The governor’s race in a high-profile swing state like Virginia often carries national implications. Some observers might be tempted to frame this year’s gubernatorial race in such terms: to assert, for example, that Democratic Terry McAuliffe’s triumph would signify a rejection of the GOP’s Tea Party contingent in the wake of a government shutdown that disproportionately affected Virginia. National figures, most notably President Barack Obama, have taken pains to link Republican candidate Ken Cuccinelli to the GOP’s congressional hardliners who engineered the shutdown. Cuccinelli has played the same game, branding the race as a “referendum on Obamacare.”
Yet for a clash of beliefs that aspires to national significance, the gubernatorial race seems petty and parochial. The candidates have rarely addressed big issues in a thoughtful way during the course of the campaign season. Given the disturbingly personal tone the race has taken — and given each candidate’s obvious faults — Virginia’s gubernatorial race has national implications only insofar as it provides a case study of political dysfunction.
The candidates have subjected Virginia voters to an onslaught of misleading ads and exchanges of press releases in which Cuccinelli paints McAuliffe as a sleazy businessman unfit for public office, and McAuliffe brands Cuccinelli as an out-of-touch culture warrior bent on oppressing women, gays and lesbians and minorities. The fact that Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis has been able to poll in the double digits speaks to voters’ dissatisfaction with the two major-party candidates.
For these reasons, other newspapers have struggled to arrive at an endorsement. The Richmond Times-Dispatch chose not to endorse a candidate. The Daily Progress suggested that voters write in Bill Bolling, who may well have emerged as the Republican candidate — and a likely winner — had GOP operatives not switched the Republican nomination process from a primary to a convention.
Neither approach satisfies. The Times-Dispatch implicitly recommends that Virginia residents abstain from voting. Though elections do “make voters complicit in the government they receive,” as the Times-Dispatch points out, citizens are not somehow immune from the effects of governmental dysfunction because they chose to stay home on Election Day.
We recognize the disappointment many Virginia voters feel about each candidate, but disappointment must not turn to disillusionment. We write first and foremost to urge students to vote. Sitting out this election is irresponsible. Voter turnout in 2009, when Bob McDonnell was elected governor, was an embarrassing 39.8 percent registered voters. Distaste for this year’s crop of candidates could depress turnout this year as well. Young people in particular are hard to draw to the polls. But University students registered to vote in Virginia have the convenience of a polling place on Grounds at Alumni Hall. They have no excuse for not casting a ballot.
We encourage students to vote no matter whom they vote for. Voting is a civic obligation — a right that many human beings in other parts of the world do not have. Voting is what citizens in a democracy do.
We support voting primarily on grounds of principle. But voting also has immense strategic value, particularly for students who are skeptical of Cuccinelli’s views — such as his rigorous stances against gay rights and abortion access, his higher-education platform focused on promoting STEM at the expense of other fields, and his opposition to the Affordable Care Act and climate science.
Though polls show McAuliffe ahead, the race is not in the bag for the Democrats. Sarvis in particular stands to siphon votes from McAuliffe, particularly from young people who like his liberal views on same-sex marriage but who identify with the rebelliousness that has come to typify modern libertarianism, in which politicians claim to cast off governmental authority much as college students seek to distance themselves from the parental yoke.
Despite his shortcomings, we think that McAuliffe is the best choice for college students and for Virginians more broadly. McAuliffe’s harshest critics paint him as a political hack, a shady insider known for striking deals. But we’d rather have someone able to arrive at deals than a candidate like Cuccinelli who seems unwilling to compromise. McAuliffe’s embrace of transportation funding efforts that will improve Virginia’s infrastructure, his support of Medicaid expansion, his interest in community colleges and his friendliness toward businesses offer a few reasons why students should vote for McAuliffe in this year’s race.
While the gubernatorial contest has drawn the lion’s share of attention this year, students should not neglect the races farther down the ballot. The lieutenant governor and attorney general positions have proven to be breeding grounds for future gubernatorial candidates. In this race, for example, we have a current attorney general (Cuccinelli) seeking to replace a former attorney general (Gov. Bob McDonnell).
The lieutenant governor race gives voters a choice between Democrat Ralph Northam, a pediatric neurologist who currently serves as a state senator, and Republican E. W. Jackson, a pastor at a Chesapeake church. Jackson seems even more divisive than Cuccinelli. His attacks on gay people and on non-Christians have no place in civil political speech.
Northam, whose commitment to women’s reproductive rights spurred him to enter the race, is a sensible candidate who worked hard in the State Senate to improve Virginia’s outdated transportation infrastructure. Even students who opt for Sarvis or Cuccinelli over McAuliffe should strongly consider casting a vote for Northam, whose low-key approach to campaigning and moderate stances were refreshing in a polarizing election season.
The attorney general race is the most competitive. It pits Republican Mark Obenshain, a state senator from Harrisonburg, against Mark Herring, a state senator from Loudoun County. The two Marks disagree vehemently on issues such as Medicaid expansion and same-sex marriage. Obenshain has attempted to tighten voter ID requirements, and he notoriously introduced a bill that would require women to report miscarriages to the police. This year, Obenshain drove through a bill that would allow college clubs to restrict membership to like-minded students — a grave error, as we argued in an April 1 editorial.
Herring — an experienced lawmaker whose legislative achievements include a ban on the sale of risky designer drugs and a bill that sought to protect Virginia’s elderly from financial fraud — gets our vote.
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