Why The California Recall Is Not a Harbinger of What Is to Come on COVID As a Campaign Issue

Some have interpreted Governor Gavin Newsom’s win in the California recall election as a mandate for Democrats to go strong on COVID in their election campaigns. Supporting COVID measures to protect the public is the right stance for any elected official regardless of how the votes may fall, but there […] Read more »

The survival of U.S. democracy may hinge on this decision by Pa.’s next governor

… Pennsylvania — the closest battleground state with the most electoral votes, where the election was called for Biden last November — is a powerful example of exactly what the Trump scheme to unwind American democracy looks like. In Harrisburg, Republican legislative leaders — after weeks of lobbying and browbeating […] Read more »

Why Democrats should be worried about Virginia’s governor’s race

The state of Virginia is about to provide the clearest preview of what’s to come in the 2022 election. Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin will face off in a marquee gubernatorial race in November. At the same time, all 100 seats in the state’s House of Delegates are […] Read more »

Recall lessons

… Newsom won the governor’s chair with 61.9 percent in 2018. His performance this month was 1.5 points better. In most of the state’s large counties, he was between zero and 2 points stronger in the recall than in his successful 2018 gubernatorial campaign. California congressional Democrats who competed against […] Read more »

Why ‘all eyes’ will be on the Virginia suburbs this fall

Reassured by the results of California’s gubernatorial recall election last week, Democrats now face tougher electoral tests this fall that will measure whether they can defend their most important political advance of the Donald Trump era. Big gains in well-educated inner suburbs ringing the nation’s major cities keyed all the […] Read more »