PHOENIX — They don’t agree on every policy, but the nation’s Republican governors were in universal agreement during their three-day meeting here: Glenn Youngkin delivered a blueprint for the GOP’s midterm comeback.
At the Republican Governors Association’s annual conference, Virginia’s governor-elect played a starring role as 20 governors and hundreds of GOP political professionals and donors celebrated his recent victory, pointing to him as a conservative exemplar — the guy who figured out how to win support from Donald Trump’s followers while keeping the polarizing former president at arm’s length.
Youngkin could barely walk the halls or grab a morning muffin at the swanky Arizona Biltmore resort without being stopped for a chat or a selfie. He was one of the two featured speakers at the conference’s main dinner on Wednesday night along with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, an embattled Republican who earned Trump’s ire for refusing to help overturn his swing state’s election results in November.
Youngkin was also showcased at the only two publicly broadcast events — a panel about Washington, D.C., dysfunction and an RGA press conference. His victory, and the lessons it could hold for Republicans in the midterms, were the subject of a GOP study and roundtable discussion from pollsters who surveyed voter attitudes after the Virginia race.
“All the momentum is on our side, and Glenn’s race was the canary in the coal mine,” said Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, an anti-Trump Republican who ranks as one of the most popular governors in the nation.
Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts, the RGA co-chair for 2022, agreed.
“The Glenn Youngkin race provides a roadmap for Republicans in blue states and swing states. His win will define a new generation of Republican leadership and is a huge boost nationally going into 2022. This will be the most important election cycle in more than a decade for our party,” Ricketts said.
Trump largely occupied a he-who-shall-not-be-named role in the conference. Governors — some of whom have been the targets of the former president’s ire — were far more likely to speak positively of the “Trump administration” than of Trump himself. On the first night of the conference, former Vice President Mike Pence gave a well-regarded private speech to the governors, according to several attendees who described the speech to POLITICO, and spoke frequently of the “Trump-Pence administration.” While the former Indiana governor didn’t convey any sense of frustration toward Trump — who has been critical of Pence’s decision to approve Congress' certification of the 2020 Electoral College votes — the sources said Pence seemed to throw subtle shade at Trump when he said that the RGA should “always support our Republican governors.”
It’s a statement that would have gone unnoticed in prior years, but RGA officials say the 2022 midterms are unprecedented because of Trump’s efforts to encourage a primary challenge against Kemp in Georgia and his decision to endorse Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice K. McGeachin over Republican Gov. Brad Little.
Republicans are nervously watching Trump’s involvement in Georgia and also in Arizona, where Trump has attacked Gov. Doug Ducey, an RGA co-chair. Like Kemp, Ducey also refused to help the former president overturn the election results. Asked about a new Arizona Republic report detailing Trump’s efforts in the state, Ducey refused to discuss his conversations with Trump.
“Every conversation I’ve had with the former president I’ve kept in confidence and I’m not going to change the policy now,” Ducey said. “I certified the election. That’s the fact. Check the tape. What the people of Arizona deserve to know is that their governor certified the election.”
National GOP officials have sought to recruit Ducey, who is term-limited, for a Senate bid next year, but Trump’s anger toward the governor has raised questions about how far he would go to deny Ducey the nomination.
For the most part, when the governors spoke about Trump this week, it was only after media prompting. Some bluntly said it’s time for the party to move on from the former president’s baseless claims of election fraud. Most of the public remarks, however, focused on presenting the states as laboratories of conservative ideas, and casting the midterm elections as a referendum on the Biden administration and progressive “wokeness.”
Still, Youngkin’s ability to manage the tricky politics surrounding Trump was an undercurrent running throughout the conference. While Youngkin generally avoided talking about Trump on the campaign trail and pointedly didn’t invite him to Virginia to campaign with him, opponent Terry McAuliffe devoted disproportionate time and money toward an effort to portray Youngkin as a Trump acolyte — or a “Trumpkin.”
When asked during a Wednesday press conference if keeping Trump at a distance was part of a Republican formula for winning blue and purple states, Youngkin said the former president was just one part of his diverse group of supporters.
“We had a broad coalition and every aspect of the coalition was important and therefore I say ‘thank you’ to everybody,” Youngkin said. “And when someone asks me about President Trump’s support, I say, ‘thank you.’”
Youngkin then went on to talk about his support among Asian Americans, African Americans, Latinos and women. He chalked up his win to talking about issues voters care most about: Schools, public safety and the rising cost of food and gas — not Trump.
A survey of the Virginia race conducted by a team of Republican pollsters reinforced the notion that voters thought McAuliffe’s focus on Trump was a waste of time. The survey showed that 71 percent agreed with the statement that, “Terry McAuliffe spent far too much time and money running against Donald Trump who wasn’t even on the ballot. He would have done better if he focused on running against Glenn Youngkin instead.” Only 20 percent disagreed.
Wes Anderson, one of the pollsters who conducted the study and held a breakout session on it at the conference, said the debate about “critical race theory” hurt Democrats as well, but its importance has been overestimated. He said the issue gained such salience and interest because parents, especially in affluent Virginia suburbs, had started to pay more attention to their kids’ schooling in general due to pandemic lockdowns and the challenges of distance learning. And parents didn’t like what they saw, he said.
Anderson told the conference that sentiment is playing out across the nation, although Biden’s sagging approval ratings are also among the most consistently problematic factors for Democrats.
“The guy who’s sitting in the Oval Office will always play a bigger role than the guy who’s not,” Anderson said.
As a result, Republicans see pickup opportunities in states Biden won by a smaller margin than Virginia, such as Michigan, Wisconsin, New Mexico and Nevada. Republicans also expect the massive cash advantage enjoyed by Gov. Greg Abbott in Texas and Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida will force Democrats to make tough choices about spending in red states or saving their money to protect vulnerable incumbents elsewhere. In all, Republicans are defending 20 incumbents and Democrats are protecting 16.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who recently announced he would forego a Senate bid and instead run for reelection, was critical of Trump’s baseless election conspiracy theories and said Republicans need to pay attention to how Youngkin won Virginia, particularly when it comes to education.
“The teachers unions and these systems are prioritizing the system over the child, and every parent is standing up and saying, ‘Wait! Wait! Wait! I have a say. My kid is an individual and should be treated as such’,” Sununu said.
Term-limited Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a target of Trump’s attacks in the past, said the importance of Youngkin’s win is that it “gives us momentum as we go into next year and gives us a real optimistic view of next year’s elections. It expands our targets of opportunity into blue states, realizing a Republican with the right message can win. The most important lesson is that Republicans win when we talk about issues, what people are more concerned about at the breakfast table.”
Hutchinson pointedly refused to say Trump’s name when asked about the degree to which Democrats or Republicans should talk about him. “If the Democrats wants to talk about the past and personalities,” he said, “that’s to their detriment.”
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By: Marc Caputo
Title: GOP governors celebrate Youngkin under Trump’s watchful eye
Sourced From: www.politico.com/news/2021/11/19/republican-governors-celebrate-youngkin-trump-523010
Published Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2021 04:30:52 EST
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