[fblike]
Last Tuesday, voters in Virginia and New Jersey participated in off-year gubernatorial elections and voters in New York City elected a new mayor. All three campaigns were watched closely by the national media to provide information on 2016 presidential aspirations, the fallout over Obamacare’s technical glitches and broken promises, and to gauge the enthusiasm of voters for conservatism or liberal ideas. Off-year elections are typically under covered by the media, but this year was different because of Virginia’s emergence as a swing state in the last two presidential elections, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie positioning himself for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg stepping down after three terms. Due to this importance, extempers can expect to see some questions about these races in the coming weeks.
Although there were other notable votes last Tuesday, like Colorado voters rejecting a tax increase for more education funding and supporting a twenty-five percent tax on the sale of marijuana, this topic brief will focus on each of these three races, with a section devoted to each. Each section will summarize the major issues in each race, analyze the outcome, and discuss the significance of each race and the challenges that the winner will face moving forward.
Readers are also encouraged to use the links below and in the related R&D to bolster their files about this topic.
Virginia
As indicated above, Virginia has emerged as a swing state in presidential politics and President Barack Obama carried the state by narrow margins in 2008 and 2012. Virginia’s shift to the left (it currently has two Democratic Senators, both of which were former Democratic governors) has been due to the influx of liberal voters and government workers in the Northern Virginia suburbs. These voters work in Washington D.C. but commute from Virginia, where the schools and living conditions are better. This suburban growth has provided Democrats with large margins in statewide races and has enabled them to swamp high Republican vote margins in the rural parts of the state. Extempers should note, though, that Virginia should still be identified as a tossup state and a center-right state because successful Democratic candidates are often moderate on economic and social issues. For example, Republicans control the Virginia House of Delegates, the state’s lower house, by a wide margin.
The recent governor’s election pitted Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe, a former fundraiser for Bill and Hillary Clinton and a businessman, against Republican candidate and Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who was a favorite of the Tea Party. As The New York Times of November 5th notes, Cuccinelli was the first attorney general to sue the federal government over the Affordable Care Act. Tea Party factions viewed him as a potential presidential candidate as well. McAuliffe ran for the Virginia governorship in 2009, but was defeated in the Democratic primary and his opponent in that race was crushed by Bob McDonnell. McAuliffe cruised to a relatively easy victory in this year’s primary, whereas Cuccinelli was not favored by the moderate Virginia Republican establishment. They preferred Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling, but in May the state Republican Party, which was staffed with Cucinelli supporters, decided to nominate its candidate through a convention instead of a primary. Extempers should be aware that primaries usually attract a broader spectrum of voters, but only very passionate activists show up at conventions. As a result, the Tea Party came out in favor of Cuccinelli and he won the nomination. Moderate Republicans were not pleased with this development and it is telling that the Chamber of Commerce refused to donate to Cuccinelli’s campaign.
During the campaign, Cuccinelli was on the defensive over his stances on social issues, notably abortion. McAuliffe and his allies alleged that Cuccinelli was waging a “war on women” by denying them access to birth control and opposing the federal Violence Against Women Act. Politico on November 6th points out that McAuliffe ran 5,600 ads on the abortion issue during the campaign. Cuccinelli also lost a valuable campaign asset when Governor McDonnell, who was seen as a potential vice-presidential nominee in 2012 and a Republican presidential candidate, became embroiled in a scandal after accepting benefits from a business executive. Despite the scandal, McDonnell is popular with the Republican base and is a great fundraiser, but Cuccinelli could not take advantage of these traits. Cuccinelli was also embroiled in the same scandal because he took gifts from the business executive in question as well. This put him on the defensive throughout the summer during the campaign. To fight back, Cuccinelli tried to paint McAuliffe was inexperienced, since McAuliffe has never held political office, argue that he was a carpetbagger who is out of touch with Virginia voters, and that McAuliffe was a poor business manager, as McAuliffe’s electric car company GreenTech lost money and was investigated by the federal government. The race may have turned, though, on economics. The New York Times article previously cited indicates that McAuliffe supported road bills that were signed by Governor McDonnell, while Cuccinelli opposed them because of the tax increases that would be required to pay for them. Traffic congestion is a big issue in Northern Virginia and this issue enabled McAuliffe to appear as a supporter of business and bipartisan. Despite Cuccinelli’s attempts to make the race a referendum on McAuliffe, the opposite occurred and exit polls, as The Christian Science Monitor of November 6th reveals, show that the race was a referendum on Cuccinelli.
Before the vote, McAuliffe was expected to cruise to an easy victory. Over the last two months of the campaign he led in most polls by an average of six to seven points, with some polls predicting a blowout win by more than ten points. However, on election night Cuccineli led for most of the race and it took a large vote margin by McAuliffe in Fairfax County and other Northern Virginia suburbs to win the race by about 55,000 votes, or 2.5%. Politico on November 6th writes that McAuliffe’s slim victory likely occurred because of anger over Obamacare. Some Republican strategists argue that if the race had taken place a week later that Cuccinelli may have been able to win. In looking at exit poll data, it is clear that McAuliffe had a more enthusiastic base of support than Cuccinelli. For example, McAuliffe successfully got black voters, a group that has low turnout in off-year and midterm elections, to go to the polls for him. Black voters were estimated to be nearly one-fifth of the electorate. The Christian Science Monitor previously cited indicates that McAuliffe won women by nine points and unmarried women by forty-two points, although Cuccinelli won married women by nine points. Politico on November 6th notes that Cuccinelli won independents by nine points, but this was not enough to win because more self-identified Democrats (37%) turned out than Republicans (32%). Politico speculates that this gap might be explained by the government shutdown, which galvanized Democratic voters and depressed Republican ones, although Obamacare’s fallout may have gotten some of these Republicans to go to the polls and vote. McAuliffe’s slim victory illustrates that he was a weak candidate that a moderate Republican could have defeated, but Cuccinelli’s positions on social issues like abortion, which voters viewed as too extreme, came back to hurt him.
Political analysts expect McAuliffe’s victory to help Hillary Clinton if she runs for the presidency in 2016 because he will be able to utilize his political apparatus to help her. However, some of this can be overstated because Republicans controlled governorships in Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania in the last election and that did not help Mitt Romney win any of those states. Democrats also argue that McAuliffe’s win is a rebuke of the Tea Party, but Cuccinelli’s supporters argue that McAuliffe’s narrow victory illustrates that he could have won with more support from the Republican Party. As noted earlier, the Chamber of Commerce did not help his campaign and Cuccinelli was outspent by $15 million. Politico on November 6th explains that the Republican Governors Association stopped funneling large amounts of money into the race after the summer, when they felt that Cuccinelli was not going to win. The Guardian on November 6th notes that McAuliffe raised $34 million during his campaign and collected thirty-seven personal donations over $100,000. This produced a huge gap between the two candidates, as The New York Times previously cited reveals that Cuccinelli was outspent by 75% on this race. The Tea Party argues that if the Republican establishment had done more to offset this disparity that Cuccinelli could have cruised to victory. Cuccinelli supporters also point out that the Libertarian candidate in the race, Robert Sarvis, a software developer, pulled in over 100,000 votes (about 7% of the total), which drew away some of his support. The conservative media broke a story late in the race that the Democratic Party was directing some of its funds to the Sarvis campaign and some of his support did ebb away in the closing stages of the race. Still, this was not enough to put Cuccinelli over the top.
On the whole, it will be tough to draw significant national implications from the Virginia race because of the various issues on the ground. McAuliffe, a relatively inexperienced candidate, did defeat a Tea Party star, but voters did not appear to like either choice, which can explain the support that Sarvis received. McAuliffe supports gay marriage, Obamacare, and gun control, but passing any of these initiatives through the Virginia House of Delegates will be impossible because of the significant Republican majority in the chamber, so his biggest role might be as a figurehead for the state rather than a champion of liberal ideas. However, the race does illustrate that Republicans with extreme positions on social issues, like abortion, can come under fire and be painted into a corner that is hard to recover from electorally. The forty-two point gap with single women will encourage Democrats to wave the “war on women” banner in 2014 as well.
New Jersey
Unlike Virginia, the outcome of the New Jersey governor’s race was called very early in the evening and was never in doubt over the course of the race. In New Jersey, the sitting governor can run for re-election, which cannot happen in Virginia. Governor Chris Christie, who defeated incumbent John Corzine in 2009, won his race by 22 points over State Senator Barbara Buono. Christie never trailed in the polls and Buono never acquired any traction against him, although her campaign tried to tie Christie to conservative social causes and argue that he was only running for governor to strengthen his profile for the 2016 presidential election. The Christie campaign, which was confident of victory, made no secret of its efforts to make his re-election campaign a testament to how popular he is with non-Republican voters, which they argued would gauge his viability for a 2016 run. This is a tried and true formula in politics and George W. Bush’s landslide victory in the 1998 Texas gubernatorial election, where he won over large numbers of black and Latino voters, paved the way for his 2000 presidential run. The Christian Science Monitor on November 6th points out that in his re-election win, Christie won 57% of women voters, one-third of Democrats, a majority of Latinos, and nearly half of union voters. Christie’s victory was also the first time since the 1988 presidential election that a Republican has won more than fifty percent of the vote statewide (Christie won 60%), and Christie only lost one county in the entire state.
Christie’s rise as a Republican star began in 2009 when he ousted Corzine from the governor’s office and his blunt political style and victories over the state’s teachers unions won him support. The Chicago Tribune paints a good picture of Christie’s ideological views on November 6th when it explains that Christie is pro-life, opposes gay marriage (he dropped a state appeal of a court decision last month that allowed gay marriages to start in the state), and vetoed tax increases while governor. However, he has shown that he can work with the state legislature, which is dominated by Democrats, to tackle the state’s pension obligations, limit property tax increases, and direct the relief effort of Hurricane Sandy. This is not to suggest that Christie’s first term was always easy. His decision to kill a project that would have built a commuter rail tunnel under the Hudson River to connect Northern New Jersey with New York City in 2010 was unpopular. The Economist on November 8th writes that this project cost the state jobs and Christie misled voters about the costs that the state would incur by continuing the project. The Chicago Tribune previously cited points out that in the summer of 2011, Christie only had a 44% approval rating and Democrats smelled blood. However, Hurricane Sandy in October 2012 turned the tide of his political fortunes and his public embrace of President Obama made him popular with the state’s Democrats, although it drew the ire of conservatives. President Obama returned the favor during Christie’s current campaign, as he praised Christie’s handling of the Hurricane Sandy effort, which took away an issue that Buono hoped to use against him.
Throughout the governor’s race, Buono supporters were frustrated at the lack of support that they received from the national Democratic Party. Major Democratic donors refused to pour money into Buono’s campaign, seeing her effort as hopeless. She did not receive an endorsement from President Obama and the Clintons did not campaign on her behalf. Politico on November 4th reveals that Buono’s only significant support came from EMILY’s List, which tries to recruit female candidates, as the Democratic Governors Association refrained from giving her a lot of money. Politico writes that this funding disparity only enabled Buono to run two advertising spots in the race versus Christie’s sixteen and Christie managed to define his opponent in the eyes of voters in early summer. Buono, seeing her political future destroyed by the race, lashed out at the Democratic Party in her concession speech, saying that it had “betrayed” her. While that rhetoric is harsh, Buono’s supporters make a good point that the Democratic Party should not have let Christie cruise to an easy victory in this governor’s race. The Politico article previously cited suggests that by not funding Buono, Democrats let Christie gain a higher national profile from his victory and lost an opportunity to blunt his 2016 momentum.
The question, though, is how much momentum does the race give Christie for 2016? His supporters point to the inroads made among women, blacks, Latinos, and union households in the latest race, but exit polls suggested that Christie could not win the state against Hillary Clinton in 2016 and that these groups would shift their allegiance back to a Democratic candidate in a national race. Republicans are also skeptical about Christie’s support for the Republican Party as a whole. For example, although he won the governor’s race by a wide margin, he did not appear to have coattails, meaning that the Republican Party did not pick up a sizeable number of seats in the state legislature. Christie has already tried to target State Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean, Jr., an effort that The Washington Post on November 8th described as a way to improve Christie’s relationship with State Senate President Stephen Sweeney. During the campaign, Christie only brought in moderate Republicans, like former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez and Utah Senator Orrin Hatch told Politico on November 6th that he would like to see a Christie-Martinez ticket for 2016. Republicans are also angry that Christie altered the timing of a special election for the U.S. Senate instead of running the election in November. In that race, Newark Mayor Cory Booker defeated Republican Steve Lonegan by a less than expected margin and the Economist reveals on November 8th that Christie could have put Lonegan over the top during the race. While this analysis discounts Christie’s lack of coattails in state legislative races, it could be used against him by other Republicans, especially since running the special election cost New Jersey taxpayers $24 million. The other issue that Christie will have to face from the national media and other Republicans during a 2016 run is his weight. Time ran a controversial cover last week that showed Christie’s picture with the headline “The Elephant in the Room.” The elephant is the Republican Party symbol, meant to illustrate wisdom and strength, but critics said that it was a job at Christie’s weight. The Los Angeles Times on November 7th explains that Christie had lap band surgery in February to lose weight, but voters might be concerned over his health. Still, other analysts say Christie’s weight might be an asset because many Americans struggle with weight loss and if the Democrats attack Christie over his weight then they will appear mean spirited. It should be noted that John Corzine tried to make Christie’s weight an issue in the 2009 gubernatorial election and that effort backfired.
New York City
Since 1993, New York City mayoral elections have been an exercise in frustration for the Democratic Party. Despite having a large voter registration advantage, the last five New York City mayors have been Republicans or received the endorsement of the Republican Party. Rudy Giuliani won two terms as mayor in 1993 and 1997 and Michael Bloomberg won as a Republican in 2001 and then as an independent in 2005 and 2009. With Bloomberg stepping down after twelve years at the helm, the time appeared ripe for Democrats to return to power and national attention fell upon this year’s chaotic Democratic primary. In that primary, the early leader, Christine Quinn, the openly gay speaker of the New York City Council, gradually lost traction and was seen as a Bloomberg crony. Anthony Weiner, the former Congressman forced out by a sexting scandal, appeared to have a small advantage in the summer, but when it was revealed that he continued his sexting behavior are resigning from office the support for his campaign plummeted. Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, whose support for much of the campaign mired in the single digits, surged into the lead after commercials emphasized his interracial marriage and liberal (or “progressive”) beliefs. De Blasio’s campaign from the late summer to the Democratic primary on September 11th became a juggernaut and he won the necessary 40% of the primary vote to avoid a runoff. On the Republican side, Joe Lhota, a former deputy mayor under Giuliani and former chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, cruised to victory in the Republican primary.
During the general election, de Blasio’s momentum continued. Unlike other Democrats in the country, de Blasio waged the politics of class warfare and argued that he would pursue raising taxes on New Yorkers that made more than $500,000 a year to fund a citywide pre-kindergarten program. Politico on November 5th explains that de Blasio’s emphasis on education funding, support for increasing public and private sector union membership in New York City, and regulating big business was embraced by other Democrats like Comptroller-elect Scott Stringer and Public Advocate-elect Tish James. Bloomberg on November 7th also explains that de Blasio’s campaign emphasized the need to build 200,000 units of low-income housing for city residents and the need for better-paying jobs. Lhota’s campaign tried to argue that de Blasio could not fulfill his campaign promises and that his policies, especially de Blasio’s opposition to “stop and frisk” policies by the NYPD (although he never came out to argue that he supported a complete ban of the practice), would return New York City to the days of high crime and stagnant economic activity. De Blasio blew off these attacks and linked Lhota to the Tea Party movement, which was a stretch since Lhota supports gay marriage and considers himself a social progressive. On Election Day, de Blasio destroyed Lhota at the polls. Lhota never broke the 30% mark in pre-election polls and lost the election by nearly 50% (73.7%-24.9%), which the Bloomberg article previously cited says is the largest margin of victory for a non-incumbent in city history and the widest margin of victory since Mayor Edward Koch won re-election to a third term in 1985 by 68 points.
The challenge for de Blasio over the next four years will be to illustrate that socially liberal ideas of governing can work in a major city. Conservative critics are cheerfully announcing that New York City is about to go the way of Detroit and Chicago, which are plagued with high crime rates and fiscal problems because de Blasio’s tax policies will drive productive citizens out of the city. However, The Atlantic on November 5th says that the chances of high crime returning in the next four years are low because of effective policies put in place by Giuliani and Bloomberg and the city’s physical spaces have become safer. Also, the only tax that de Blasio can raise within the city limits without getting approval from the New York State Assembly in Albany are property taxes, which de Blasio has said that he will not raise. His attempt to raise taxes on the wealthiest citizens in the city may run into some problems at the state level because Governor Andrew Cuomo, a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2016 if Hillary Clinton decides not to run, is looking for ways to reduce taxes. Therefore, fears that de Blasio is going to tax New York City out of existence are unjustified. The Nation on November 6th provides a great breakdown of the challenges that de Blasio will face as mayor. For example, the city has a huge wealth gap, as the richest 1% of New York City residents are 39% of the city’s income, some public sector unions have not received pay raises in four years, the city has 50,000 homeless people in need of housing, city policing tactics are deemed as racially insensitive, and 70% of children in the city’s public schools are at or below the poverty level. Facing a $2 billion budget shortfall next year, de Blasio will have to find ways to pay for his ambitious plans and meet the expectations of his voters, while managing to keep the city safe from criminals and a beacon of economic activity. Extempers would be wise to carefully see how de Blasio’s liberal experiment plays out and if it emerges as a model for liberal governance in other metropolitan areas of the country.