Democrats take control of Virginia and claim win in Kentucky governor's race | US news ... - 0 views
-
Democrats have won control of Virginia’s state legislature for the first time in a generation
-
In Kentucky, which Trump won by nearly 30 percentage points in the 2016 election, Andy Beshear – the Democratic challenger to unpopular incumbent governor Matt Bevin – declared victory as he was narrowly ahead of the Republican
- ...10 more annotations...
-
Tonight voters in Kentucky sent a message loud and clear for everyone to hear. It’s a message that says our elections don’t have to be about right versus left, they are still about right versus wrong,
-
Voters in suburban swaths of Kentucky and Virginia sided with Democrats, a trend that would complicate Trump’s path to re-election in 2020 if it holds. And the Democrats who made gains in Tuesday’s election did so by largely avoiding positions such as the government-run healthcare plan “Medicare for All” that have animated the party’s left flank in the Democratic presidential primary race.
-
Bevin was elected in 2015 and had portrayed this election as a referendum on Trump, who stumped for the governor at a rally in Kentucky on Monday night and called Beshear “too liberal, too extreme and too dangerous”
-
A bullish Bevin had told the New York Times last month that he anticipated winning the election by between six and 10 points.
-
But while Trump won Kentucky with more than 60% of the vote in 2016 and remains popular in the state, with Republicans in other races there doing well on Tuesday, Bevin – who polls as one of America’s most unpopular governors – could not ride that popularity to victory.
-
Beshear, the state’s attorney general and the son of Kentucky’s last Democratic governor, made public education the cornerstone of his campaign, choosing a public high school assistant principal as his running mate and accusing Bevin of bullying schoolteachers who protested against proposed pension reforms.
-
Bevin, meanwhile, fought on broader, national and cultural issues, highlighting his relationship with Trump and his support for the second amendment, while touting himself as the “most pro-life” governor in America.
-
Kentucky’s race was one of several closely watched elections in states across the US on Tuesday. Republican Daniel Cameron made history in a resounding win in Kentucky’s election for attorney general, becoming the first African American to win the office.
-
Democrats have pledged that when they take power, they will pass an agenda that Republicans have blocked for years, including stricter gun laws, a higher minimum wage and ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.