A Political Lightning Round Ahead of Tuesday’s Elections

Contests in four states carry some national implications

Election Day is tomorrow in a handful of states, and the stakes are quite high. Today I’ll take a closer look at what is on the line in four states: Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky and Mississippi.

Ready to play a political lightning round? Let’s start the clock!

Virginia legislature up for grabs

Virginia runs off-cycle elections for both governor and the state legislature. And tomorrow, every seat in that legislature is theoretically up for grabs. Republicans are aiming to hold the House of Delegates and flip the State Senate, now controlled by the Democrats. If they succeed, they will gain a trifecta of power and be able to pass all manner of regressive policies, including restrictions on abortion and changes to educational curricula that align with a more extremist conservative agenda.

Even though every seat is in theory up for grabs, due to the way district lines are drawn there are only about 10 House of Delegates seats that remain competitive. The make-up of the House is currently 52-48, so to gain control the Democrats would have to flip three seats. On the other hand, Democrats control 22 of the 40 seats in the State Senate to the GOP’s 17, with one vacancy. Political observers believe that the key races will be in Northern Virginia near D.C., central Virginia near Richmond, and Southeastern Virginia in the Hampton Roads region.

So how do things look? It’s honestly hard to tell. Republicans, including Governor Glenn Youngkin, have been pushing GOP voters to cast their ballots early, in a reversal of past years. That looks like it is paying off, with Republican share of the early vote rising by around 2 percent over the prior election. But there is a general malaise in overall turnout, with many residents saying they don’t plan on voting or know who is even running. (This isn’t uncommon when it comes to state legislative races.) 

That means the election will come down to which party’s base is more motivated. Democrats have been sounding the alarm that a flip in the State Senate would turn Virginia into the next Florida because the GOP would have control of all government. Republicans have been pounding on crime as an issue, and Governor Youngkin has invested a whopping $30 million of his own campaign funds into helping win state legislative races. 

How Virginia goes could provide a bellwether for the parties for 2024, so many are waiting nervously to see whose voters are more motivated to come out in an off-year cycle.

Ohio abortion rights amendment 

It’s been a hard-fought goal for defenders of abortion rights, but their chance to enshrine them as a Ohio state constitutional guarantee is finally here. If adopted, Issue 1 would protect an individual’s right “to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions” free from interference by the state. It would still allow abortion bans after the point of fetal viability, but there would be an exception where a doctor deems it necessary to protect “the patient’s life or health.”

Advocates were buoyed by successes in other red states such as Kansas and Kentucky over the last year and are hoping to replicate that success in Ohio. And polls show that abortion as a right, as it existed under Roe, is a popular concept in Ohio. That was put to the test when Republicans sought to raise the threshold to pass a constitutional amendment by way of initiative to 60 from 50 percent—a measure that failed badly, even in 15 Ohio counties that favored Trump in the last election.

Abortion opponents were successful in court to some measure, however, where they requested that a summary of the amendment, which replaced the word “fetus” with “unborn child,” be the language voters would see on the ballot. But even with these machinations and smokescreens, the amendment is expected to pass on Tuesday. That could give greater momentum to abortion rights as an issue that turns out voters in 2024—including in the swing states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada.

Kentucky race for governor

It may seem odd that a state that went so heavily for Donald Trump (and has as its two senators Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and professional political obstructionist Rand Paul) would elect a Democratic governor. But Andy Beshear defies expectation, and his folksy, Mr. Rogers style of governing has resonated with Kentucky voters, and he remains popular in the state. Beshear is looking to be re-elected to a second term.

His challenger is Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who is best known nationally for his botched response to the slaying of Breanna Taylor in her own home in a police raid in Louisville in 2020. (Cameron infamously labeled the police action and killing “justified.”)

Beshear gained the public’s trust through his calm and transparent handling of the pandemic and is heralded for bringing a lot of national investment into the state (thanks in large measure to Biden initiatives such as the Infrastructure bill). He is also a supporter of abortion rights, which have been severely curtailed in the state after the fall of Roe snapped an existing restriction into place.

The GOP candidate, Daniel Cameron, has received the full-throated support of Trump, so this race is something of an indicator of whether any Democrat can survive a statewide race in the deeply red South. The question of race also flips the narrative a bit: Cameron, who is African American, would become the first Black governor of the state if he wins on Tuesday.

Mississippi race for governor

It would be something of a political earthquake if a GOP stronghold like Mississippi elected a Democrat as governor this year, particularly after the Republicans won outright in neighboring Louisiana recently. But there are some reasons the Democratic candidate, Brandon Presley (a distant cousin to that Presley) might have a fighting chance.

The current governor, Tate Reeves, has been embroiled in a welfare scandal where $77 million in state funds were apparently diverted away from needy families and over to the pet projects of people like football star Bret Favre (who claims he didn’t know it was welfare funds). 

On top of that scandal, Reeves has refused to allow Medicaid expansion into the state, claiming that the money wouldn’t save the state’s failing hospitals. But this has left millions of poorer and rural residents without adequate access to affordable healthcare. 

There are two structural changes to voting in the state to watch as well. First, Mississippi is allowing, for the first time, after voters repealed the law in 2020, a direct election of the governor by the voters. Mississippi has long had in place a system that resembles the national electoral college, where the winner of any statewide race has to win not only the popular vote but the vote of the state’s electors. This is a Jim Crow-era law that diluted Black voting power in the state.

Second, a court in Mississippi has struck down the state’s long-standing lifetime voting ban for those convicted of felonies, which some experts believe affects around 10 percent of the state’s voting age population and—surprise, surprise— disproportionally affects African Americans, according to The Sentencing Project. That case is on appeal, but for now those banned for life because of their felonies can vote—though it isn’t clear how many will do so.

I’ll be back on Wednesday to review how the voting in these states went. Have a great week!