Virginia’s governor’s office has been led by a Democrat since 2014 until businessman Glenn Youngkin won election Tuesday. Farther down the ballot, Democrats witnessed a Republican candidate win the lieutenant governor’s race and win a race for state attorney general, too, in a state that had been declared "blue" by the national media and political observers.
Victoria Cobb, who leads the Family Foundation of Virginia, tells American Family News that voters “rejected all the liberalism that we've been seeing over the past two years here in Virginia and what we're seeing coming out of the Biden White House."
In 2019, Virginia voters witnessed Gov. Ralph Northam speak in cold, heartless terms about a baby that survives an abortion, when he was discussing a measure allowing third-trimester abortions.
"The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable," Northam, himself a physician, explained in a radio interview. "The infant would be resuscitated if that's what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother."
With help from the Democrat-controlled state legislature, Northam would later sign the Virginia Reproductive Health Act into law in 2020.
In the state legislature, the national media swooned when Democrats wiped out slim GOP majorities in the House of Delegate and Senate in 2019. With that new majority, Democrats passed gun control “reforms” that limited handgun purchases, restricted public possession of a firearm, and introduced a controversial “red flag” law. A push to ban so-called “assault weapons” was narrowly defeated.
But those controversial measures angered Second Amendment supporters who organized marches and protests. Across the state, city councils and county sheriffs refused to comply with the new gun laws and declared themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries.”
That long list of new gun-control laws took effect just this summer.
“In the last year and a half,” Charniele Herring, the House Democrat Majority Leader, said in July, “Democrats have shown how powerful the majority can be.”
Now, just four months later, voters across the state chose Republican candidates and helped the GOP flip the House of Delegates from Democrat control that was 55-45 going into Election Day.
“Virginia voters made a historic statement,” Todd Gilbert, the House Minority Leader, said early Wednesday morning, “delivering a clear rebuke of the failed policies of the last two years and electing Republicans up and down the ballot.”
Cobb tells American Family News the House of Delegates will be led by genuine conservatives who will be in control of pro-family legislation that moves forward.
According to NBC News, exit polling showed white female voters --- the so-called “suburban mom” voters --- chose Youngkin over McAuliffe 57% to 43%. Exit polling from 2016 showed those same voters chose Biden over Trump 50%-49%, which means Youngkin witnessed a 15-point swing on Election Day.
In other exit polling from Virginia, polling by liberal CNN showed self-identified independent voters broke for Youngkin over McAuliffe.
On the abortion issue, Olivia Turner of Virginia Society for Human Life says pro-life voters showed up to support the pro-life candidate, Youngkin. Over the last two years, she says, Virginians witnessed the "constant drum beating" over the issue by the pro-abortion side which did not reflect voters' concerns.
"And certainly the idea of unlimited, unrestricted abortion," she says, "under any circumstances, through all nine months pregnancy up to to birth and beyond, turned off voters."
Editor's Note: This story has been updated with comments from Olivia Turner from Virginia Society for Human Life.
