WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden mangled Virginia’s political history this week as he tried to brush off his party’s big loss in that state’s race for governor.
Biden contended that Democrat Terry McAuliffe could not have been expected to win because Virginia always elects governors from the party not in the White House. But that’s not so.
BIDEN: No governor in Virginia has ever won when hes of the same, or he or shes the same party, as the sitting president. remarks Wednesday.
THE FACTS: Not true.
While Virginia has a recent pattern of electing governors of the opposite party, McAuliffe himself defied that trend in 2013 by winning the governors mansion when fellow Democrat Barack Obama was president.
The election at the time made McAuliffe the only Virginia candidate for governor in four decades to win when his party occupied the White House. A. Linwood Holton, Jr., an attorney and moderate Republican, previously won the governorship in 1969 when Republican Richard Nixon was president. Holton was followed by Mills Godwin, a longtime Democrat who won a nonconsecutive second term as governor in 1973 after switching his party affiliation to Republican.
On Tuesday, Glenn Youngkin became the first Republican to win statewide office in a dozen years, tapping into culture war fights over schools and race to unite former President Donald Trumps most fervent supporters with enough suburban voters to notch a victory.
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