The 2017 Virginia Governor’s Race in the Final Stretch

Republican Ed Gillespie

The race for the next Governor in Virginia between Republican Ed Gillespie and Democrat Ralph Northam comes to a close on Tuesday. After months of debates and television ads, the voters will have their say. Most polls have shown a tightening of the race and a slight swing towards the Republican candidate. Two events have occurred in the last week that has caused this swing:

  • A political ad run by the Latino Victory Fund attacked Gillespie in general and his SUPPORTERS specifically as racist and anti-immigrant. The fact that this was done is not surprising because unfortunately it is a tactic the left has used successfully when they can’t debate the issues. But this ad was despicable and the equivalent of the “deplorables” comment made by Hillary Clinton during the Presidential election last year. Hopefully these tactics have seen an end to their success.
  • Gillespie has been effective in criticizing Northam for his support for Sanctuary Cities. Earlier this year Northam voted against a bill that would ban such cities, but has now backed off that position thanks to Gillespie’s ads. This has some liberal groups angry as reported by com:

“Ralph Northam’s gutless, politically senseless, and morally debased decision yesterday to openly backtrack on his commitment to standing up for immigrant families is a picture-perfect example of why Democracy for America never endorsed him in the primary and focused the entirety of our efforts in Virginia on down-ticket races, like Justin Fairfax’s campaign for Lieutenant Governor. It’s also why, today, we’re announcing that we will no longer do any work to directly aid Northam’s gubernatorial efforts,” DFA Executive Director Charles Chamberlain said in a statement.

And now, incredibly, Northam is being attacked from his left as being racist:

They also criticized the decision by the Virginia Democratic Coordinated campaign to leave Justin Fairfax, the party’s candidate for lieutenant governor, off of literature given to canvassers.

Following that racist action, we decided to remove Northam’s name from the tens of thousands of volunteer Get-Out-the-Vote calls our members are making in Virginia…

Democrat Ralph Northam

Here is what the polls are showing (for what it’s worth) as we head into the final days:

The RCP Average on October 20 was Northam +5.8. Now it is at +1.8 (which includes an outlier showing Northam up by double digits).

The Roanoke College Poll has it at 47-47:  “Gillespie has improved his position among self-identified Independents,” said Harry Wilson, director of the Roanoke College Poll. “More of those respondents say they lean toward the Republicans than we saw in our most recent poll.”

And the latest Rasmussen poll has it tied at 45-45 – with 6 % undecided.

It’s a close election that could go either way. Or as Dan Rather might put it: “”If you try to read the tea leaves before the cup is done you can get yourself burned.” (Dan should have applied that to fake documents as well!).

The Democrats have more to fear from losing this race than Republicans. Virginia has been trending blue due to a heavy influx of Democrats into Northern Virginia in the last 10 years. So a Democrat win would not be anything extraordinary. But a Republican win would be considered an upset and a good launching point for the Republicans heading into the mid-terms next year.

The election is on Tuesday November 7th.

John Baldwin

John Baldwin is a native of Roanoke, Va located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of SW VA. He is a husband and father of three children. He has been a devout Christian since he surrendered his life to the Lord Jesus Christ and accepted the free gift of salvation in 1988. Politically John is a conservative who's political views were formed during the administration of Ronald Reagan. John's fulltime job is as an Applications Analyst (Software programming). John is also the host of two online radio shows on Victory Radio - "The Front Porch Gospel Music Show" and "Victory Talk Radio" (interview show). He is also an avid "oldies" music fan and is the DJ of the weekly "J-Bal Oldies Show” on the Doo Wop Cove.

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