Despite losses elsewhere in the country, the Democratic Party gained a net total of more than 40 seats in the local and municipal elections held in Georgia on November 2, including mayorships in Cairo, Stone Mountain, Hampton, and McDonough and crucial city council seats in Lawrenceville, Peachtree Corners, Sandy Springs, Tucker, Stone Mountain, Dunwoody, Brookhaven, Kennesaw, and Powder Springs. While local elections are often immune to partisan trends and are of lower turnout, the results of the election in Georgia are a relatively good sign for the statewide Demcoratic Party in one of the nation’s key battleground states.
In the cities of McDonough and Warner Robins, voters elected the first African American mayors in those cities’ history, and the first women as well. McDonough City Council member Sandra Vincent told GPB News she is hoping to retain the city’s “small-town feel” while ensuring rapid growth in the surrounding area doesn’t leave residents behind. LaRhonda Patrick defeated incumbent Warner Robins mayor Randy Toms in a runoff election as well.
Congresswoman Nikema Williams, chair of the Democratic Party of Georgia, said in a statement that the results leave the party well-positioned to continue making gains in 2022. “From Middle Georgia to the coast and everywhere in between, Georgians came out in full force this election cycle to make their voices heard and demand change,” she said. “Democrats’ strong showing in this year’s municipal elections is a testament to the unprecedented grassroots enthusiasm our party has been building across the state for years — and our momentum is only growing.”
Beyond seats changing hands, runoff elections in the metro Atlanta area also signaled an end to many longtime incumbents’ terms and a new direction for Atlanta’s government. South Fulton Councilman Khalid Kamau ousted incumbent mayor Bill Edwards in the city’s mayoral race, while newcomers Jason Dozier and Antonio Lewis defeated Cleta Winslow and Joyce Shepherd, respectively, for Atlanta City Council seats. With City Councilmember Andre Dickens handily winning Atlanta’s mayoral runoff, Atlanta City Council President Felicia Moore continued the streak of council presidents failing to move up into the city’s highest office.
Throughout the municipal election season, the Democratic Party of Georgia made nearly 91,000 calls and sent nearly 185,000 texts to voters across the state to get out the vote in dozens of targeted races. Candidates in DPG-targeted races flipped 41 seats in 21 counties across Georgia, while Republican candidates picked up just 6. The counties that saw Democratic flips include Ben Hill, Berrien, Brooks, Chatham, Clarke, Cobb, Cook, DeKalb, Fulton, Grady, Gwinnett, Heard, Henry, Jackson, Jefferson, Lanier, Meriwether, Mitchell, Oconee, Troup, and Walton.
Democratic New Jersey Governor Phil Murphynarrowly fended off an election challenge from Republican former State Senator Jack Ciattarelli, returns showed on November 3, a day after voting ended in an unexpected nail-biter for the incumbent. Murphy became the first Democratic governor since Brendan Byrne in 1977 to win re-election in New Jersey, even though registered Democratic voters outnumber Republicans by more than 1 million in the densely populated northeastern coastal US state. The incumbent struck a triumphant but politically inclusive tone in a brief victory speech he delivered at an Asbury Park convention hall to supporters chanting, “Four more years!””If you want to be governor of all of New Jersey, you must listen to all of New Jersey. And New Jersey, I hear you,” he told the crowd.
Unofficial returns posted by the Associated Press and cited by the New York Times and other media outlets pronouncing the victory for Governor Phil Murphy showed him clinching 50.03% of the vote, compared with 49.22% for Jack Ciattarelli, with 90% of ballots counted. There was no immediate word from Ciattarelli conceding defeat, and his campaign spokesperson, Sami Williams, posted a tweet criticizing the media for calling the race when it did. “With the candidates separated by a fraction of a percent out of 2.4 million ballots cast, it’s irresponsible of the media to make this call when the New Jersey Secretary of State doesn’t even know how many ballots are left to be counted,” she wrote.
Governor Phil Murphy has presided over a political shift to the left in the state, including new taxes on millionaires, tougher firearms restrictions, marijuna legalization, a higher minimum wage, and paid sick leave. He has also defended his robust public health measures aimed at curtailing the coronavirus pandemic, which emerged as a key point of contention in the race. Jack Ciattarelli, who had trailed Murphy by up to 10 percentage points in some opinion polls, capitalized on widespread unpopularity with Murphy’s aggressive mask requirements for schoolchildren. The Republicans also focused much of their campaign on the state’s high taxes, while accusing Murphy, a wealthy former Goldman Sachs executive, of being out of touch with the electorate.
New Jersey has trended steadily Democratic in recent years. The party won 10 of the state’s 12 House of Representatives seats in 2020, and President Joe Biden carried the state over then-President Donald Trump last year by more than 15 percentage points. Still, Jack Ciattarelli’s unexpectedly strong performance in New Jersey, and a Republican victory in Virginia’s hard-fought gubernatorial race spelled trouble for Biden’s party heading into next year’s congressional elections. Murphy trailed overnight in the returns but squeaked into the lead as the tabulation of the vote unfolded in several heavily Democratic counties.
Democrat Eric Adamshas been elected New York City mayor, defeating Republican Curtis Sliwa on November 2 in a contest far easier than his next task: steering a damaged city through its recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. Adams, a former New York City police captain and the Brooklyn borough president, will become the second African American mayor of the nation’s most populous city. David Dinkins, who served from 1990 to 1993, was the first. “Tonight, New York has chosen one of you — one of our own. I am you. I am you,” Adams told a jubilant crowd at his victory party at a hotel in his hometown borough of Brooklyn. “After years of praying and hoping and struggling and working, we are headed to City Hall.” Adams’ victory seemed all but assured after he emerged as the winner from a crowded Democratic primary this summer in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans 7 to 1.
As a candidate, Mayor-elect Eric Adams referenced his working-class roots and being raised with five siblings by a single mother who cleaned houses. He described carrying a garbage bag of clothes to school out of fear his family would be evicted. He brought a photo of his late mother with him as he voted in Brooklyn. He teared up as he described his life as a classic New York story, rising from a poor upbringing to become the leader of the city. Adams will take office on January 1, 2022 in a city where more than 34,500 people have been killed by COVID-19, and where the economy is still beset by challenges related to the pandemic. The tourism industry hasn’t come back yet. Office buildings remain partly empty, with people still working from home. Schools are trying to get children back on track after a year of distance learning. After he finished speaking, Adams was joined onstage by Governor Kathy Hochul, who pledged “a whole new era of cooperation” between the state in the city, after eight years in which the former governor, Andrew Cuomo, was constantly at adds with Mayor Bill de Blasio. “We will fight for you, not fight each other anymore,” she said.
Republican Curtis Sliwa, who founded the Guardian Angels anti-crime patrol in 1979, ran a campaign punctuated by his penchant for stunts and his signature red beret. He portrayed Eric Adams as an out-of-touch elitist. Adams dismissed Sliwa as a clown and painted him as untrustworthy for having admitted he made up claims years ago about being kidnapped and of other exploits from the Guardian Angels’ patrols. Sliwa said at an election night party that he tried to call Adams to concede but couldn’t immediately reach him. “I am pledging my support to the new Mayor Eric Adams because we’re all going to have to coalesce together in harmony and solidarity if we’re going to save this city that we love,” Sliwa said.
Mayor-elect Eric Adams brings a nuanced perspective on policing and crime, drawing on his experiences as a former police captain, an officer who gained early attention for speaking critically about the department he served in, and as someone who experienced police brutality as a teen. At age 15, he said, he was beaten by police officers when he was arrested for trespassing. He rejected progressive mantras to “defund the police,” and said he was proud of his time in the department. Adams became a transit police officer in 1984. As a police officer, he cofounded an advocacy group, 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, which pushed for criminal justice reform and decried police brutality. Adams retired from the police department in 2006. He then won a seat in the state Senate, representing Brooklyn. In 2013, he was elected borough president. Though seen as the moderate candidate in the crowded Democratic primary, one who offered a business-friendly approach, Eric Adams has rejected the label and maintains he is a progressive.
Eric Adams faced questions as a candidate about his residence after Politico reported he was sleeping at his Borough Hall office often. He co-owns an apartment in Fort Lee, New Jersey, with his partner, Tracey Collins. He tried to dispel the questions during the campaign by giving reporters a tour of a basement apartment in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood that he said is his primary residence. Curtis Sliwa tried to spotlight the issue during the campaign by crossing a bridge to Fort Lee while holding a milk carton featuring a picture of “missing” Adams. Curtis Sliwa also become known for living with more than a dozen rescue cats in his very small apartment with his wife. He brought one of the cats with him to his Manhattan polling place but was told the animal had to stay outside. In his concession speech, Sliwa made it clear he wasn’t going to fade from the headlines. “You will have Curtis Sliwa to kick around,” he said in his speech.
Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated former Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe in Virginia‘s high-profile election on November 2 for governor, flipping control of a state that President Joe Biden won handily just a year ago. The results there and in other states holding off-year elections sent a warning shot to Democrats, suggesting that trouble may be brewing ahead of next year’s midterm elections. “This is the spirit of Virginia coming together like never before,” Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin told supporters well after midnight, joking breakfast would soon be served. “For too long, we’ve been expected to shelve our dreams, to shelve our hope, to settle for low expectations. We will not be a commonwealth of low expectations. We’ll be a commonwealth of high expectations.” Terry McAuliffe congratulated Youngkin in a statement conceding defeat. “While last night we came up short, I am proud that we spent this campaign fighting for the values we so deeply believe in,” he said, thanking his family and supporters. Virginia will also get its first woman of color lieutenant governor, with the victory of Republican Winsome Sears, a former Marine born in Jamaica.
Glenn Youngkin, a former private equity executive, and political newcomer campaigned on a promise to unite the factions of the Republican Party and drove a message focused on the economy and education. He kept just enough distance from former President Donald Trump while trying to keep his base engaged. Terry McAuliffe, meanwhile, was weighed down by his party’s post-Trump political fatigue, along with President Joe Biden’s sinking poll numbers and gridlocked agenda in Washington, but ran a campaign that included damaging gaffes and, critics say, was overly reliant on trying to tie Youngkin to Trump.
Virginia, which always elects a new governor one year after presidential races, has long been seen as a political bellwether and both parties were anxiously watching as results poured in from across the commonwealth, eager for clues about the political landscape that will inform their upcoming campaigns. The Republican victory in Virginia, powered by robust turnout in conservative rural counties, improved support in the suburbs, and a message focused on the economy and alleged anti-white bias in school curriculum, will likely serve as a blueprint for Republicans looking to recapture the House and the Senate next year. “It’s time to hit the panic button, because the base is not motivated,” Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher said, calling the loss “catastrophic” for Democrats. In Virginia, white women swung back toward the Republican Party by 15 percentage points compared to 2020, while African American turnout was down in some key places.
Turnout will be key in next year’s election and Virginia’s results suggest the Republican base is more engaged than the Democratic one, as is often the case for the party out of power in Washington. “Youngkin’s victory in Virginia should serve as a wake-up call to Democrats everywhere that an epic wave is on the way,” said John Ashbrook, a Republican strategist who works on Senate races and is close to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “Voters are clearly dissatisfied with the direction our country is headed and they’re prepared to exercise their right to change it.”
Virginia was one of the first former Confederate states to trend heavily towards the Republican Party beginning in the late 1940s and established a reputation as one of the best states for the Republican Party by the 1980s. Starting in the mid-2000s, however, Virginia began to trend heavily towards the Democrats due to declining Republican support in Suburban areas. For example, no Republican had won a statewide office in Virginia since 2009 and President Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by 10 points in Virginia in the 2020 Presidential election. Moreover, Democratic Governor Ralph Northam, who is prohibited by the state Constitution from running for a second term, won by 9 percentage points in 2017. Democrats won control of the state Legislature for the first time since 1996 two years ago and pushed through an expansion of early voting rules that some analysts predicted would help the party turn out its base.
Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin made education the centerpiece of his campaign, capitalizing on parental frustration with school closures and a gaffe by Terry McCauliffe in the final debate when he said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” The race was stoked by conservative alarmism about critical race theory, an until-recently obscure academic discipline mostly taught in universities. Republicans say the issue could be central in future campaigns across the country. Former President Donald Trump has loomed large over the Virginia race, with McAuliffe looking to tie his opponent to the divisive former president, who lost the state by 10 percentage points in 2020. The NBC News exit poll found that 54 percent of voters said they have an unfavorable opinion of Trump, compared to 41 percent who had a positive view of him. While McAuliffe voters were almost unanimously negative on the former president, only about three-quarters (73 percent) of Youngkin voters had a favorable opinion of Trump and 19 percent had a negative view of him.
“Being anti-Trump is not going to be enough. Democrats have to show what they’re for,” former Virginia Congressman Tom Perriello said, adding that the party can’t just ignore hot-button issues like the critical race theory debate. “If anyone on the Democratic side thought these culture wars were going to go away without Trump, that needs to be re-evaluated.” Meanwhile, about half of voters said that President Joe Biden was not a factor in their vote for governor, according to the NBC News exit poll, but only 43 percent approved of the way he is doing his job, while a slight majority (56 percent) disapproved. Twenty-eight percent said one reason for their vote for governor was to express opposition to Biden, while 20 percent said it was to express support for the President.
A Republican-led bid to recall Governor Gavin Newsom of California ended in defeat, as Democrats in the nation’s most populous state closed ranks against a small grass-roots movement that accelerated with the spread of Covid-19. Voters affirmed their support for Governor Newsom, whose lead grew insurmountable as the count continued in Los Angeles County and other large Democratic strongholds after the polls had closed. Larry Elder, a conservative talk radio host, and Donald Trump accolade led 46 challengers hoping to become the next governor. The vote spoke to the power liberal voters wield in California, as no Republican has held statewide office in California since Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger left office in 2010. Additionally, the vote also reflected the state’s recent progress against the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed more than 67,000 lives in California. California has one of the nation’s highest vaccination rates and one of its lowest rates of new virus cases, which Governor Newsom tirelessly argued to voters were the results of his vaccine and mask requirements.
The Associated Press called the race for Governor Gavin Newsom, who had won in a 62 percent landslide in 2018, less than an hour after the polls closed on Tuesday. About 66 percent of the eight million ballots counted by 10 p.m. Pacific time said the governor should stay in office. “It appears that we are enjoying an overwhelmingly ‘no’ vote tonight here in the state of California, but ‘no’ is not the only thing that was expressed tonight,” Governor Newsom told reporters. “We said yes to science. We said yes to vaccines. We said yes to ending this pandemic. We said yes to people’s right to vote without fear of fake fraud and voter suppression. We said yes to women’s fundamental constitutional right to decide for herself what she does with her body, her fate, her future. We said yes to diversity. In Orange County, Larry Elder spoke to a packed ballroom of supporters and conceded the race. “Let’s be gracious in defeat,” Elder said, adding, “We may have lost the battle, but we are going to win the war.”
Considered a bellwether for the 2022 midterm elections, the recall outcome came as a relief to Democrats nationally. Though polls showed that the recall was consistently opposed by some 60 percent of Californians, surveys over the summer suggested that likely voters were unenthusiastic about Gavin Newsom. As the election deadline approached, however, his base mobilized. President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota traveled to California to campaign for Governor Newsom, while Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former President Barack Obama appeared in his commercials. Some $70 million in contributions to his campaign poured in from Democratic donors, tribal and business groups, and organized labor. The governor charged that far-right extremists and supporters of former President Donald Trump were attempting a hostile takeover in a state where they could never hope to attain majority support in a regular election. He also contrasted California’s low rates of coronavirus infection with the large numbers of deaths and hospitalizations in Republican-run states like Florida and Texas. Electoral math did the rest: Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one in California, and pandemic voting rules encouraged high turnout, allowing ballots to be mailed to each of the state’s 22 million registered, active voters with prepaid postage. More than 40 percent of those Californians voted early.
Initiated by a retired Republican sheriff’s sergeant in Northern California, Orrin Heatlie, the recall was one of six conservative-led petitions that began circulating within months of Gavin Newsom’s inauguration. Recall attempts are common in California, where direct democracy has long been part of the political culture. For example, Governors Culbert Olson, Pat Brown, and Ronald Reagan were subject to failed recall attempts in 1939, 1960, and 1967 respectively. But only one other attempt against a governor has qualified for the ballot, in 2003, when Californians recalled Governor Gray Davis on the heels of the 9/11 attacks, the dot-com bust and rolling electricity blackouts. They elected Arnold Schwarzenegger to replace Davis as governor, substituting a centrist Republican for a centrist Democrat. Initially, Heatlie’s petition had difficulty gaining traction. But it gathered steam as the pandemic swept California and Governor Newsom struggled to contain it. Californians who at first were supportive of the governor’s health orders wearied of shutdowns in businesses and classrooms, and public dissatisfaction boiled over in November when Newsom was spotted mask-free at the French Laundry, an exclusive wine country restaurant, after urging the public to avoid gatherings.
As the outcome in the recall election became apparent, Darry Sragow, a Democratic strategist and publisher of California Target Book, a nonpartisan political almanac, said the governor held off “a Republican mugging” and “could come out of this stronger than ever, depending on his margin.” Recall backers also claimed a measure of victory “We were David against Goliath, we were the Alamo,” said Mike Netter, one of a handful of Tea Party Republican activists whose anger at Governor Gavin Newsom’s opposition to the death penalty, his embrace of undocumented workers and his deep establishment roots helped inspire the attempted ouster.
Other Republicans, however, called the recall a grave political miscalculation. About one-quarter of the state’s registered voters are Republicans, and their numbers have been dwindling since the 1990s, a trend that recall proponents believed might be reversed if they could somehow flip the nation’s biggest state. The recall’s defeat, in a special election that cost the state an estimated $276 million, instead marked “another nail in the coffin,” said Mike Madrid, a California Republican strategist who has been deeply critical of the party under Donald Trump, charging in particular that the Republican. has driven away Latino voters. Madrid said the recall signified that, even in California, Trump’s party had become part of “an increasingly radical, exercised and shrinking Republican base, lashing out in different ways in different parts of the country.” He took note of the voter fraud accusations that some in his party began to make well before the polls closed, echoing Trump, who claimed without evidence that Democrats had “rigged” the recall election. Despite the yawning gap in support, for example, Mr. Elder demanded this week, before the voting was finished, that a special legislative session be called “to investigate and ameliorate the twisted results.” He said there had been “instances of undocumented ballots” but provided no examples.
The election results capped a nearly yearlong push by Governor Gavin Newsom to persuade voters to see beyond that darkness. Since early this year, when it became clear that the recall would have the money and time to qualify for the ballot, Governor Newsom has campaigned relentlessly. Taking advantage of a huge state surplus, a result of higher-than-expected gains in income and stock prices for affluent Californians, the governor moved aggressively to demonstrate that the state could both protect its economy and curb the virus. In recent months, he has rolled out vaccinations, cleaned up trash in neighborhoods neglected by pandemic-worn Californians, thrown motel rooms open to homeless Californians, announced stimulus checks and rent assistance for poor and middle-class Californians, and stood repeatedly in front of a gold lamé curtain to host one of the nation’s largest vaccine lotteries. As in 2003, when he ran against a popular progressive for mayor of San Francisco, Newsom framed the race not as a referendum on him but as a choice between himself and a potentially catastrophic alternative, in this case, Larry Elder, whose name recognition quickly vaulted him to the top of the list of challengers. Noting that Elder had built a career bashing liberal causes, the governor painted him as a Trump clone who would foist far-right policies on a state that has been a bastion of liberal thinking. “Vote no and go,” the governor told voters, suggesting that they stick to voting against recalling him and not even dignify the second question on the ballot, which asked who should replace Newsom if the recall succeeds.
