Donald Trump will be the 47th president of the United States, and there are plenty of people in Virginia Politics circles who signed on at various stages of his Nixonian comeback.
All think they’re about to be rewarded, but most won’t be – that’s reality in the Trump orbit; one can quickly fall out of favor, and beware if you do.
There are winners and losers on the MAGA side, and then on the Democratic side, it’s not all bad news.
Tim Kaine won re-election to the U.S. Senate; the Ds held their majority in the state’s U.S. House delegation.
Assessing the winners and losers among Virginia pols from Tuesday:
Winner: Jason Miyares
Gotta figure that Jason Miyares, the sitting attorney general, is now the odds-on favorite to win the Republican nomination for governor.
With apologies to the lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, she’s got two problems that won’t go over well with the MAGA base: she’s Black, and she’s a she.
Miyares has neither of those hindrances.
I’d suggest to Earle-Sears that she pull a Bill Bolling and run for a second term as LG, but that won’t help her down the road, unless she can figure out a way to be less Black and less feminine gender.
Loser: Glenn Youngkin
Remember how the guy with the “Chinese-sounding” last name publicly flirted seemingly forever with a run for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination?
It was to a point where heavy hitters like Rupert Murdoch were floating the idea of having Glenn Youngkin enter the race at the 11th hour to save the Republican Party from the inevitable damage that running an adjudicated rapist with a felony record and hundreds of millions of dollars in civil judgments would wreak.
As Trump reasserted control over the party, Youngkin fell in line, no doubt influenced by the political reality of being term-limited by the Virginia Constitution, meaning, there’s nowhere in politics for him to go after his term ends in January 2026.
OK, he could challenge Mark Warner in a 2026 U.S. Senate race, but good luck with that, running against a popular Democratic incumbent in a midterm that is sure to be a bloodbath for Republicans.
I digress.
Youngkin seems to think he’s in Trump’s good graces to the point that he can get a low-level job in the next administration.
Here’s what the answer will be from DJT when Youngkin makes the ask, hat-in-hand:
I only give jobs to winners, and Glenn, you lost Virginia for me. I don’t give jobs to losers, Glenn. Are you sure you’re not Chinese?
Don’t feel sorry for the governor. His net worth is $400 million.
He’s about to get a big tax break; it’ll all work out for him.
Loser: Bob Good
Bob Good, the Fifth District congressman for another few weeks, was at the top of the world, as the new House Freedom Caucus chair, ready to take it to the libs at a level that you would never imagine.
He screwed the pooch when he decided to hitch his wagon to Ron DeSantis in the 2024 GOP presidential race.
That earned Good a primary challenger in the form of John McGuire, who got the endorsement of Trump even as Good prostrated himself as a surrogate at Trump’s New York felony trial.
His rise and fall was sudden: Good is finishing up his second and final term in Congress at the end of the year.
Don’t let the door hit you where the good lord split you, is what he’ll hear from MAGA as he’s cleaning out his office.
Winner: Abigail Spanberger
There’s this odd Virginia Politics tradition of electing the nominee for governor of the party opposite the new president dating back a ways.
Actually, it’s not all that odd – a new president has natural growing-pains issues, and Virginia’s off-year elections puts the new president’s record to the test pretty much instantaneously.
Advantage: Abigail Spanberger, then, heading into the 2025 cycle in Virginia.
It doesn’t hurt that she’s already battle-tested, having won three tight races in the 50/50 Seventh Congressional District, and a natural candidate in slightly left-of-center Virginia.
The 2025 race is Spanberger’s to lose.
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Chris Graham
