The morning after Republicans recorded a clean sweep in Virginia, underdog Colorado Senate candidate Gino Campana blasted a memorandum to GOP donors across the country declaring Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin proof positive that his own blue state out west is worth their investment.
Before Republicans flipped the Virginia governor’s mansion and ejected Democrats from office in other key elections Tuesday, Campana’s pleas for contributions from well-heeled GOP financiers might have fallen on deaf ears. Ditto for funds allocated by the array of Republican campaign committees. Why underwrite a candidate running in Colorado, a state controlled by Democrats from top to bottom and won by President Joe Biden by 13.5 percentage points in 2020?
After Youngkin scored a 2-point victory and Republicans cleaned up down-ballot in Virginia, a state Biden carried over former President Donald Trump by more than 10 points, Republican donors are listening, and GOP campaign committees are busy expanding their maps of targeted Senate seats and House districts once considered fool’s gold and not worth risking precious resources in a presumed futile effort to make them competitive.
“If Republicans can fight and win in trenches so blue that Joe Biden won them by 10 points, then Republicans will be bringing the House battlefield to a map far wider than Democrats are ready to accept,” Dan Conston, a GOP operative, said in a statement. Conston runs the Congressional Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, likely the next speaker if Republicans win the majority in 2022.
The Democrats are defending thin majorities in the House and Senate and were under threat based on historical trends alone. Biden’s sagging poll numbers served to underscore their electoral vulnerability in midterm elections scheduled for Nov. 8 next year. But after watching Youngkin defeat Democratic former Gov. Terry McAuliffe in Virginia and seeing the party win races for lieutenant governor and state attorney general, Republicans believe a massive red wave is building.
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Republican confidence is swelling further because Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy just narrowly escaped an underfunded Republican challenge in New Jersey, a state Biden won by 16 points. That optimism is poised to translate into hundreds of millions of dollars spent in House and Senate races in solid liberal territory the GOP would otherwise direct elsewhere — for instance, into districts held by Democratic Reps. Sean Casten of Illinois, Frank Mrvan of Indiana, and Ed Perlmutter of Colorado.
“Last night’s results make it clear that anywhere Joe Biden won by 15 points or less is in play,” said a Republican strategist involved in House races. Republican operatives focused on the Senate are similarly giddy.
On Wednesday morning, they started to imagine they might have opportunities to put the Democrats on their heels, and possibly pull off upsets, in Illinois, Oregon, Washington state, and, yes, Colorado — “Colorado being the big one,” a GOP strategist active in Senate races said. That’s the message the Campana campaign was pushing in its memo to Republican donors and party activists.
“There was a political earthquake in Virginia last night and it’s already setting off an avalanche of political implications in Colorado,” the document reads. “Virginia proves that states where Joe Biden won by double digits are fully up for grabs in 2022 and we believe that Colorado is the next Virginia.”
Off-year elections in Virginia often foreshadow what awaits the party in power in the White House in the following year’s midterm elections. That was the case when Republicans won the governor’s mansion in the Old Dominion in 2009 and when Democrats finished on top there in 2017. Democratic insiders acknowledge the rebuke the party suffered Tuesday and what it could portend for 2022.
But they firmly reject the claim that Colorado, or any other reliably blue state, could become the next Virginia. Their reasoning? Youngkin was able to avoid the taint of Trump, they concede, despite McAuliffe’s efforts to convince voters he was a clone of the former president. With Trump dominating the discussion in competitive GOP congressional primaries across the country, Democrats argue Republican Senate contenders will not succeed in emulating Youngkin, if they even try.
“All they are talking about right now is who can suck up to Trump the most and that is the exact opposite of what played out in Virginia,” said David Bergstein, spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Meanwhile, Republicans said the outcome in Virginia (and New Jersey) has pushed their bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto from somewhat of a reach to straight-up competitive. And expect top Republicans to point to Tuesday’s results as they take another stab at recruiting Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan to challenge Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen.
Brad Todd, a Republican strategist advising Campana, was the chief outside consultant for the National Republican Congressional Committee in 2009 and 2010, when the GOP followed up a big off-year victory in Virginia with a historic gain of 63 House seats 12 months later. Republicans began that election cycle in the doldrums. After winning big in the commonwealth and flipping the governor’s mansion in New Jersey, Todd recalled, the party’s effort to recruit congressional candidates took off.
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Even in marginal House districts where the chances of victory were seemingly slim, quality candidates, or at least credible and plausible candidates, were calling the NRCC without having been approached and declaring their desire to run. Todd said that helped the party field a slate that made the 2010 red tidal wave possible. He believes the same thing could happen heading into 2022.
“After the [2009] Virginia landslide, candidate recruitment became something that was on autopilot,” Todd said. “We saw a lot of people not on our radar screen in districts we hadn’t gotten to yet showing up at our door.”
