Election 2019: Days before Nov. 5 election, Virginia Republicans take hard right turn
n crucial swing districts, from Northern Virginia to Richmond to Hampton Roads, Republican candidates are trying to turn out GOP voters while hoping they can hang on to the centrist images they cultivated all summer. To pull it off, they’re casting Democrats as extremists — invoking hot-button issues such as abortion and immigration that Republicans had largely avoided as they attempted to soften their connection to an unpopular President Trump.
“The strategy was to try to make it comfortable for women to vote Republican again,” longtime Virginia political analyst Robert Holsworth said. The harsh turn “may be a risky strategy because it may remind people again of their Republican identity, which at the moment is not that popular in suburban Virginia.”
Democrats, too, have resorted to tougher tactics as next week’s election looms, depicting Republicans as chummy with Trump and in the pocket of the National Rifle Association. But that’s consistent with the strategy they’ve adopted all along, in a year when national Democrats view Virginia as a tuneup for next fall’s presidential contest.
Democrats, too, have resorted to tougher tactics as next week’s election looms, depicting Republicans as chummy with Trump and in the pocket of the National Rifle Association. But that’s consistent with the strategy they’ve adopted all along, in a year when national Democrats view Virginia as a tuneup for next fall’s presidential contest.
“The road to 2020 runs through 2019,” Democratic presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke said in a video the Democratic Party of Virginia tweeted on Wednesday. “And the success for the United States of America is dependent on what we do this year in the commonwealth of Virginia.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/blue-summer-red-fall-virginia-republicans-change-colors-with-the-season-stepping-up-attacks-on-democrats/2019/10/30/0115f352-fb26-11e9-8190-6be4deb56e01_story.html
