In Virginia, an election all about Trump

That’s the hope of Ed Gillespie, front-runner for the Republican nomination. He wants to make the race all about outgoing Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe, whom he accuses of driving the commonwealth into an economic ditch. In Virginia, governors get a single, four-year term.

But with a new Republican president promising radical change, the first major elections of Trump’s first year in office will be a verdict on his leadership. Or, at least, they will be interpreted as such.

“Two things are in tension,” said Brad Todd, a Republican strategist with offices in Alexandria, Va., just across the Potomac River from Washington.

“The state has a tendency to vote against the party that holds the White House, and that can be a harbinger of the midterms. But McAuliffe has been a fairly partisan governor, so there will be a pendulum swing away from him.”

Virginians will head to the polls June 13 to nominate their general election candidates, who will face off Nov. 7. Liberal politicians have gained an edge in the state as the fast-growing Washington suburbs have seeped southward from the Potomac.

Former President Obama won the state twice. McAuliffe was elected in 2013 despite Obama’s re-election, breaking a decades-long streak in which the party in the White House does not win the governor’s mansion in Richmond the next year. Not since 2002 has a Republican won a race for U.S. senator.

In November, Trump lost Virginia 49.8 percent to 44.4 percent even as he rolled to a bigger than expected victory just south in North Carolina and crushed Hillary Clinton in the Midwest.

Yet Virginia remains competitive. Republicans control the legislature. Plus, it’s in Washington’s backyard. Federal government policies are felt as acutely there as anywhere in the country.

Ed Gillespie, front-runner for the Republican nomination, wants to make the race all about the outgoing Democratic governor whom he accuses of driving the commonwealth into an economic ditch. (AP Photo)

The Northern Virginia suburbs teem with federal employees and a reasonably established technology industry. Hampton Roads, in Southeastern Virginia, holds the world’s largest naval base. Southwestern Virginia is coal country. The commonwealth includes robust minority communities — Hispanics, Asians and African-Americans.

That should make the 2017 elections a good barometer of how voters feel about President Trump and the GOP Congress.

“The thing I think is really interesting from our side is how this Republican primary is going to play out,” said Jared Leopold, a spokesman for the Democratic Governors Association. “It’s a test for the GOP in the Trump era. Everyone is going to have to answer questions every day about the things Trump is doing.”

While the Democratic Party is struggling nationally in the wake of Clinton’s stunning defeat, Virginia remains a bright spot.

That buttresses the cautious confidence Democrats have in their top contender for the nomination: Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, 57. He is from Virginia’s eastern shore, attended Virginia Military Institute, served in the Army and was a state senator before becoming lieutenant governor.

Democrat Tom Periello, a former Virginia congressman, entered the race the first week of January. He could offer Northam stiff competition for the nomination, and stoke a bitter fight for control of the Democratic Party in the state between grassroots progressives and pragmatic establishmentarians.

Northam, a pediatric neurosurgeon, is a centrist Democrat who almost switched parties and joined the GOP in the Virginia legislature eight years ago. He has described himself as a fiscal conservative and social liberal. Periello is more liberal and personally close with Obama, versus McAuliffe.

Some Republicans wonder if Northam would be easier competition for Gillespie, even though he appears to be a stronger general election candidate.

Gillespie, 55, lives in Fairfax County, a suburban population center in Northern Virginia that has fueled the rise of the Democratic Party in the former red state. He has assiduously cultivated relationships with voters there and in Arlington County and Alexandria, other Democratic bastions lining the Capital Beltway, as well as in counties in the outer Northern Virginia suburbs, Loudoun, Prince William and Stafford.

That could help Gillespie cut into Northam’s base, if he’s the Democratic nominee. Periello, 42, could be more competitive there, where most of the votes are located, even though he might have a tougher time connecting with conservative Virginians, albeit he represented the more rural, western part of the state in Congress.

Either way, Gillespie first has to navigate the Republican primary.

Money, organization and name identification are important, and Gillespie has all three. But they could get blown away if Virginia Republicans stage a little uprising.

The Virginia governor’s race ought to make Donald Trump happy. After all, it’s all about him.

That’s what happened in June 2014, when Republicans in the 7th Congressional District threw out Rep. Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, and nominated a little-known college economics professor named Dave Brat.

That’s what Corey Stewart is counting on. He is running in the Republican primary and he is perhaps the candidate who will offer the clearest clue about whether Trump is transforming the Republican Party in his own, brash, nationalist image. Stewart is a sharp-edged and sharp-tongued 48-year-old chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors.

“I was Trump before Trump was Trump,” Stewart said in an interview. “I’m definitely cut from the same cloth as Trump — very aggressive, very bold, unafraid of taking on controversial issues like illegal immigration.”

The smart money is betting against him.

Republicans, including those who supported President Trump without reservation in 2016, expect a more standard GOP affair that pits the party establishment against the anti-establishment grassroots, as opposed to a Trump versus anti-Trump proxy war.

Gillespie came up through the party establishment ranks. He served as an adviser to President George W. Bush, counseled 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and was chairman of the Republican National Committee during the 2004 election cycle.

He later went into lobbying and consulting, partnering with Democrat Jack Quinn, a former aide to President Bill Clinton. The firm advised political and corporate clients. Gillespie eventually struck out on his own. He closed that business, a consulting firm based in Alexandria, late last month to focus on his run for governor.

Despite the burden of a resume so out of step with the times, Gillespie has solidified support across the party, including from Tea Party and other grassroots factions inclined to be suspicious of someone with his pedigree.

That’s due in part to his hard work building relationships, beginning during his 2014 Senate run, a near victory against supposedly unbeatable Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, in preparation for this year’s campaign.

“Gillespie right now is the prohibitive favorite for the nomination. No question. He has the money, and an endorsement list that’s very deep, with a lot of conservatives on it,” said John Fredericks, a conservative talk radio host who broadcasts from Chesapeake, in Hampton Roads.

“His Achilles heel: He lacks a message as to why he wants to be governor,” Fredericks said.

Fredericks was an early Trump supporter who assumed the duties of chairman of the Trump campaign in the state after his predecessor, Stewart, was fired for attacking RNC Chairman Reince Priebus without authorization from Trump. Trump has chosen Priebus to serve as White House chief of staff.

Fredericks is one of those Republican insiders who don’t expect the GOP primary to revolve around whether or not a candidate is or was sufficiently aligned with the president. Fredericks predicted a more traditional battle between establishment and anti-establishment forces.

But to the extent that Trump partisans might be looking to vote for a loyalist, Stewart faces complications in his strategy of running as Trump’s man in Richmond.

Gillespie has scooped up support from conservative grassroots activists who should be Stewart’s natural base. It’s also because Stewart fell out with prominent Trump supporters, who are now running around Virginia badmouthing him publicly.

Stewart calls it sour grapes because he wouldn’t hire them for his campaign. Either way, infighting might have opened a lane for another candidate with appeal among Republicans looking for an alternative to Gillespie, state Sen. Frank Wagner.

Wagner has the disadvantage of having voted to raise taxes. And, as an elected official, he’s cannot claim an anti-establishment mantle against Gillespie. But he represents a Hampton Roads district, which, on its own, could be good for 15 percent of the vote.

“I don’t cede anything,” Wagner, 61, said in an interview, when asked about his underdog status. “You’re hiring someone to run Virginia, and I’m confident that when the voters look at [my] real business experience, they’ll hire me.” Wagner is a Naval Academy alumnus and shipyard owner.

Rounding out the Republican field is Denver Riggleman, a businessman, who owns a distillery in rural Nelson County, just south and west of Charlottesville, home of the University of Virginia.

Contrary to criticism by Fredericks, Gillespie appears to have figured out his message and line of attack. And he alone among the Republican candidates is a lock to raise upward of $30 million that is needed to finance his primary and general election campaigns adequately.

In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Gillespie talked about a state economy that he views as straitjacketed by McAuliffe’s big government policies.

The unemployment rate is low, but so is workforce participation, Gillespie said more than once, and so is innovation and Virginia’s national ranking as a good place to start and run a business. Gillespie is pinning those issues on McAuliffe, and says he intends to fix them, along with the other issues Virginians perennially complain about, such as overcrowded highways and inadequate public schools.

“Our economy is stuck and we’ve got to get it unstuck,” Gillespie said. Gillespie months ago set up working groups with Republicans in the General Assembly to develop plans of action he can deploy on day one, if elected.

But all of that could depend on what Virginia voters think of the leadership of a president most of them didn’t vote for.

The president has an ambitious agenda. Repeal and replace Obamacare; reform the tax code; crack down on illegal immigration; fill a vacant seat on the Supreme Court; overhaul trade policy; spend trillions on military hardware and domestic infrastructure; and reset aspects of foreign policy.

Aside from Trump’s appetite for change and action, much of that represents a change in direction from Obama, who Virginia voted for twice, the two sitting U.S. senators the state voted for on four occasions since 2006, and a governor who has mirrored Obama by attempting to move the commonwealth left.

That has included restoring voting rights to felons.

Gillespie is no stranger to brass politics. He knows that Democrats, if they have their way, will make the campaign all about Trump, framing the differences between the president’s agenda and that of his predecessor.

Gillespie knows they’ll try and knock him off balance every day by trying to ask him to comment about Trump.

Eight years ago, Democrats suffered a similar fate, as voters recoiled from Obama’s stubborn pursuit of an unpopular restructuring of healthcare. In 2009, one year after demoralizing losses, Republicans won the Virginia governor’s race, beginning their road to political recovery.

Gillespie’s challenge is to keep the campaign focused on his message and his contrast with McAuliffe, if he can.

“External factors always affect races in Virginia. I can’t control that,” he said.