Virginia law forbids governors from seeking consecutive terms. The outgoing governor, Democrat Ralph Northam, served as Mr. McAuliffes lieutenant governor and in February 2019 was ensnared in a cascading scandal when he apologized for, then later denied, posing in blackface in a photograph that appeared in his medical school yearbook. At the same time, Mr. Fairfax was accused by two women of sexual assault years earlier. He denied the allegations.
Interviews last week with more than a dozen Democratic activists in Northern Virginia found a group of voters thrilled with Mr. Bidens success and yearning for him to follow through on campaign promises to stop the spread of the coronavirus, address income inequality and racial justice disparities and reverse Trump administration policies on the environment.
But it also found an electorate hungry to go beyond Mr. Bidens heal-the-soul-of-America politics and set a marker for progressive politics in a Virginia that Mr. Biden carried by more than 10 percentage points. That result gave every Democrat interviewed confidence that whoever wins the primary will win the general election next November.
The two announced Republican candidates in the race are Kirk Cox, a former speaker of the House of Delegates, and Amanda Chase, a state senator in the mold of Mr. Trump.
I never had any doubt that there would be a problem getting Joe Biden elected in Virginia, said Joanne Collins of Reston, Va., who is a leader of a local chapter of Indivisible, the progressive grass-roots organization that began after the 2016 election. That didnt even cross my mind. And I think the governors race is going to be similar.
Robbin Warner, who formed an organization that mailed more than 460,000 postcards to voters this fall, said her volunteers were energized about the prospect of Virginia electing its first female governor after an unbroken string of 73 men that began with Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson.read more
Virginia Democrats, Thrilled With Biden Victory, Aren’t Looking for Carbon Copy
