Virginia G.O.P. Assesses Loss to Rival It Saw as Weak

From The New York Times:

Republicans in Virginia awoke Wednesday with the knowledge that a bad streak had been extended: With the election of a Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe, Republicans have lost seven of the past eight statewide, top-of-the-ballot races, including those for governor, senator and president — a run of misery dating to 2005.

While Mr. McAuliffe called for a spirit of bipartisanship in his first news conference as governor-elect, Republicans who viewed him as a flawed, beatable candidate were engaging in recriminations about how the party had gone wrong by nominating an outspoken social conservative, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II.
      

At the Republican Party’s election night gathering in Richmond, the state party chairman, Pat Mullins, told the crowd that Mr. Cuccinelli’s loss by less than three percentage points, narrower than many polls had predicted, occurred mainly because he had been outspent two to one. Republicans re-elected to their supermajority in the House of Delegates, Mr. Mullins added, will “block any crazy ideas” the new governor may have.

      

But for the party’s moderate wing, the loss of what it considered a winnable race was a lesson in how a candidate known mainly for promoting conservative social policies could not appeal in a state whose population is increasingly diverse.

      

“McAuliffe was probably the weakest Democratic nominee in a generation,” said Tom Davis, a former Republican congressman from Northern Virginia, noting that the Democrat had never held elective office and had made business investments that drew government scrutiny. “You have to ask yourself, maybe we did something wrong.”

      

To him, the “something wrong” was nominating a candidate whose calling card was a social conservatism that pushed away mainstream business-oriented Republicans.

      

Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, a Republican who pointedly withheld his endorsement from Mr. Cuccinelli, said the party needed to do better at reaching out to a more diverse and moderate population.

      

“Virginia is changing,” Mr. Bolling said. “Clearly, an issue that hurt us very badly was the issue of abortion. We are a pro-life party, but if we’re going to be the party of fetal ultrasounds, we’re going to have a problem.” He was referring to measures the party promoted in the General Assembly that failed, and that abortion-rights groups seized on in the campaign.

      

Speaking to reporters in the State Capitol in Richmond, Mr. McAuliffe said his first priority would be prohibiting discrimination across state government based on sexual orientation. As attorney general, Mr. Cuccinelli had written an order to state universities that they could not include sexual orientation in their bans on discrimination.

      

Mr. McAuliffe said he would institute a ban on gifts of more than $100 to elected officials, a response to a scandal around the sitting governor, Bob McDonnell, a Republican, for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts from a political patron. The episode cast a shadow over Mr. Cuccinelli’s campaign since he, too, accepted gifts from the donor.

      

The race for attorney general was unsettled on Wednesday, with the candidates in a statistical tie and the race probably headed for a recount, which could take weeks. State Senator Mark R. Herring, a Democrat, held a 32-vote lead out of 2.2 million ballots cast over State Senator Mark D. Obenshain, a Republican.

      

Republicans who rejected the calls of moderates that the party needed to rethink its policies after its defeat pointed to the competitiveness of Mr. Obenshain, whose positions are as conservative as Mr. Cuccinelli’s, though he was not the lightning rod that his running mate on top of the ticket became.

      

Even Will Sessoms, the Republican mayor of Virginia Beach, who crossed party lines to endorse Mr. McAuliffe because he thought Mr. Cuccinelli was too extreme, praised the Obenshain campaign. “I think the Republican Party can come up with a very positive message,” he said. “We do believe in limited government, but that means we don’t want government in the bedroom.”

      

For Democrats, the great lesson of the night was that they had the ability to reassemble significant parts of President Obama’s coalition even when he was not on the ballot. Virginia has a history of younger voters and minority voters, who provided a surge for the president one year ago, dropping away in nonpresidential elections.

      

Turnout on Tuesday by white and older voters did not significantly rise compared with last November. The same percentage of African-Americans, one in five voters, went to the polls, according to exit polling conducted by Edison Research. They overwhelmingly picked Mr. McAuliffe.

      

Voters 18 to 29 years old represented 13 percent of the electorate, lower than for the presidential race but not as much of a drop-off as in previous off-year elections, said Ashley Bauman, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Party of Virginia.

      

“The fact is the women’s health issue, reproductive rights issue, that continued to come in the Tea Party-type candidates’ talking points really motivated young women to come out and vote,” Ms. Bauman said.

      

Harry L. Wilson, a political scientist at Roanoke College, said the closeness of the vote in the race for governor, narrower than almost all public polls predicted, meant both parties could credibly argue they nominated candidates who had the potential to win. “After a narrow loss you can spin this any way you want,” he said.