Washington Post endorses Northam in Va. gubernatorial race

The editorial board of the Washington Post endorsed Democrat Ralph Northam for Virginia governor on Saturday, just under two weeks before the election. 

“It is not that Mr. Northam is qualified and Mr. [Ed] Gillespie unqualified. It is that Mr. Northam can convincingly promise to be governor for all Virginians, while Mr. Gillespie, even while asserting the same, has disqualified himself from any such credible claim. We support Mr. Northam,” the Post said.

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The paper slammed Northam’s opponent Gillespie (R) for appealing to the “racially inflammatory tendencies of his party’s base” through his support for Confederate statues remaining in place after the violent neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville sparked by the removal of one such statue. 

“Having chosen to campaign as a divider, Mr. Gillespie’s chances of governing as a uniter are dim,” the Post said. 

Both campaigns have been using the controversy over Confederate statues against the other. Gillespie supports keeping the statues up in the name of history, and Northam this week defended a mailer linking Trump and Gillespie to the deadly white nationalist rally in August.

However, the Post slammed Northam for his tax proposals, including getting rid of a grocery tax for low-income state residents with no alternative proposal. 

Gillespie leads Northam by 8 points, 41 to 33 percent, among likely voters in a Hampton University Center for Public Policy poll released Wednesday. Twenty-seven percent remain undecided.

The gubernatorial race, the only competitive statewide race during Trump’s first year in office, has become a high priority for both parties. 

Both campaigns are testing different messaging in different parts of the Commonwealth. The Virginia Public Access Project tracked ads running Oct. 17-23 in four media markets — Norfolk, Richmond, Roanoke and northern Virginia — to see where Northam and Gillespie were running 15 different ads.