(Photo by Steffi Loos/Getty Images)
After sitting out several special congressional elections, President Barack Obama will hit the campaign trail once again on behalf of Ralph Northam in Virginia’s gubernatorial race, according to the HuffPost and Washington Post.
Northam, who currently serves as the state’s lieutenant governor, won the nomination earlier this month in a race against former Congressman Tom Periello. He’ll face off against former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie, who barely fended off a self-styled Donald Trump “mini me,” Corey Stewart.
After losing four closely watched congressional races, “all that stands between Democrats and a massive freakout is this man,” as HuffPost puts it. It’s not really even hyperbole.
In pre-primary polls, Northam polled nearly 10 points ahead of Gillespie in a hypothetical match-up, and nearly as many people voted for Northam in the Democratic primary as the entire Republican field. Once a reliably purple state, Virginia now has a Democrat in the governor’s office, both Senate seats, and serving as the attorney general. Clinton carried the state with five percentage points.
If Northam loses to Gillespie, a “massive freakout” on the part of Democrats wouldn’t be out of line. Enter Barack Obama.
No specific events have been planned yet, but aides confirmed to both news outlets that the president plans to hit the Virginia campaign trail.
Obama stayed out of the fray in the primary, which had been misleadingly billed as a reprise of the Hillary Clinton/Bernie Sanders matchup. Periello ran as an economic progressive with support from Sanders himself, but he was also heavily favored by the national Democratic political establishment (including a long list of former Obama staffers). Northam, for his part, had a stronger record on gun control and abortion rights and near unanimous support from the state Democratic party.
Gillespie’s team has already blasted Obama’s involvement (“How many Democratic surrogates is it going to take to try to drag the lieutenant governor across the finish line?” his spokesman told the Post), but the former president carried the state in both 2008 and 2012 and remains widely popular.
Rachel Sadon