We knew that Abigail Spanberger was going to be the first woman to be elected governor in Virginia; we didn’t know she’d win by 15 points.
The margin was such that Spanberger carried Jay Jones, who did everything but hand over on a silver platter the attorney general race to do-nothing MAGA Jason Miyares, to a surprisingly comfortable six-point win over the MAGA incumbent.
Don’t give Jay Jones any credit for doing more than putting his head down and not suggesting that any other Republicans be shot in the head.
Credit goes to whoever took his phone from him.
And whoever on the campaign came up with and enforced the no more texts to Republican close friends (!) policy: winner, winner, thin-crust pepperoni pizza for dinner for you.
ICYMI
There were fears among some with me on the left that John Reid, the crazy-talking MAGA radio host running for lieutenant governor, had been treated with kid gloves by the Virginia news media, which might give him a shot at winning the LG race.
Ghazala Hashmi, a state senator from Richmond, who, frankly, didn’t do herself any favors, in the form of, barely campaigning on her own behalf, cruised to an 11-point win.
Turns out, maybe less is more when your opponent is busy fighting campaign fires involving the words gay Nazi porn started by people in his own party.
And then, the House of Delegates, which, going into tonight, was a narrow two-seat majority for the Ds.
I identified, in September, House seats held by vulnerable Republicans that the Ds were targeting.
Damned if Democrats didn’t win the top 13 on the list.
The 2025 cycle could not have gone any better for Virginia Democrats.
And then, our Democratic neighbors on the Acela Corridor, in New Jersey and New York City, had big – yuge! – nights of their own.
The polls, which were way, way off this cycle – Spanberger had a lead in the polling average of nine points, and won by 15 – had the Democrat in the New Jersey governor race, Mikie Sherrill, with a narrow lead, in the area of a point or two or three.
Ahem, she beat the Republican, Jack Ciaterrelli, by 13.
Donald Trump didn’t stick his nose into either of those two races, but he did decide to endorse former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, nominally a former Democrat, running for mayor of New York City as an independent after losing the Democratic Party primary, because of course a guy who isn’t an actual Democrat should lose the Democratic Party primary.
Cuomo lost the general to self-glossed Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani by nine points.
May we never hear his name again.
Elsewhere, California voters approved a ballot measure giving state legislators the ability to redraw congressional maps by 30 points, another double-middle-finger salute to the Trumper.
And in Cincinnati, Vice President JD Vance’s half-brother, Cory Bowman, came up short in his bid to become mayor, losing to Democratic incumbent Aftab Pureval by 56 points.
The half-brothers’ childhood couch had no comment.
The headlines from tonight: two White suburban moms elected governor, two sons of immigrants elected mayor, all by convincing margins.
And then there’s this bit of good news: the endless loop of attack ads cutting into everything you watch on TV or streaming are over!
For a couple of months.
There’s another election next year, which pretty much starts – well, bad news, the 2026 cycle started before I was able to finish this article and get it online.
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Chris Graham
