- If you can get five people to the polls,
that's five more people and five more people,
and that is the margin of victory in this election.
The Virginia governor's race is getting tighter
as election day nears,
and Democrats are bringing in big names to rally support.
- It starts here in Virginia.
In starts here in Fairfax.
It starts here in this election.
- Four years after leaving office,
former governor Democrat Terry McAuliffe wants his seat back.
- 102,000 doors knocked on this weekend.
- Virginia is the only state that prohibits governors
from serving back-to-back terms.
- There's nothing that McAuliffe is running on that
really separates very far from the Northam administration,
and so the race really feels like a race
where we have an incumbent running
even though that's not actually the case.
- I'm the first governor in America
after the historic Supreme Court
ruling to perform a gay marriage in the United States of America.
- Terry McAuliffe was governor, and he did a good job.
He brought in hundreds of jobs.
I think he will do that again, and we need him.
- I think people will be looking to the commonwealth to say,
"Can we win elsewhere?"
So this is very important. -
♪ O say does that ♪
-Republicans are hoping voters are in the mood for change.
Their candidate is Glenn Youngkin,
a former CEO of The Carlyle Group
and a political newcomer.
- He is not a career politician, he's honest,
he's got a great background,
he's got a good family, he's smart,
and he's gonna make some good decisions
that are gonna help Virginia get back on track.
- This race has got the full attention
of the entire United States of America.
- Youngkin is right.
People all over the country are paying attention to Virginia.
- Youngkin! Youngkin!
Youngkin!
- We are from Alabama, the Mighty Alabama Strike Force.
There are 20 of us here in Virginia Beach.
We're all volunteers.
- And they've come from all over
to knock on doors for Youngkin in the Tidewater region.
- This race is important.
Like, we have a nation to save, period.
- Like Trump, he's a businessman,
he's ultra conservative,
and I consider myself ultra conservative.
Several things hit my hot button --
the education issue, taxation, and the abortion issue.
Oh, God, I can hardly talk about that without crying.
- Republicans haven't won a statewide race here since 2012,
but with President Biden's poll numbers lagging,
they see a chance to build momentum
ahead of next year's midterms.
- We'll be really watching to see if any of this larger,
broader, national unpopularity
for Democrats spills down into these more local races.
Virginia's an interesting test case for this, too,
because Virginia
is demographically strongly Democratic.
It has all the features that you would expect
from a good Democratic state.
Well-defined urban and suburban areas
in the northern part of the state.
It has relatively shrinking rural areas, where
-- typically GOP strongholds.
But it's certainly possible
that a moderate Republican like Glenn Youngkin
could actually pick up enough votes here to win.
- For Youngkin, the race is a delicate balancing act.
He needs Trump voters to turn out in force
if he is to triumph,
but he also risks alienating more moderate voters
if he veers too far to the right.
- I am winning the independent votes by 10 at least,
and this is what he's seeing, as well.
And this is why he's inviting anybody he can get.
- And McAuliffe never misses an opportunity to bring up Trump,
a state he lost by 10 points last year.
- We want to keep our schools open,
and we want to keep our economy strong.
That will not happen with Glenn Youngkin,
who's just got a Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos education plan
and a Donald Trump anti-vaxxer rhetoric.
That's just not gonna work here in Virginia.
- You can see this playing out
in Terry McAuliffe's campaign strategy, right?
He's trying to tie Glenn Youngkin to Trump
whenever he can because
Trump is politically quite a bit unpalatable in Virginia,
and you saw this play out in 2020,
where these college-educated white voters
in northern Virginia and in the Tidewater region
really broke heavily for Biden,
where they had not done that in 2016.
- The election here on November 2nd will be the first major test
for Democrats in the post-Trump era.
A loss or even a narrow win
could spell trouble in 2022 and beyond.
- Help us organize your five friends.
Get them to vote early.
Get them to volunteer.