N.J., Virginia Pick Democrats

Democrats rolled to victory in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races Tuesday night, recapturing seats Republicans have held for the last eight years.

Though the races turned more on local dynamics than on national themes, the twin gubernatorial wins by venture capitalist Mark Warner in Virginia and Woodbridge Mayor James E. McGreevey in New Jersey gave Democrats optimism about their prospects against the GOP in next year’s midterm elections.

“It’s never a good sign to lose elections badly,” said Bruce Reed, president of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council.

Republicans immediately countered that the Democratic triumphs were unlikely to signal any broader pattern in 2002. “Both Democrats ran as center-right Republicans,” insisted Trent Duffy, communication director at the Republican National Committee. “In 2002, voters will be able to vote for the real thing.”

National Republican leaders had been concerned for weeks about the prospects of their gubernatorial candidates, former Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler and former Virginia Atty. Gen. Mark Earley. Several hours before the polls closed Tuesday, RNC officials seemed to acknowledge defeat by e-mailing reporters a memo on why they should not view the results as a slap at President Bush.

Late results showed McGreevey holding a double-digit advantage, while Warner’s win was solid but narrower than expected.

The New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races have attracted increased attention in recent years as the initial tests of voter sentiment in the first year of a new presidential term. But this year they were eclipsed by the long shadow of the Sept. 11 hijackings and the subsequent anthrax attacks.

Even leading Democrats, such as party chairman Terry McAuliffe, agreed that Democratic victories could not be seen as a sign of dissatisfaction with Bush, who now enjoys some of the highest presidential job approval ratings ever recorded. But Democrats took heart from the converse: The wins by Warner and McGreevey suggested that Bush’s astronomical ratings offer no guarantee of success for Republicans next year.

Bush “didn’t have coattails before [in 2000] and he doesn’t have coattails now,” McAuliffe said Tuesday night.

Bush did not campaign in either state, though he signed letters and recorded automated telephone calls for the two GOP candidates.

Both McGreevey and Warner are comeback winners. McGreevey narrowly lost the New Jersey gubernatorial race four years ago to Christie Whitman, now head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Warner, a former Virginia Democratic Party chairman who made a fortune as a venture capitalist, lost to Republican John Warner in the 1996 senatorial contest.

The twin victories give the Democrats 21 governors; the GOP has 27, and there are two independents. That is the highest number of governorships the Democrats have held since 1994.

In next year’s midterm election, voters will choose governors in 36 states, along with 34 senators and all 435 members of the House of Representatives.

In both New Jersey and Virginia, the candidates struggled to catch the attention of a thoroughly distracted electorate.

But even in a more conventional environment, these first races have been an imperfect predictor of voter intentions for the larger midterm elections that follow the next year. In 1993, a GOP sweep of the two gubernatorial contests, as well as of the New York and Los Angeles mayoral races, presaged the party landslide in 1994. But Republicans swept all four contests again in 1997 and lost ground in the House and gubernatorial races the next year.

Republicans argued that the races were likely to be no more of an augur this time. Tuesday’s RNC memo noted that “neither [winning] Democrat ran against President Bush or the Bush agenda this year.”

Local factors loomed larger. In each gubernatorial race, Democrats benefited from a significant spending advantage and Republican divisions.

In New Jersey, Schundler, a staunch conservative, openly feuded with acting Gov. Donald T. DiFrancesco, a moderate Republican. In Virginia, Earley was hurt by the backlash against a budget impasse between outgoing Republican Gov. James S. Gilmore and the GOP Legislature. And, as Duffy observed, since Democrats were ahead in the polls Sept. 11, they were helped by the lack of voter attention to the contests thereafter.

Even so, the races did suggest developments that Democrats found heartening. Though all four candidates incorporated terrorism-related issues into their campaigns after Sept. 11, those concerns did not significantly affect either race. If that pattern holds, it could be good news for Democrats, since Republicans have traditionally held the advantage on questions relating to national security.

Also, Republican tax messages seemed to fizzle in both contests. In Virginia, Earley sharply attacked Warner for supporting a referendum that would allow Northern Virginia voters to raise their sales tax to pay for transportation improvements. In New Jersey, Schundler centered his campaign on a pledge to cut taxes and a charge that McGreevey would raise them.

But both Democrats weathered the attacks, largely because they portrayed themselves as fiscal conservatives who would also be tough on spending. “If you run as a centrist, common-sense Democrat who is careful with people’s money . . . then you can talk about education and creating jobs and the Democratic core issues,” said Democratic media consultant Frank Greer, whose firm designed the ads for Warner and McGreevey.

The Democrats also adroitly handled social issues. In New Jersey, a classic socially liberal coastal state, McGreevey relentlessly hammered Schundler over his opposition to legalized abortion and gun control and his support for private school vouchers--to the point where Schundler tried to mute (or even renounce) his positions on all three.

For Schundler, “those were barrier issues,” said Steve DeMicco, McGreevey’s campaign director. “If you don’t get beyond them, you can’t engage in a dialogue on other issues. [Schundler] never crossed the barrier.”

In Virginia, a much more culturally conservative state, Warner went in the opposite direction. Looking to reverse the Democratic erosion in rural counties, he courted the National Rifle Assn., aggressively organized sportsmen and echoed the NRA argument that enforcing existing gun laws should be a higher priority than passing new ones.

Though no exit polls were conducted in Virginia, surveys just before election day showed Warner running unusually well in rural areas and among white men. After Al Gore’s poor showing with both groups of voters in the 2000 presidential race, Democrats are likely to closely study Warner’s success in 2001.