Last week’s election results in Virginia, New Jersey, California, and New York City were stunning – for Democrats and for Donald Trump. After less than a year of the second Trump term, months of ICE and Border Patrol abuses, a month into a federal government shutdown, and three weeks after millions participated in No Kings marches across the country, voters proved what many polls indicated – they’ve had enough! November 4 may be a significant date in American history, the day that ordinary Americans began to pull the nation back to the center.
Virginia Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger led a ticket that was more victorious than even the most positive pre-election predictions. The Commonwealth’s first woman elected governor beat the Republican candidate by more than 15 points. Ghazala Hashmi, who will be the first Muslim-American woman to win a statewide contest anywhere, beat her opponent by 13 points, and even Jay Jones, the attorney general candidate beset by disgusting text messages about another elected official, won his race over incumbent Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares by six percentage points. In 2021, Miyares defeated incumbent Attorney General Mark Herring by 27,000 votes, or less than one percent statewide. This year, the winning margin in that race alone was six points, or 200,000 votes.
The landslide victory was made all the sweeter in the General Assembly, where Democrats flipped 13 seats, winning 64 seats from their current 51 seat margin. Legislative experts thought there was a good chance to gain five to seven seats; doubling that was an unexpected bonus. The challenge now will be for the new Democratic majority to take great care not to overreach in the legislative session that begins in January. It is easy to declare that an election victory, especially a wide one, is a mandate but it also is easy to run “off a cliff” in the excitement of winning. Experienced legislators would be wise to educate and mentor their new colleagues with the moderation that Governor-elect Spanberger espouses. As House of Delegates’ Speaker Don Scott noted “The word of the day is restraint…We have to be wise with the gift that the voters have given us to govern.”
In New Jersey, in a race expected to be close, Representative Mikie Sherill won the governorship by about 13 percent, and will become the second female governor in that state’s history. Both Sherill and Spanberger campaigned on affordability, the kitchen table issues that are affecting so many families across the nation. Affordability also was the tenet of Zohran Mamdani, the young Democratic-Socialist elected as Mayor of New York City. Many Democrats are leery of his lofty promises and meteoric rise and Republicans have targeted him as a “Marxist,” but younger voters, especially those under 30, supported his campaign style and put him over the top in the election results.
Down ballot results focused on the local level. Stafford County elected two new Supervisors and now has four Black women on its board, which has a Democratic majority for the first time in recent memory. A Greene County incumbent Supervisor was only 12 votes ahead of his opponent, including provisional ballots, which triggers an automatic recount. In Albemarle County, where three board seats were up, two were uncontested, and a Democrat handily won the third. In Fairfax County, the $460 million School Bond Referendum was approved by slightly more than 70 percent.
Were the Virginia, New Jersey, California, and New York City election results harbingers of the political pendulum swinging back to equilibrium? Winning is a heady feeling, quickly replaced by the hard reality of governing. America still is a closely-divided nation, but last week’s election results provide some hope that we can find middle ground, protect democracy, and recapture the American dream – for all.
