From Virginia to New York, Democrats face heat at polls

Donald Trump may be bumping the bottom in the latest polls, but the president’s difficulties have not translated into a broader abandonment of the Republican Party, not even in what looked like a blue country a year ago. In Virginia and Westchester County in New York, two places that Hillary Clinton won in 2016, voters have not embraced the Democrats in races that are just days away.

According to the polls, Ralph Northam, the Democratic candidate for Virginia governor, and George Latimer, the Democratic nominee for Westchester County executive, have not sealed the deal in their respective bids for higher office. Even as Nancy Pelosi dreams of wresting the Speaker’s gavel from Paul Ryan, her party’s difficulties on ostensibly blue colored turf should give her pause. The numbers tell a story, and they say that both Northam and Latimer are underperforming.

{mosads}Last year, Clinton won Virginia by better than five points, while in Westchester, she shellacked Trump with 65 percent of the vote. Yet, the Democrats have failed to lock down either place this cycle. In Virginia, the polls are all over the lot, with Northam holding an average lead of under 4 percent, and some surveys showing Ed Gillespie, Northam’s Republican challenger, ahead by as much as eight points. Meanwhile, in Westchester County, home to the Clinton Chappaqua abode and a Trump golf course, an internal Democratic poll gives Latimer just a one point advantage over Republican Rob Astorino, the incumbent.

From the looks of things, it’s not just flyover country that is having a casting a down the line for the Democrats, which is not to say that Northam and Latimer won’t prevail come Election Day. Indeed, if past is prelude, neither man can afford to take anything for granted. In 2014, reliably Democratic Maryland and Massachusetts elected Republicans as governors. In Barack Obama’s Illinois, voters sent the Democratic incumbent governor packing. In Bernie Sanders’s Vermont, the Peter Shumlin, the Democratic candidate for governor, failed to win an outright majority and needed to have his ambitions salvaged by the Democratic majority state legislature.

To be sure, not every contest in 2017 looms as a cliffhanger. In New Jersey, the Democrats are expected to be pick up the New Jersey governor’s mansion, as the singularly unpopular Chris Christie is set to leave office, with approval ratings hovering in the teens like a ghost in chains. There, the latest polls show Democrat Phil Murphy with a comfortably steady double digit lead over Kim Guadagno, Christie’s lieutenant governor. But New Jersey appears more the exception than the rule.

Christie’s bridge debacle soiled anyone who came in contact with him, even Guadagno whose relationship with Christie has been described as strained and tense. In contrast, Trump is not proving to be the boon that Democrats had prayed for, with local concerns such as taxes appearing to override national politics. Said differently, it is one thing to be the viewed as pro-choice, but it is quite another to be seen as pro-taxes, and at the state and local level, pocketbook issues possess added resonance.

Looking toward the 2018 midterms, the Democrats can take heart, for now, from Trump’s sluggish performance. According to Gallup, the last time Trump’s approval stood above 40 percent was in June. They can also smile at the generic congressional ballot, which now gives them an edge of more than 10 points. But polls are fluid creatures, and with an economy that has now grown at 3 percent in the last two quarters, despite a raft of hurricanes, the Democrats must be prepared to offer a message that goes beyond “we are not Trump.” So far, the jury is out on that one.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi have shown themselves to be masterful tacticians, who have repeatedly turned legislative lemons into lemonade, thwarting Trump, the GOP, and their agenda at every turn. But elections are different things, and in the face of a growing economy, the Democrats have yet to arrive at a message that can cut through the din and economic good news. If Westchester and Virginia look slogs for the Democrats, they should not expect their battles in swing districts next year to be any easier.

Lloyd Green was the opposition research counsel to the George H.W. Bush campaign in 1988 and later served in the U.S. Department of Justice.