Republican opponent Jack Ciattarelli narrow to six percentage points in one poll.  Some pollsters say the gap could even be narrower.

Neither one of these revolting developments was supposed to happen.  Youngkin is a Trump straw man in a state Trump lost to Biden by ten points in the 2020 presidential election.  New Jersey should be even more of a gimme for the Democrats, yet Ciattarelli is in a position to keep the incumbency curse on New Jersey Democratic governors going - no Democratic New Jersey governor has won a second term since Brendan Byrne in 1977, while three Republican New Jersey governors have.

McAuliffe has been patiently waiting for President Biden to get his infrastructure legislation through Congress and give him an edge over Youngkin, but even if that legislation passes Congress tomorrow, McAuliffe has to answer for his big fumble in a gubernatorial debate in which he said that parents have no right to tell school boards how to educate their kids.  Really, Terry?  Okay, what McAuliffe meant was that parents have no right to threaten school board members who either advocate strict COVID measures or push history courses that include more people of color, but it didn't come out right.  Now that Youngkin has that McAuliffe gaffe on tape, the election may not come out right for McAuliffe no matter how much he tries to correct the record.  

Similarly, Governor Murphy in New Jersey opened a can of worms for himself when he said that New Jersey is "probably not your state" if taxes are your only issue.   Murphy said that back in 2019, but the context was not to dismiss taxes as an issue per se. 

"If your spectrum of inputs as you make decisions as a family or as a business is wide, we’ll compete with anybody. The wider that spectrum of consideration, the better it is for New Jersey," Murphy said at a Rowan University event two years ago.  "So if on that list is taxes, by the way, and I’m not shying away from that. Our job is to make sure whether it’s cracking the back of property taxes or making sure that we get to a good place on incentives and that we have that tool in the toolbox, that’s on that list. It’s on the list. I got it."

Ciattarelli has ignored all that, of course, and he's used the Murphy quote about taxes and new Jersey to pound the governor on the head.  And it's working - Murphy has steadily lost support in each successive poll, and there's still one week left before the election.  Murphy has countered with ads going after Ciattarelli's reactionary stands against abortion and vaccines - all vaccines, not just COVID - but the polls show that the biggest issue concerning New Jersey residents is neither.  The biggest issue? Taxes.

And the undecided voters appear to be breaking for Jack.

Personally, I think McAuliffe may be toast, but Murphy may still hold on.  But even if they both win, anyone who thinks the the Democrats can replicate the resounding victory Gavin Newsom pulled off in the California recall vote is sadly mistaken.  The difficulties Democrats are having in Virginia and New Jersey are likely to reflect the difficulties they'll have in next year's midterms.