Virginia Sen. Kaine: ‘Congressional Democrats hurt Terry McAuliffe’

Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine said Wednesday that congressional Democrats are to blame for Terry McAuliffe losing the VA governor’s race to Republican Glenn Youngkin.

Kaine said McAuliffe was a “solid candidate.”

“I think it was on the shoulders of Democrats here who have the majority,” he said. “People had a lot of hope for Joe Biden and the Joe Biden agenda, but Democrats didn’t want to give Biden a win,” he said.

He continued to say that he thinks the responsibility is shared between all congressional Democrats.

“It’s on progressives who wanted to be too purist, it’s on moderates who wanted to be too purist, on the House who wanted it their way and the Senate who wanted it their way,” he said. “You got to be able to make a deal and deliver results … They want more results and we got to deliver because we are the majority and they expect us to deliver.”

With Democrats losing in Virginia and a really narrow result in New Jersey, Kaine said they “now have a tough narrative that we have to face.”

 “Democrats control both houses and they have to act like it,” he added. “Have to be disciplined, have to get results.”

Kaine also pushed back on the idea that the result in Virginia was a rejection of Democrats’ proposed sweeping social policy changes.   

“No, they would love, absolutely love like pre K and childcare, are you kidding me that’s exactly what suburban parents are hungry for, especially after a tough pandemic,” he said.

Aboard Air Force One, people familiar with the matter said the mood was grim as a weary Biden team returned to what undoubtedly will become a swirl of recrimination and second-guessing. 

After months of in-fighting over the President’s multi-trillion dollar legislative agenda, which laid bare the divisions in the Democratic party, it has not taken long for finger-pointing and panic to set in among Biden’s allies.

Over the final weeks of the campaign, Virginia’s Democratic candidate for governor, Terry McAuliffe, and his allies repeatedly raised warnings that Biden’s inability to pass a sweeping social safety net expansion was hindering his race.

Some of Biden’s advisers have chaffed at the notion the President’s stalled domestic agenda was to blame, pointing instead to a lingering pandemic and its economic aftereffects. Some Democrats close to Biden have also privately lamented at McAuliffe’s stumbles, including sparking outrage with a comment on education that came to define the closing weeks of the race.

Read more about what this means for Biden here.

President Biden on Wednesday received an unwelcome wake up call for his still-new presidency as the Democrat arrived back in Washington from a European excursion suddenly facing a transformed political landscape.

Republican Glenn Youngkin’s projected victory over Democratic former Gov. Terry McAuliffe in Virginia, which Biden won by 10 points, and a too-close-to-call race in New Jersey made for unwelcome news for the Democratic President as he flew over the Atlantic.

Returning to the White House in the dark, Biden declined to answer questions about the race, which he’d incorrectly predicted Democrats would win eight hours earlier. The results had been called a half-hour before Biden touched down at Joint Base Andrews. Aboard Air Force One, people familiar with the matter said the mood was grim as a weary team returned to what undoubtedly will become a swirl of recrimination and second-guessing.

After months of in-fighting over Biden’s multi-trillion dollar legislative agenda, which laid bare the divisions in the Democratic party, it has not taken long for finger-pointing and panic to set in among Biden’s allies.

Over the final weeks of the campaign, McAuliffe and his allies repeatedly raised warnings that Biden’s inability to pass a sweeping social safety net expansion was hindering his race.

Some of Biden’s advisers have chaffed at the notion the President’s stalled domestic agenda was to blame, pointing instead to a lingering pandemic and its economic aftereffects. Some Democrats close to Biden have also privately lamented at McAuliffe’s stumbles, including sparking outrage with a comment on education that came to define the closing weeks of the race.

Questions remain over how the shifting dynamic will play out in the coming days, weeks and months.

Biden has for months been locked in a repeating cycle of pressure-packed weeks for his legislative agenda as his party has failed to pass his sweeping domestic agenda, comprised of a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan and a $1.75 trillion social safety net expansion bill. Those priorities remain unfinished – and a potential government shutdown and default on the nation’s debt looms in early December.

Read more here.

Demoralized Democrats need a reckoning after a rough election night that sent serious warning signs that they have misjudged the nation’s mood as their window closes before next year’s midterms.

While the party feuds over its vast social spending agenda, Republicans are highlighting issues that preoccupy voters more immediately, like a sluggish economy, high gas prices, expensive groceries, crime rates and concerns about the rights of parents to influence what is taught in schools. Those concerns in many cases have been exacerbated by a prolonged pandemic, which President Biden declared all but over in July but that spiked over the summer in a new blow to an exhausted nation’s morale.

Virginia governor’s race especially was seen as a one-year referendum on Biden’s presidency in a state he won by a whopping 10 points a year ago. Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin didn’t just triumph, according to a CNN projection, he showed Republicans everywhere how to win, keeping former President Donald Trump out of the state to make inroads in suburbs lost to the GOP in 2018 and 2020 elections.

If Democrats only underperformed in Virginia, they could have put their misfortune down to an erratic and unfocused campaign by veteran party heavyweight Terry McAuliffe, who was trying to win a second, non-consecutive term as governor.

But in New Jersey, a state Biden won by an even more comfortable margin, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy’s squeaker reelection race – which is still too close to call – reinforced a sense that the President’s party has lost the country’s confidence as he struggles to live up to his vow to restore competency to the White House and post-pandemic normality to American life.

As the President arrived home from Europe in the early hours of Wednesday, it was not clear that Democratic leaders and many of the voters that ejected Trump from the White House last year are still on the same page. The party’s lawmakers in Washington have spent weeks feuding with one another over the most sweeping social spending plan in generations – a cornerstone of Biden’s agenda.

Read the full story here.

Democrat Terry McAuliffe conceded the Virginia gubernatorial contest to Republican Glenn Youngkin on Wednesday morning. 

The morning after election day, New Jersey’s Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy has taken a narrow lead over his GOP opponent Jack Ciattarelli — and Murphy’s team says they expect to hold on to that lead until the moment the race is called for them.

They’ve been watching more returns get processed overnight and into the morning, and say they expect the majority of the outstanding votes to favor them. But they don’t have a great guess as to how quickly those remaining votes will be uploaded into the system, and whether we’re talking about minutes or hours.

The adviser billed the current moment as a “waiting game.”

One reminder of how much closer this race has been than the Murphy camp had hoped — it was around midnight last night that one Murphy aide was predicting that they would take the lead over Ciattarelli soon.

A number of candidates made history on election night Tuesday. Here’s what you need to know about their historic wins:

Virginia lieutenant governor

CNN projects Winsome Sears to be Virginia’s lieutenant governor, making her the first female and the first woman of color in the office in the commonwealth’s 400-year legislative history.

“It’s a historic night — yes, it is — but I didn’t run to make history. I just wanted to leave it better than I found it,” Sears said before a crowd of supporters early Wednesday morning.

A conservative Republican, Sears will serve alongside Republican Glenn Youngkin, whom CNN projected would win the Virginia gubernatorial race.

Sears, who was born in Jamaica, is the first Black Republican woman to be elected to the Virginia General Assembly.

Boston mayor

CNN projects Michelle Wu to be Boston’s next mayor. She’ll be the first woman and person of color elected to the top post in the city’s history.

“From every corner of our city, Boston has spoken. We are ready to meet this moment. We are ready to become a Boston for everyone,” Wu said to a crowd of supporters Tuesday night. “I want to be clear, it wasn’t my vision on the ballot, it was ours, together.”

City Councilor Annissa Essaibi George, also a woman of color, conceded the Boston mayoral race with a large share of the vote still waiting to be counted.

From the beginning, this election was a remarkable departure from Boston’s history. Uncontested mayoral races, where there is no incumbent seeking reelection, are hard to come by in Boston and often draw crowded primaries in the Democrat-heavy city. And in this year’s unaffiliated primary, every serious contender was a person of color, and most of them were women.

Championing hallmark policies like a Green New Deal for Boston, Wu racked up support from high-profile Massachusetts progressives, such as Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren. Pressley, who represents a portion of Boston, also served on the Boston City Council with both Wu and Essaibi George.

Wu ran on a progressive platform, including calling for a fare-free transit system.

Pittsburgh mayor

Ed Gainey will be Pittsburgh’s first Black mayor, CNN projects.

Gainey, a Democrat, bested Republican Tony Moreno, a retired Pittsburgh police officer.

During the campaign, Gainey said he wanted to make Pittsburgh the country’s most “safe, affordable and diverse” city and touted police reform and affordable housing. He has represented Pittsburgh in the state legislature since 2013 and previously worked for Pittsburgh Mayors Luke Ravenstahl and Tom Murphy.

During an exchange over mayoral efforts to tackle violence in a recent debate, Gainey emphasized using a public health blueprint. 

“The reality is, if it was that simple, it would be solved already,” Gainey said. “This is a real-life situation, and we will deal with it,”

In the Democratic primary, Gainey comfortably beat the current incumbent Mayor Bill Peduto in May — making him the first mayoral challenger to unseat an incumbent since 1933.

New York City Mayor-elect Eric Adams said New Yorkers elected him because they felt a connection with his story.

Adams also said that after an election is over, it’s important to stop debating and “get stuff done.”

“I think it’s imperative that we have a discussion, we debate, we have conversations pre-election, but once that election is over, post-election, you have to become a GSD elected — get stuff done,” he said. “… To continue to debate after the election is just a failing solution for the people on the ground,” he said.

The national Democratic Party “can’t be so philosophical and theoretical that we just simply giving out and throwing out terms instead of looking on the ground, what people need,” Adams said. 

“That’s what I’m hoping the party that I love, the Democratic Party, realize,” he said. “We must get back on the ground and impact the things that are important to people.”

Adams also said a lesson to Democrats around the country is “practical is progressive,” talking about closing jail buildings and disbanding police departments “when crime is increasing” is not progressive.

On the topic of the Covid-19 vaccine mandate for municipal workers, Adams said he encourages outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio to sit down and talk to leaders of police and firefighter unions to come to a resolution.

“If he doesn’t, if this is still going into January, I’m going to sit down with them and we’re going to get this resolved,” said Adams. “We have to defeat Covid and make sure we don’t have crime turning our city.”

Watch:

Republican Glenn Youngkin celebrated his win in the Virginia governor’s race early Wednesday morning, taking the stage in Chantilly to Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky” at 1:05 a.m. ET after waiting for the major television networks to call the race. 

Youngkin delivered a shortened version of his stump speech, discussing his agenda for his first day in office in January — starting with education, the topic that animated many of Youngkin’s crowds. 

He said he would seek the largest education budget in Virginia’s history for teacher raises and would launch an expansive school choice program, including new charter schools. 

“We’re going to embrace our parents, not ignore them. We’re going to press forward with a curriculum that includes listening to parents, as well as a curriculum that allows our children to run as fast as they can, teaching them how to think, enabling their dreams to soar. Friends, we are going to re-establish excellence in our schools,” he said. 

He did not mention critical race theory, even though in his stump speech during the campaign’s closing weeks he frequently said he would ban critical race theory from Virginia’s schools. 

He also repeated his plans to eliminate Virginia’s grocery tax, suspend the most recent increase in the gas tax and double standard deductions on income taxes. 

The crowd in the Westfields Marriott ballroom had been watching Fox News all night, and erupted in a huge cheer at 12:41 a.m. ET when the network projected — minutes after CNN and other networks had done so — that Youngkin had won the race. 

Youngkin was introduced by his wife, who described the day he had told her he wanted to quit his job as chief executive of the private equity firm The Carlyle Group the next day and run for governor. 

She said her first reaction was, “Clearly, you’re having a midlife crisis.” But she said Youngkin felt a “call on his heart” to public service. 

“A defining moment together started with two people on a walk,” Youngkin said. “And a defining moment that is now millions of Virginians walking together — walking together, sharing dreams, hopes.”