Democrats have taken full control of the Virginia legislature for the first time in more than two decades, while the race for governor in deeply Republican Kentucky was too close to call despite a last-minute boost from US President Donald Trump.
In Kentucky, Democratic challenger Andy Beshear on Tuesday held a narrow lead and declared victory in the race over Republican Governor Matt Bevin, though Bevin had not conceded.
In Virginia, Democrats flipped control of the state Senate and House, gaining outright control of government in a state that is often a battleground for the White House.
Photo: AFP
“I’m here to officially declare today, Nov. 5, 2019, that Virginia is officially blue,” Virginia Governor Ralph Northam told a crowd of supporters in Richmond.
A year before the presidential election, the results offered warning signs for both parties.
Voters in suburban swaths of Kentucky and Virginia sided with the Democrats, a trend that would complicate Trump’s path to re-election if it holds, while the Democrats who made gains did so by largely avoiding positions such as “Medicare for All” that have animated the party’s left flank in the presidential primary.
Democratic pickups in Virginia occurred in Washington and Richmond suburbs that already had trended in the party’s direction.
In Kentucky, Beshear gained considerable ground on Bevin in Kentucky’s suburban Cincinnati, Ohio, counties that had helped propel the Republican to office four years ago.
Other statewide Republican candidates in Kentucky won by comfortable margins, but the dip at the top of the ticket still offered another example in the Trump era of suburban voters’ willingness to abandon established Republican loyalties — even with the president making a personal appeal.
Trump’s presidential campaign manager tried to find a positive frame for the results in a state Trump won by 30 percentage points in 2016.
“The president just about dragged Governor Matt Bevin across the finish line, helping him run stronger than expected in what turned into a very close race at the end,” Brad Parscale said.
Trump might need to depend on Mississippi, where he also campaigned in the final stretch before the election, for something to crow about.
With Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant, a Republican, term-limited, nominee Tate Reeves defeated Democrat Jim Hood to extend the Republican 20-year hold on the state’s top office, but even that contest could finish with a single-digit percentage margin in a state Trump won by 28 percentage points three years ago.
While the results are not necessarily predictive of what is likely to happen in November next year, voters in multiple states tied their decisions to the national atmosphere, particularly the president.
In Kentucky, 73-year-old Michael Jennings voted straight Democratic.
A Vietnam veteran, retired state worker and former journalist, Jennings described the president as unfit for office and a threat to democracy.
“If Kentucky can send a small flare up that we’re making the necessary turn, that’s a hopeful sign that would have reverberations far beyond our state,” he said.
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