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Tag: 2025 elections

  • Democrat Renee Hardman wins Iowa state Senate seat, blocking GOP from reclaiming a supermajority

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    Democrat Renee Hardman was elected to the Iowa state Senate on Tuesday in a year-end special election, denying Republicans from reclaiming two-thirds control of the chamber.Hardman bested Republican Lucas Loftin by an overwhelming margin to win a seat representing parts of the Des Moines suburbs. The seat became vacant after the Oct. 6 death of state Sen. Claire Celsi, a Democrat.Hardman, the CEO of nonprofit Lutheran Services of Iowa and a member of the West Des Moines City Council, becomes the first Black woman elected to the 50-member Senate.“I want to recognize that while my name was the one on the ballot, this race was never just about me,” Hardman told a room of supporters in West Des Moines after declaring victory.Her win is latest in a string of special election victories for Iowa Democrats, who flipped two Senate seats this year to break up a supermajority that had allowed Republicans to easily confirm GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds’ appointments to state agencies and commissions.Democrat Mike Zimmer first flipped a seat in January, winning a district that had strongly favored Republican President Donald Trump in the 2024 election. In August, Democrat Catelin Drey handily defeated her GOP opponent in the Republican stronghold of northwestern Iowa, giving Democrats 17 seats to Republicans’ 33. Celsi’s death brought that down to 16.Republicans would have regained two-thirds control with a Loftin victory Tuesday. Without a supermajority, the party will need to get support from at least one Democrat to approve Reynolds’ nominees. The GOP still has significant majorities in both legislative chambers.Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, called Hardman’s victory “a major check on Republican power.”“With the last special election of the year now decided, one thing is clear: 2025 was the year of Democratic victories and overperformance, and Democrats are on track for big midterm elections,” Martin said.In November the party handily won governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey and the mayoral election in New York City. Democrats held onto a Kentucky state Senate seat this month in a special election. And while Republican Matt Van Epps won a Tennessee special election for a U.S. House seat, the relatively slim margin of victory gave Democrats hope for next year’s midterms. Democrats nationally need to net three U.S. House seats in 2026 to reclaim the majority and impede Trump’s agenda.Iowa GOP Chairman Jeff Kaufmann applauded Loftin and his supporters for putting up a fight in a district he described as “so blue.” Democrats outnumber Republicans in the district by about 3,300 voters, or 37% to 30%.“Although we fell short this time, the Republican Party of Iowa remains laser-focused on expanding our majorities in the Iowa Legislature and keeping Iowa ruby-red,” Kaufmann said.The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee pledged Tuesday to help defend the party’s gains in Iowa and prevent the return of a GOP supermajority next year.

    DES MOINES, Iowa —

    Democrat Renee Hardman was elected to the Iowa state Senate on Tuesday in a year-end special election, denying Republicans from reclaiming two-thirds control of the chamber.

    Hardman bested Republican Lucas Loftin by an overwhelming margin to win a seat representing parts of the Des Moines suburbs. The seat became vacant after the Oct. 6 death of state Sen. Claire Celsi, a Democrat.

    Hardman, the CEO of nonprofit Lutheran Services of Iowa and a member of the West Des Moines City Council, becomes the first Black woman elected to the 50-member Senate.

    “I want to recognize that while my name was the one on the ballot, this race was never just about me,” Hardman told a room of supporters in West Des Moines after declaring victory.

    Her win is latest in a string of special election victories for Iowa Democrats, who flipped two Senate seats this year to break up a supermajority that had allowed Republicans to easily confirm GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds’ appointments to state agencies and commissions.

    Democrat Mike Zimmer first flipped a seat in January, winning a district that had strongly favored Republican President Donald Trump in the 2024 election. In August, Democrat Catelin Drey handily defeated her GOP opponent in the Republican stronghold of northwestern Iowa, giving Democrats 17 seats to Republicans’ 33. Celsi’s death brought that down to 16.

    Republicans would have regained two-thirds control with a Loftin victory Tuesday. Without a supermajority, the party will need to get support from at least one Democrat to approve Reynolds’ nominees. The GOP still has significant majorities in both legislative chambers.

    Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, called Hardman’s victory “a major check on Republican power.”

    “With the last special election of the year now decided, one thing is clear: 2025 was the year of Democratic victories and overperformance, and Democrats are on track for big midterm elections,” Martin said.

    In November the party handily won governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey and the mayoral election in New York City. Democrats held onto a Kentucky state Senate seat this month in a special election. And while Republican Matt Van Epps won a Tennessee special election for a U.S. House seat, the relatively slim margin of victory gave Democrats hope for next year’s midterms. Democrats nationally need to net three U.S. House seats in 2026 to reclaim the majority and impede Trump’s agenda.

    Iowa GOP Chairman Jeff Kaufmann applauded Loftin and his supporters for putting up a fight in a district he described as “so blue.” Democrats outnumber Republicans in the district by about 3,300 voters, or 37% to 30%.

    “Although we fell short this time, the Republican Party of Iowa remains laser-focused on expanding our majorities in the Iowa Legislature and keeping Iowa ruby-red,” Kaufmann said.

    The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee pledged Tuesday to help defend the party’s gains in Iowa and prevent the return of a GOP supermajority next year.

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  • Trump Could Save Himself by Saving Obamacare

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    Trump could again draw in all the congressional leaders and force them into a deal.
    Photo: Melina Mara/Getty Images

    This isn’t the first time that we’re reading stories about Republicans taking their first baby steps toward a post–Donald Trump future. Pundits, rivals, and opponents have been looking over the horizon for signs that Trump’s grip on his party would fade since 2016. But the combination of sinking presidential job-approval ratings, terrible off-year election results, occasional acts of congressional defiance, and more-deranged-than-usual Truth Social posts has revived talk of Trump’s mojo eroding. Add in the fact that the president has run his last campaign and you can understand why the “lame duck” label is beginning to stick to him. If his so-far-faithful servants on the Supreme Court let him down in a series of big cases between now and next July, a real jailbreak atmosphere could infect the GOP and the whole world of political observers who have had to live with this turbulent man every minute for a decade.

    This trend has to be excruciating for the president, who believes he has already saved the country and has earned the right to a perpetual victory lap in which he consolidates his lofty place in global history by ending wars and cutting big investment deals wherever he goes. Instead he’s having to deal with a rebellion in the very core of his MAGA movement over his relationship with the late Jeffrey Epstein, and cope with widespread public concerns over the “affordability” of life in America. This last problem clearly baffles and sometimes angers Trump, who has bought his own spin about the economy being better than ever and on the brink of new heights thanks to AI.

    There is, however, something he could do right now that would reestablish his relevance, confirm his mastery of Congress, and address affordability concerns while reducing the odds of a GOP midterm apocalypse. He could reengage on the issue of extending Obamacare subsidies and buy some time for his party to finally figure out what to propose on health care.

    As you may recall, the Democratic calculation immediately before and throughout the recent record government shutdown was that Trump would negotiate a subsidy extension deal and impose it on his party. But he refused to come to the table, and instead, began denouncing Obamacare itself as though it was still 2015. He also began encouraging Republicans to go back to the poisoned well of proposals to repeal and replace Obamacare with some sort of beefed-up individual health accounts instead of fixing the current system and heading off a huge insurance-premium price spike. It has sure looked like Trump was leading his party back to the agenda that bombed in 2017 and led to the loss of the House in 2018.

    But now there are Republicans in both congressional chambers trying to steer their party and their president back to a temporary Obamacare subsidy patch that can head off electoral disaster while letting them continue to talk about some wonderful Obamacare alternative that will appear a bit down the road (say, after the 2026 midterms). As Punchbowl News reports, the talented dealmaker Katie Britt seems to be front and center in this effort:

    Republican senators have been privately lobbying President Donald Trump to support a limited short-term extension of Obamacare subsidies, arguing it would save the GOP from a 2026 drubbing and buy time for Congress to pass a longer-term health care plan that mirrors the president’s preferences.

    Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) has spoken with the president several times this week to pitch the idea, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

    Britt seems to have a special rapport with Trump based in part on her physical appearance. She’s also a shrewd politician who understands her party’s immediate needs:

    A short-term extension of the Obamacare subsidies could mean one, two or even three years, with strict eligibility crackdowns, such as income caps and anti-fraud provisions. A Trump-led push would provide political cover for vulnerable Republicans; it would also save Thune from having to deal with a divided conference.

    There’s activity in the House, too, where a bipartisan group that includes Democrats Tom Suozzi and Josh Gottenheimer and Republicans Don Bacon and Jeff Hurd have a two-year extension plan, per Punchbowl:

    The bill would add a new income cap, extending the enhanced credits for families of four earning less than $200,000 per year and phasing them out for families of four earning between $200,000 and $300,000.

    One other idea under discussion is a one-year subsidy extension with income caps and fraud-prevention changes, paired with a commission to negotiate a longer-term solution next year.

    Time’s a-wasting, though, since the Senate vote on health care that John Thune agreed to is coming up in weeks and the politics of a short-term Obamacare subsidy-extension deal are tricky. Some Democrats are fine with Republicans doing nothing and giving them a powerful midterm message. And again, there is zero way House Republicans allow a vote on, much less agree to, any Obamacare extension unless Trump calls them in and demands it, along with all sorts of rhetorical window dressing about his determination to kill Obamacare and atomize its remains sometime real soon.

    A deal is still a long shot. But Democrats need to retroactively vindicate their government-shutdown strategy, which fell short of its principal goal when Trump refused to play his part. Republicans need to get the Obamacare premium spike out of the news until November 2026. And Trump needs to show he’s still the Man, the straw that stirs every drink in American politics. The ingredients are there for the deal that has eluded everyone for so long.

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    Ed Kilgore

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  • GOP Redistricting May Backfire Due to Team Trump’s Incompetence

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    The Department of Justice’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, Harmeet Dhillon, who’s had a bad week.
    Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

    At some point earlier this year, Donald Trump took a look at his shaky political standing and decided two things. First, he really wanted to hold on to the trifecta control of the federal government that made all his 2025 power grabs possible. And second, he recognized that keeping control of the U.S. House during the 2026 midterms would probably require a big thumb on the scales, which he could most easily achieve by quite literally changing the landscape. He went public in July with a national effort to get red states to remap their congressional districts immediately so that the GOP would go into the midterms with a cushion larger than the likely Democratic gains. And it all began with a blunt demand that Texas give the GOP four or five new seats in a special session that was originally supposed to focus on flood recovery.

    Texas complied, and other red states followed suit, even as Democrats — most notably in California — retaliated the best they could with their own gerrymanders. But now, the original map-rigging in Texas has just been canceled (subject to U.S. Supreme Court review) thanks to the ham-handed incompetence of the Trump administration, as Democracy Docket explains:

    A federal court Tuesday delivered a devastating blow to Texas Republicans’ attempt at a mid-decade gerrymander. And the court found that a July letter sent by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) — intended to justify the GOP’s aggressive redraw — effectively handed voting rights advocates a smoking gun proving it was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. …

    Unless the U.S. Supreme Court reverses it — Texas has already said it will appeal — the state must use its 2021 congressional map for the 2026 elections, killing what had been the GOP’s biggest planned redistricting gain of the decade. 

    The blow to Trump’s plans came from two federal district-court judges (one of whom is a Trump appointee) who were part of a three-judge panel. Their order made it clear that DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, under the direction of Trump appointee and longtime Republican operative Harmeet Dhillon, stupidly insisted on making its instructions to Texas Republicans revolve around the racial makeup of the desired new districts, which is a big constitutional no-no:

    “It’s challenging to unpack the DOJ Letter because it contains so many factual, legal, and typographical errors,” the judges wrote. “Indeed, even attorneys employed by the Texas Attorney General — who professes to be a political ally of the Trump Administration — describe the DOJ Letter as ‘legally unsound,’ ‘baseless,’ ‘erroneous,’ ‘ham-fisted,’ and ‘a mess.’”

    The judges noted that while Texas insisted the 2025 map was drawn for partisan reasons, the DOJ letter made no such claim and framed its demands entirely around race.

    That omission was pivotal.

    The grand irony is that this same DOJ Civil Rights Division subsequently sued California to invalidate that state’s voter-approved gerrymander on grounds that the legislators who drew the map had taken race into account in designing the new districts. Trump’s lawyers live in a house with no mirrors, it seems.

    The Texas ruling came at a time when Trump’s whole map-rigging exercise seems to be unraveling all over the country. On the very same day, Indiana’s Republican-controlled state Senate killed a special session that Trump, J.D. Vance, U.S. senator Jim Banks, and Governor Mike Braun had all demanded in order to wipe out two Democratic U.S. House districts. Kansas Republicans have similarly balked at Trump’s orders to kill a Democratic district. Voters in Missouri seem poised to cancel that state’s recent gerrymander designed to eliminate a Democratic seat in a ballot initiative. Fearing litigation, Ohio Republicans cut a deal with Democrats to make two Democratic-controlled House districts a bit redder instead of flipping them altogether. And on November 4, voters in Virginia solidified Democratic control of that state’s legislature and elected a new Democratic governor, which greatly facilitated plans to remap that state’s congressional districts to flip as many as three GOP seats.

    Republicans could still gain seats in Florida, and a U.S. Supreme Court review of the Voting Rights Act could create all sorts of chaos. But Trump’s gerrymandering crusade will soon hit the wall of 2026 candidate filing deadlines. As Punchbowl News observes, his party could actually lose ground overall: “It’s not impossible to imagine that [Democrats] end up netting more seats than the GOP in these mid-decade redraws, a stunning change of circumstances that didn’t seem possible only a few months ago.”

    Trump clearly opened a Pandora’s box in Texas, and he and his party — not to mention his bumbling and heavily politicized legal beagles — are now dealing with the consequences.


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    Ed Kilgore

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  • Once Again, Republicans Have a Trump Problem

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    He’s going to dominate the midterms just like he dominates his party.
    Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

    While presidents are always a dominant influence over the political parties they lead, that sway tends to fade toward the end of their tenures if they serve two terms. This is why they are typically called “lame ducks” at some point after being reelected. But Donald Trump is already well past the usual sell-by date because he has been his party’s presidential nominee three times. The prior politician with such an extended hold on a major party was Richard Nixon (nominated and defeated in 1960, elected in 1968, and reelected in 1972). Though Nixon won his last race in 1972 by a huge landslide, that didn’t turn out well for Republicans (Nixon resigned in 1974, and the GOP subsequently lost the White House).

    At the moment, Trump seems to be defying the lame-duck precedent. No president has ever had a more dominant position in his own party, having crushed all intraparty dissent in his triumphant 2024 reelection campaign and then reduced the usually proud congressional leaders of the GOP to the status of loyal satraps. Whatever their private misgivings, all Republicans publicly sing his praises. And the most frequently uttered excuse for the major Republican underperformance in the off-year elections on November 4 was that Trump wasn’t on the ballot to bring those low-propensity voters who tilted his way in 2024 back to the polls.

    The problem now, of course, is that Trump won’t be on the ballot in the 2026 midterm elections, either. So if the key to victory is to turn out every single pro-Trump voter, that would mean making the midterms even more of a referendum on the incumbent president than it will be in any case. That would certainly be Trump’s preference, of course; the Sun King always believes he is the source of all radiance. Unfortunately, as his steadily eroding job-approval ratings show, his agenda is not very popular. And when it comes to his administration’s greatest weakness, a perceived inability to reduce living costs, his current prescription seems to be to claim things are better than they appear, as the Associated Press reports:

    President Donald Trump took a victory lap on the economy on the one-year anniversary of his successful election, boasting of cheaper prices and saying the U.S. is the envy of the globe even while the Republican Party faced a rebuke from voters anxious about their own finances in Tuesday’s off-year elections.

    Trump, speaking Wednesday at the America Business Forum, said he thinks that communication was the problem, insisting that “we have the greatest economy right now” and that “a lot of people don’t see that.”

    “These are the things you have to talk about,” Trump told a packed arena at Miami’s Kaseya Center that included top business executives, global athletes and political leaders. “If people don’t talk about them, then you can do not so well in elections.”

    This, too, was the economic-messaging strategy of Joe Biden for much of his term in office, and it rather clearly did not work. It’s true that owning the status quo and treating it as threatened by the nefarious opposition is a way to mobilize already-loyal base voters. But it’s a bad idea if swing voters aren’t happy, and they definitely aren’t happy now. So looking ahead to the midterms, Republicans have a classic base voter–swing voter dilemma that won’t resolve itself.

    Perhaps swing-voter-sensitive Republicans can convince their leader to modify his policies and priorities to make them more generally popular. But Trump is not exactly renowned for taking advice, particularly if that means admitting error. And for his entire career, he has pursued a base-in, rather than a center-out, political strategy, counting on polarization to put him in a position to win with superior voter mobilization and the mistakes of his opponents.

    If Republicans decide on yet another MAGA messaging extravaganza with Trump at the center as always, then the one thing we know for sure is that the GOP’s persuasion strategy for swing voters will be strictly negative. If you cannot occupy the political center, you try to push the other party out of the center by regular assertion that it is extremist. Trump is without question a master of this tactic, and we’re already seeing him warming up for 2026 by calling Zohran Mamdani a communist and treating the entire “radical left” Democratic Party as beyond the pale. One question Republicans will have to answer, however, is whether key elements of the electorate will get tired of polarization theater and finger their president as the main perpetrator. Any way you slice it, though, he will not get out of the spotlight until his political career has ended, if then. And that’s a problem for the GOP.


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    Ed Kilgore

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  • Only Trump Can Reopen the Government. But He’s Not in the Mood.

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    Deal-making overseas is so much more interesting than deal-making at home.
    Photo: Samuel Corum/Getty Images

    Before last night’s off-year elections, there was quiet momentum in Washington toward an end to the government shutdown, which has officially become the longest one in U.S. history. Among Senate Democrats, there was angst over the damage being done to public employees and SNAP beneficiaries and some confidence that public reaction to Obamacare-premium spikes would lead Republicans to agree to a subsidy extension after the government reopened. Among congressional Republicans, there was a realization that the public was blaming them for the shutdown and a recognition that Democrats needed some sort of moral victory in order to give up the fight. And among appropriators of both parties, there was a desperate desire to return to bipartisan spending decisions instead of lurching from shutdown threats to stopgap spending bills and back again. So a deal seemed likely.

    But only one person could make a deal possible: President Donald Trump. Without his personal involvement, no Democrat could trust that a deal would be honored. And without his personal pressure, too many House Republicans would refuse to make any concessions to Democrats at all, particularly if it involved the hated Obamacare program. Yes, Trump was too distracted by his recent world travels to cut deals and lobby for peace prizes. But he’d eventually focus, particularly after Senate Republicans made it clear they wouldn’t just cut to the chase by killing the filibuster and crushing Democrats without negotiations.

    Then last night happened, and suddenly it’s not at all clear if the government is reopening soon. Trump publicly blamed Republican losses on the shutdown and accurately pointed out the quickest solution to that problem was for Republicans to follow his earlier instructions: Kill the filibuster, and impose a reopening on Democrats by a simple majority vote in the Senate. During what Axios described as an “uncomfortable breakfast” with Republican senators who were sorting through the ashes of the off-year elections, Trump stamped his foot:

    The room was “eerily silent” and “uncomfortable” Wednesday morning as President Trump cajoled Republican senators to end the filibuster, multiple attendees told Axios …

    Trump warned the party would “get killed” and be viewed as “do-nothing Republicans” if they don’t change Senate rules requiring 60 votes for most legislation.

    “If you don’t terminate the filibuster, you’ll be in bad shape,” the president told GOP senators during the televised portion of the breakfast remarks.

    He went even further after the press was instructed to leave.

    So much for the prior Republican self-assurance that if they just held their ground, Democrats would either cave or crawl to them for a face-saving deal that wouldn’t require real concessions. But as John Thune made clear after the “uncomfortable breakfast,” the Republican votes aren’t there to do what Trump wants. So it will require some very serious presidential arm-twisting (making Senate GOP lives “a living hell,” one Trump adviser warned) to bring them around.

    Meanwhile, as Punchbowl News reports, Democratic spines were stiffened by the same election returns that enraged Trump:

    Senate Democrats who want to keep up the fight are pointing to Tuesday’s election results as evidence that the public is with them — and that they shouldn’t cave now.

    Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said their victories should “give Democrats confidence that the American people have our back as we engage in the fight to protect people’s health care and save our democracy …”

    Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) are leading 25 fellow Senate Democrats in a new letter to the Trump administration that slams the GOP for refusing to negotiate a deal to reopen the government that concretely addresses health care. It lists rising health care costs, including spiking Obamacare premiums, and says voters want Congress and the president to act.

    So what, or who, is going to give? Trump, most Democrats, and the more sensible Republicans all want the government to reopen. But it’s not happening unless Trump okays concessions he is in no mood to consider or, alternatively, unless Senate Republicans stop thinking ahead to a future in the minority and make Congress a totally party-run operation. It does not seem to have occurred to Trump that another authoritarian power grab might be as unpopular as the shutdown it would end. And it must really suck to be John Thune right now and bear the burden of talking either his president or his colleagues into abandoning their positions.


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    Ed Kilgore

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  • Spanberger Cruising in Virginia, But Scandal Could Take Down AG Candidate

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    Abigail Spanberger on the campaign trail.
    Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

    Virginia’s off-year elections have predictably lined up as a negative referendum on Donald Trump’s fractious second-term agenda. But while the Democrats’ gubernatorial candidate, the centrist congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, looks to be cruising toward a comfortable win over Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, there’s trouble two spots downballot. A scandal involving newly unearthed 2022 text messages from attorney general nominee Jay Jones has roiled his close race against incumbent Republican Jason Miyares and discomfited his ticket-mates (statewide candidates in Virginia run separately but often campaign together). While Spanberger and the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, Ghazala Hamshi, have denounced the texts, which wished terrible deaths for a Republican legislative leader and his family, they haven’t asked Jones to withdraw from the race as the GOP and its allied media have predictably demanded.

    So Virginia Democrats have been thrown off-balance, and limited polling shows Jones in serious trouble. Hamshi’s race against Republican John Reid for the LG position is also very close. But Republican hopes that the scandal would derail Spanberger’s campaign don’t look to be realistic at all. For one thing, Jones’s troubles are mostly just convincing voters to skip the AG race rather than voting Republican, which mitigates the damage to his own candidacy and isolates the fallout. For another, Donald Trump is just a lodestone for the GOP that’s too difficult to throw off, as veteran Virginia political reporter Jeff Schapiro recently observed:

    The ongoing federal government shutdown, triggered Oct. 1 by a partisan standoff in Congress, and preceded by a wave of DOGE-induced layoffs and retirements of government workers that, starting this past winter, fueled a steady increase in joblessness into the final months of the Virginia campaign. These spikes are most evident in Washington’s Northern Virginia suburbs but they are flaring elsewhere in the state.

    Further, Trump’s tariffs are eroding by nearly 10% cargo traffic through the state’s gateway to the world, the Port of Virginia, a pillar of the coastal Virginia economy along with surrounding military bases and related federal civilian employment.

    Add in unhappiness with Trump’s mass-deportation overreach among Virginia’s sizable population of immigrant citizens, and it’s clear the usual swing against the party controlling the White House (which gave the commonwealth Republican governor Glenn Youngkin four years ago) has been intensified this year. Spanberger has also run a highly disciplined campaign, fueled by a big funding advantage over Sears-Earle. So while Virginia experienced a significant swing toward the GOP in 2024 (Kamala Harris won it by just under six points; Joe Biden won it by ten in 2020), it’s still a blue state in a blue mood over a Republican presidency.

    Aside from the Jones brouhaha, there’s one other late development that some Republicans think might help them: a surprise decision by Democratic legislative leaders to undertake a long-shot effort to get a constitutional amendment enacted so they can draw up a favorable congressional map prior to next year’s midterms. But since over a million Virginians have already voted early, and the gerrymandering process is extremely tentative and complex, it seems unlikely to have an impact other than on the margins.

    Gubernatorial polls show no late Republican trend. The most recent publicly released survey, from Roanoke College, showed Spanberger with a ten-point lead over Earle-Sears (51 percent to 41 percent). The RealClearPolitics polling averages have the Democrat leading by 7.2 percent. The only poll indicating a really close race was a mid-October finding from the decidedly pro-GOP combine of Trafalgar and Insider Advantage, and even they gave Spanberger a three-point advantage. Jay Jones may or may not go down, but barring a shocker, Virginia will be governed by Democrats, almost certainly in a trifecta, next year.

    One historical note worth mentioning: no matter who wins the race, Spanberger will be the first woman to serve as governor or senator of Virginia. That will leave Pennsylvania as the only state that has never broken the male monopoly on these positions.

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    Ed Kilgore

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  • Republicans See an Upset in Violent Texts From Virginia Democrat

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    A once-happy Virginia Democratic ticket.
    Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

    Until very recently, the much-watched off-year elections in Virginia were looking pretty bad for Republicans. Their gubernatorial candidate, Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, has been struggling to compete financially and politically with Democrat Abigail Spanberger, a centrist congresswoman. Specific candidacies aside, Virginia has a long history of rejecting gubernatorial candidates from the party controlling the White House (which helped outgoing Republican governor Glenn Youngkin defeat Terry McAuliffe in 2021). Add in the Commonwealth’s recent blue-leaning tendencies and the terrible treatment its many federal employees have received from the second Trump administration, and you can understand why national Republicans have been more interested in the other big off-year gubernatorial contest in New Jersey.

    But now the Virginia GOP may have caught a break via some oppo research on the Democratic candidate for attorney general by National Review:

    On August 8, 2022, a Republican state legislator received a disturbing string of early-morning text messages from a former colleague, Jay Jones, this year’s Democratic nominee for Virginia attorney general …

    Jones, who at the time had recently resigned from the state house after a brief stint representing Norfolk, had strong feelings about how the political class was eulogizing recently deceased former state legislator Joe Johnson Jr., a moderate Democrat with a long tenure in Virginia politics …

    “If those guys die before me,” Jones wrote, referencing the Republican colleagues who were publicly honoring the deceased Johnson’s memory, “I will go to their funerals to piss on their graves” to “send them out awash in something.”

    Jones then suggested that, presented with a hypothetical situation in which he had only two bullets and was faced with the choice of murdering then-Speaker of the House Todd Gilbert or two dictators, he’d shoot Gilbert “every time.”

    Apparently the texts were intended for a different recipient, but Jones’s words shouldn’t have been said to anybody about anybody. He reportedly compounded the offense in a follow-up phone call to the accidental recipient of the text suggesting that “he wished Gilbert’s wife could watch her own child die in her arms so that Gilbert might reconsider his political views.”

    This was years ago, and Jones hasn’t displayed any offline violent tendencies, but as you can imagine, Republicans see a huge opportunity: not just to potentially defeat Jones (who was favored to win before all this controversy) but to divide and defeat the entire Democratic statewide ticket, as Axios explains:

    Leading Virginia Democrats, including the statewide ticket, have condemned the comments Jones made in 2022 suggesting a hypothetical scenario in which he would shoot the then-Republican House speaker and wished harm on his children.

    But none have called for Jones to step aside …

    Gubernatorial nominee Winsome Earle-Sears and lieutenant governor nominee John Reid are pressuring their opponents on social media to call on Jones to drop out.

    Jones, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger and lieutenant governor nominee Ghazala Hashmi’s campaigns didn’t immediately respond to Axios’ request for comment.

    Unsurprisingly, those great advocates for civility in political discourse, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, have jumped into the fray with the latter quickly using the texts to defend himself and his boss for their own recent lapses in taste:

    Conservative media is all over this story, and Jones’s abject apologies for the texts have cut no ice in those circles. He’s not the real target anyway; it’s Spanberger, and as Axios put it, “pushing Jones off the ticket could fracture Democrats’ chances in a pivotal statewide race seen as a bellwether for next year.” To be clear, in Virginia statewide candidates run independently, so there’s not really a “ticket” the gubernatorial nominee can control. For another, Jones is the sole Black statewide Democratic nominee, in a state where Democrats rely heavily on robust Black turnout.

    I’m sure there’s back-channel talk about Jones “doing the right thing” and relieving his colleagues of his problems, along with pushback against the cynical manipulation of the “crisis” by Republicans. White House policy director Stephen Miller commented that Jones’s texts showed how “dangerously radicalized the Democrat Party has become.” But then Miller very clearly believes the “Democrat Party” should be outlawed, since, as he recently said, it is “an entity devoted exclusively [his emphasis] to the defense of hardened criminals, gang-bangers, and illegal, alien killers and terrorists.” Pleasing the likes of Miller would be galling for Virginia Democrats. Perhaps Jones and his party can tough it all out, but MAGA folk will incessantly use his example to buttress their absurd argument that the main source of violent political talk is left of center and will perhaps even pull off an electoral shocker in a time and place in which the Boss and his agenda aren’t very popular.


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    Ed Kilgore

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