November Elections Eyed for Clues to 2022

A closely watched race for the Virginia governorship is going down to the wire with the election too close to call.

In this year’s other governor’s election, Democratic incumbent Phil Murphy (D) leads by double digits over his Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli, a former state legislator who calls himself a “disciple of Lincoln.”

Democrats also hold the early edge in the invisible election of redistricting that will determine which party controls the House and state legislative chambers in 2022.

VA, NJ Gov Races Statement on Biden?

The most eye-catching race is in Virginia, where Democrat and former governor Terry McAuliffe is opposed by Republican Glenn Youngkin, a wealthy businessman and political newcomer, in an election that will test the popularity of both President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump.

McAuliffe has led throughout, but recent polls have shown the outcome to be within the margin of polling error. The Cook Political Report rates the race a tossup in an election where turnout is key. 

All 100 seats in the Virginia House, where Democrats hold a 55-45 advantage, are on the ballot in the Nov. 2 election.

Democrats won control of the House in 2019 and transformed the Old Dominion. They implemented criminal justice reforms, legalized marijuana, expanded voting rights, raised the minimum wage, enacted gun control measures and repealed the death penalty.

In New Jersey, a poll by Monmouth University released last Wednesday shows the liberal Murphy, who has championed Biden policies, 11 points ahead. That is a slight drop from an earlier Monmouth poll that showed the incumbent with a 13 point lead, but a significant improvement from another recent poll conducted by Emerson College that showed him just six percentage points ahead of Ciattarelli. 

New Jersey voters will also elect both houses of the legislature. Democrats hold a 52-28 majority in the Assembly and a 25-14 majority in the Senate with one vacancy.

The legislative elections in New Jersey and Virginia will be among the last ones held in districts based on the 2010 census. Going forward, most redistricting will be based on the 2020 census.

House Control Lends Heat to State Redistricting

Redistricting of congressional seats for the 2022 midterm elections is a priority for both parties since Democrats now control the U.S. House by only eight seats.

Republicans have a built-in redistricting advantage because they hold 67 of 98 legislative chambers, excluding unicameral and nominally nonpartisan Nebraska. The GOP controls both legislative chambers and the governorship in 23 states compared to 15 states in which the Democrats hold this advantage.

But there’s a complication to this advantage. As noted by Elaine Kamarck of Brookings, Republican states picked up the most congressional seats in the 2020 census and GOP-dominated legislatures control the process in the most states, but Republican counties, many of them rural, lost population while Democratic counties gained.

This means that Republicans have to figure out how to create new GOP districts or retain old ones with votes from Democratic or swing districts, Kamarck observed. Democrats will have to figure out how to benefit from growth in traditionally Democratic areas.

Congressional redistricting is still in its early stages. Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott (R) on Monday signed off on maps designed to preserve the GOP advantage in the Lone Star state, making Texas the sixth state to complete redistricting.

The other states are Indiana, Maine, Nebraska, Oregon and West Virginia.

Another state, Colorado, has completed the redistricting process but referred its new maps to the state supreme court for final approval.

An analysis Wednesday of the six states by the demographic site 538 found that Democrats have gained seven seats nationally from the redistricting process so far, Republicans have gained one, and the number of competitive seats has dropped by six.

Gerrymandering Fears Overblown?

Many Democrats fear that Republicans will use their majorities to create new gerrymanders in an effort to win the U.S. House of Representatives.

But this hasn’t happened so far, and Bruce Cain, a political science professor at Stanford and expert on redistricting, thinks the gerrymander concern may be overblown.

“Doing a gerrymander is harder than it looks,” Cain said.

He points out that an extreme gerrymander would require some Republican House members to accept lesser margins of victory, which they are likely to resist. In many states, the majority party may opt to protect incumbents of both parties rather than seek additional seats.

The redistricting in Texas perfectly illustrates Cain’s point. As 538 points out, the new maps reinforce Republican control of the Texas delegation in the House, in which the GOP holds a 23-13 majority, but also gave some Democratic incumbents safer districts in exchange for shoring up Republican incumbents.

Two new House districts Texas will receive as a result of the 2020 census are evenly divided, with the Republicans gaining a favorable seat in Houston and the Democrats one in Austin.

But while protecting incumbents of both parties, the Texas reapportionment dilutes the votes of people of color and is therefore headed for the courts.

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund has sued Texas, arguing that Latinos do not benefit from the new maps even though population increases among Latinos contributed significantly to the state’s gain of the two new congressional seats.

“What we’re doing in passing this congressional map is a disservice to the people of Texas,” said Rafael Anchia, a Dallas Democrat who chairs the Mexican American Legislative Caucus. “What we’re doing is hurtful to millions of Texans — it’s shameful.”

Redistricting battles in other states will play out over the next nine months.

Deadlines for redistricting are determined by the dates states hold their primary elections, observed Wendy Underhill, director of elections and redistricting at the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In contrast, there’s a deadline of next Tuesday in the Virginia and New Jersey elections.

VA Gov Race Has National Implications

The Virginia governor’s race has attracted national attention because it’s seen as a test of Biden’s popularity in a state he carried by ten percentage points in the 2020 presidential election.

Biden and other prominent Democrats, including former President Barack Obama, have campaigned for McAuliffe, echoing his theme that a vote for Youngkin is equivalent to a vote for Trump.

In fact, Youngkin defeated a Trump-supported candidate in the Republican primary and has walked a tightrope ever since, welcoming Trump’s eventual endorsement while trying to keep his distance from the former president.

This has produced some odd moments in the campaign, such as a rally in Richmond organized by onetime Trump advisor Steve Bannon that began with a pledge of allegiance to the U.S. flag used in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Youngkin issued a statement saying it was “weird and wrong” to use this flag.

He did not attend this rally, at which Trump phoned in as a surprise guest and endorsed Youngkin, who recently told Washington Post chief political correspondent Dan Balz that his formula for winning was “hugging everybody.”

“We’ve got Forever Trumpers, Never Trumpers, and single-issue voters and folks who were Libertarians and Tea Party folks and independents,” Youngkin said.

Republicans in other states are waiting to see if Youngkin’s strategy of accepting support from Trump while trying to hold him at arm’s length succeeds.

Meanwhile, Democrats are wondering if the downturn for Biden, whose approval ratings cratered in polls after the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, will rub off on McAuliffe.

While Youngkin claims to be emphasizing state issues, he is pushing a divisive issue of the teaching of history and racial history that has resulted in flare-ups at school board meetings throughout the country. They have been exploited by Republicans, including Ciattarelli in New Jersey.

Youngkin’s standard speech includes a promise to prevent the teaching of critical race theory in Virginia schools, even though this theory is not part of the state’s school curriculum.

For his part, McAuliffe has tried relentlessly to nationalize the race while pinning Youngkin to Trump. He has singled out Youngkin’s opposition to abortion and to vaccine and mask mandates.

An oft-used McAuliffe television ad goes beyond this and claims inaccurately that Trump is “anti-vaccination.”

McAuliffe has also targeted Youngkin’s support for “election integrity,” which have become code words for Trump’s false narrative that he won the 2020 election.

There is no evidence of election irregularities in Virginia.

The late Tip O’Neill, House speaker for a decade, famously said that “all politics are local.”

In this era of hyper-partisanship it might also be said that local policies such as school board decisions have become nationalized.

-- Lou Cannon

Six States Have Approved New Congressional District Maps

Six states - Indiana, Maine, Nebraska, Oregon, Texas and West Virginia - have proposed new congressional district maps based on the 2020 census, according to a tracker maintained by the political analysis website FiveThirtyEight. New maps have also been proposed in another 20 states.