From sweeping all three statewide offices to winning firm control of the Virginia House of Delegates, Democratic leaders used the word “mandate” Wednesday.
They may have flipped about a dozen seats from red to blue, including a handful in Northern Virginia. But Gov. Glenn Youngkin, R, has a very different take on what went wrong for Republicans.
“Our majority now stands a at an historic, unbelievable 64 seats,” Virginia House Speaker Don Scott, a Democrat, said.
Flanked by charts illustrating the Democrats’ blue wave in the House of Delegates elections, the architects of the plan celebrated the victories Wednesday.
“This is what a mandate looks like,” Scott said.
“This is the largest Democratic majority we’ve won in more than three decades — 1987,” he said.
“Here’s how we did it,” Fairfax County Del. Dan Helmer said. “We approached this like a military campaign.”
Scott and Helmer — both military veterans — say their battlefield was designed to recruit and fund quality candidates who addressed voters’ priorities, many of whom felt the pain of inflation and Trump administration layoffs.
“They said they wanted us to work hard to lower the cost of housing, the cost of health care,” Scott said. “They want their schools to be safe. They want us to be sure to continue to protect public safety.”
Youngkin offered congratulations to Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger, but he put the blame for the GOP defeat on the government shutdown, not Department of Government Efficiency cuts, layoffs or Youngkin’s administration.
“We have 330,000 government workers in the commonwealth of Virginia, and I can’t imagine how disruptive this has been for their families,” he said. “And so, I do believe that had a major impact on yesterday.”
“Voters saw them running away, cowering in the face of Donald Trump’s destruction of Virgina’s jobs, and because of that, Virginia sent a message to the entire nation, to the entire world,” Scott said.
But when it comes to governing, now, Democrats said they will look for Republicans to move their way and won’t overplay their hand.
“The word of the day now is ‘restraint,’” Scott said. “We can’t overreach. We have to be restrained, we have to be wise with the gift that the voters have given us to govern.”
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