The NPR Politics Podcast - You Should Pay Attention To The Virginia Governor's Race

Episode Date: October 22, 2021

The off-year election is the first test of how people are feeling ahead of a consequential midterm season for the Biden administration. And will the Justice Department prosecute Trump ally Steve Bannon for ignoring an order to appear before Congress? This episode: demographics and culture correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben, WVTF reporter Jahd Khalil, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Leigh in Audubon Park, New Orleans, where the Whistling Ducks have made a stop on their migration path. This podcast was recorded at 106 p.m. on Friday, October 22nd. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Okay, enjoy the show. Our timestamps have been amazing lately. I love the sound there. That was incredible. Yeah, that could have been like the end of a CBS Sunday morning, our moment of nature.

Hey there, it is the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover demographics and culture. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And today we are talking about the Virginia governor's race, the first big electoral test of the Biden presidency. That election is on November 2nd, so it's coming up really quick. It's just a week and a half away. And here to talk about that with us, we have Jad Khalil. He covers Richmond for WVTF. Jad, welcome. Hi, thanks. So, OK, we're going to talk about all aspects of this. We're going to start with Domenico. Let's start with the broad view of this. Why should people care about this race if they're not Virginians? presidency there's clearly a lot of you know attention right now on the democratic agenda and how it's kind of slowed and stalled and how Biden himself has kind of sagging mediocre poll

numbers and you know Virginia is a pretty good indicator demographics wise of a lot of how the rest of the country has changed over the last couple of decades. Virginia has gone from really what was a white-dominated southern cultural state to what's now a more diverse state with a diverse economy and a pretty highly educated population with the sprawl outside of Washington, D.C. and the expansion in northern Virginia. So we're seeing very similar patterns emerge here as we've seen elsewhere. And Democrats had made huge gains in Virginia over the last 10 years or so. And, you know, they're fighting back some degree of apathy here, which has made this race close. I mean, is there a sort of effect here similar to what we see in midterm elections, where the president's party just naturally faces headwinds or is something bigger going on here?

Well, definitely, that's a huge piece of it. I mean, first of all, you know, because the Virginia governor's race takes place one year after the presidential election every year, and they only have one term governors, you get these every four years. And what happens is that people who don't support the party that's in power, the party that controls the White House, it's their first chance to register their frustrations. So clearly more fired up are going to be people who don't like Joe Biden or who are against democratic policies. All the way back to 1977, just once in that stretch of time from then until now, has the party that controls the White House also won the Virginia governor's race. The one exception to that was in 2013, when Terry McAuliffe, who's on the ballot again,

won the Virginia governor's race when Barack Obama had won in 2012, the year before. Well, and Jad, let's get to the substance here. What have been the big issues driving the race? The two candidates, of course, Democratic former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe and Republican businessman Glenn Youngkin. What are they talking about? So jobs is obviously a big thing. That's something that kind of comes up in every election. Schools has also been a big issue. So when Terry McAuliffe, some of his early issues that he was running on were giving teacher raises. And the Youngkin campaign and the Republicans have kind of also tried to make it an issue too. So they've been attacking McAuliffe a lot on schools. You get a lot of the culture kind of war issues that, you know, we're seeing kind of around the country also in Virginia are kind of coming to the forefront here. COVID is also something that McAuliffe has run on a lot. During early debates, there were a lot of discussion over vaccine mandates and that sort of thing. One thing about Glenn Youngkin is that he's tried to be a

bit more amorphous in terms of like what his issues are. For example, there's no issues page on his website. There's references to jobs and schools and that sort of thing. McAuliffe on the other side of that, if you go to his website, there seems like there's like something for everything. And I think that kind of gets to what Domenico was talking about in terms of, you know, Terry McAuliffe is kind of like a double incumbent of sorts. You know, we have Joe Biden, who's also a Democrat that's in the White House, and McAuliffe was a governor before and also has been a big force in Virginia politics after that. So, you know, Youngkin being more of an amorphous kind of candidate that people can kind of put their own issues onto seems to be working. I mean, he's got a pretty close race. He's been in the margin of error in a lot of polls. There was another poll recently that had, you know, things neck and neck. On the other side of things, there's also the,

you know, the people that are supporting him are talking about things that Youngkin might not want to talk about because he wants to be that same amorphous type of kind of generic Republican. So sometimes in rallies, you have talk about the conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was stolen, rolling back abortion access, and that sort of thing. So that's kind of where the candidates have been campaigning, the issues that the candidates have been campaigning on in this pretty important election. You know, we should be clear, though, this is an election that Democrats really should win. Despite the history here, what we've seen demographically has really shaken up the political power in the state. Democrats since 2009 have won every single statewide race in Virginia.

They've won the last four presidential elections. And for the first time in 2019, they took over the state legislature after decades of Republican rule. So despite that history, Democrats should be doing well. But as is being mentioned here, Glenn Youngkin, the Republican, who's a wealthy former private equity executive, has poured in millions of dollars of his own money into this race, has been trying to paint himself as this kind of suburban dad businessman who's non-offensive while also sort of walking this line of accepting President Trump's endorsement while keeping him sort of at bay with maybe a 30-foot pole.

Well, and let's talk about that because, Domenico, you have some new reporting out about Terry McAuliffe, again, the Democrat, working hard to combat some apathy among voters, voters just potentially staying home or shrugging this election off. What is he up to? And do you have a sense of how well that's working? Well, yeah, there are three really key Democratic base groups in the state that I wanted to look at. And that's African-American voters who are always a very strong and important block of voters, first of all, because they have a long history of putting usually white politicians, by the way, over the top in these races despite sometimes not getting the attention that maybe they deserve or feel they deserve certainly based on the numbers. I mean consider in 2013 when McAuliffe won.

He only won by three points, but he lost white voters by 20 points. He won black voters with more than 90% of the vote. And they were 20% of the electorate. They were one out of every five voters. They voted at the same share of the electorate rate as they did for Barack Obama in 2012. So that was a huge reason why Terry McAuliffe won. His campaign knew this. They know this. He spent his time this past Sunday at seven different black majority churches because he knows that they need to get black voters out if he wants to win. All right. Well, we could clearly talk about this for hours more, but I want to switch gears. Jad, let's talk about something else big that's been getting a lot of attention in Richmond,

and that's the congressional map drawing process. Give us a quick rundown first. How does Virginia draw its maps and how has that been going? So one thing I think is important to mention is, you know, not how they're doing it now, but how they're doing it before, which is that the legislature would draw it and it would be kind of, you know, behind closed doors. It wouldn't be like a high level of public comment and input into the process. So one way of addressing that, that the, you know, civic leaders in Virginia wanted to do was having an independent redistricting commission, which

they eventually got. So now we have a commission, it's 16 members. It's evenly split between legislators and people who aren't in the general assembly. And both of those groups are also evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. So there's a lot of public comment that's going on, like anybody can listen to debates that are happening between citizens and legislators. So you get kind of the politician, you know, voter divide, you get the Democratic Republican divide, you get regional divides, too, because it's supposed to be diverse geographically. You get other demographic divides between women or minorities or, you know, all kinds of different Virginians that are going to be, that are on the commission. So that's how they're doing it this year. And the process,

you know, hasn't been, I think, what a lot of people imagined it was going to be like. Dominico, let's zoom out. Does this reflect the sort of difficulties Virginia's been having? How much does that reflect how redistricting is going elsewhere? Is it going smoothly in other parts of the country? Well, you know, I have to tell you, I mean, well, I do laugh because as I'm listening here, I just think about Democratic strategists I've talked to who just sort of slap their foreheads, you know, with their palm thinking like, why are Democrats tying their hands behind their backs trying to fight this war on gerrymandering while Republicans are not really pushing to go to independent commissions or bipartisan commissions out of some sense of fairness or morality? They're looking to win. And the Supreme Court has said that state legislatures

have the ability to be able to redraw these districts as long as they do so politically, not racially, although we know those two things are very hard to separate oftentimes. seats when they're winning constantly in the House ballot nationally, but then wind up with a disadvantage. And they feel like, you know, while this is well-intentioned, sometimes there's some unintended consequences that also mean Democrats not doing as well as they could. Right. All right. We're going to leave it there. Jad Khalil of WVTF, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, it was a pleasure. Thank you very much. Okay. We're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, is Trump ally Steve Bannon going to be criminally prosecuted? And we are back with Claudia Grisales.

She, of course, covers Congress. Hey, Claudia. Hey there. Excited to talk to you. I haven't talked to you in a while. I know. This is where we can get together is the fun. I know.

So we're going to talk about the House of Representatives, which approved a criminal contempt report against Steve Bannon for defying a subpoena from a House panel probing the January 6th attack. Bannon, of course, for those who have forgotten, is an ally of President Donald Trump who ran President Donald Trump's campaign, although Bannon was not formally affiliated with the White House at the time of the insurrection. So with all of that out of the way, Claudia, let's get to the basics here. Why are House members interested in talking to Steve Bannon?

So he played a key role, they argue, the members of this panel in the days and weeks leading up to January 6th. He had made comments on his podcast, for example, that all hell would break loose on January 6th. There was also a meeting on January 5th, that evening prior, at a hotel, the Willard Hotel, very close to the White House with other prominent Trump supporters to kind of game out the day, the next day. And kind of this theme, members of this committee argue, carried on in a lot of Bannon's public comments that there would be a way to reverse this election and kind of spreading the lie that President Trump was somehow going to remain in office as of Inauguration Day. Right. And we should also say that this vote that happened, there was a partisan split, I mean, or a largely partisan split. How did that shake out? Yeah, this debate on the House floor was pretty striking yesterday. And we knew it would re-litigate January 6th in a way. We would see those divides between Democrats and most Republicans. As we remember, most of these Republicans in the House

have boycotted this House Select Committee. And we saw the chairman, Benny Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, making his point, along with Wyoming Republican Liz Cheney. She touched on the debate of these colleagues, her members, who are trying to dismiss what happened that day. People who now seem to have forgotten the danger of the moment, the assault on the Constitution, the assault on our Congress. Jim Banks of Indiana was the point person for Republicans to make their argument that Bannon was a private citizen that day. Steve Bannon was a private citizen before, after, and during January 6th. So why is the Select Committee interested in Steve Bannon? It's simple. He is a Democrat Party boogeyman. It was the crux of Democrats' argument that he

should be testifying. He should not have a legal shield. Steve Bannon was a private citizen on January 6th, so he can't claim this executive privilege because he wasn't part of the administration. And circling back, Danielle, to your question about the divide, we did see nine House Republicans join Democrats to push forward with this effort, with this contempt report against Bannon, which now heads to the Justice Department. It was interesting, the divide for those nine. Some had previously voted for Trump's impeachment earlier this year, and some were new. You know, what's crazy about all this, frankly, is that we're talking about

just testifying before Congress, being able to just talk about what happened that day. You know, we're seeing this much kind of pushback and people trying to make this into almost like it's a witch hunt, as opposed to just being part of a fact-finding mission where people in Congress can ask questions of somebody about what they were up to that day and what the president might have been up to that day. It's really fascinating, and I wonder how long people are going to let this play out and how opportunistic people are going to be with some of this. Well, Claudia, I want to circle back to that first question I asked about what the House is doing.

What exactly does a criminal contempt report mean? So this is exceedingly rare for a case like this to see its ultimate culmination, that is prosecution conviction that would result in jail time and fines, possibly. But it's essentially a contempt of Congress report that the House has now approved that heads to the Justice Department, basically saying that Steve Bannon defied this subpoena to testify before Congress. And so this is one of the tools that this committee has, among others, to go after witnesses who are trying to not cooperate with this probe. Well, and now that this vote has happened, then what are the next steps?

So now this contempt report goes to the Justice Department. It is in their hands. The U.S. Attorney's Office will take the next steps, but likely it will involve the highest levels of the department. For example, Attorney General Merrick Garland, who was just testifying before the Hill yesterday, in his tone, along with President Biden's tone last night at a town hall, was very, very balanced in terms of trying not to give us any hints on what they'll do with the case. It will be up to the Justice Department on whether they will prosecute. Of course, we know that President Biden signaled his confidence there, but backtracked last night. And we saw that with Garland's testimony that he wasn't going to take a side here either way. He's going to have to make a decision. And that's where we hear if they'll continue with this case forward and pursue perhaps jail time for Bannon or even fines. And I don't think we have to look much further than understanding that this is about politics. You know, it's the kind of thing that

a lot of Republicans who are running for election next year are having to answer questions about because, frankly, President Trump has continued to say a lie that the election was somehow stolen from him. I mean, I think John Cornyn sort of summed it up a little bit earlier this year, the Senator from Texas, where he said, essentially, we don't want to give Democrats an issue that they get to hold over Republicans' heads into next year. They want to be able to talk about things that they think will woo voters and sway them to their side, not something like the January 6th insurrection, which clearly won't. Right. It's a very calculated decision they're making.

Wait, so I have one more question here, and that is that, Claudia, there must be other folks the committee is trying to talk to with other more formal ties to the White House. Who is that and what should we be watching for? Yes, there's a long list they still need to get to of subpoenas. Overall, there's about 20. And that also includes three other former Trump officials. This includes a former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, a former White House aide, Dan Scavino, and a former Defense Department official, Kash Patel. Now, Scavino himself is actually Defense Department official Kash Patel. Now Scavino

himself is actually set for a deposition for now. It's on November 4. But we just learned today that's also a first hearing that will be held in the lawsuit that former President Trump has filed against this committee trying to thwart their efforts in this investigation. And then next week is a pretty big week out of those 20 that were subpoenaed. About half, about 10 are due to show up for deposition. So we'll see if those folks cooperate or not. When we talk about other Trump officials like Meadows, Scavino and Patel, they're still in talks with the panel and they gave them extra time. And of course, Scavino is set, but we'll see what happens with these other folks in the meantime.

All right. A lot to keep our eye on, but we're going to leave it there for now. And we're going to get to Can't Let It Go next. But first, we have some more news. The Supreme Court agreed this afternoon to hear from both sides on the near total ban on abortion in Texas. That's going to happen November 1st, and we will cover it here. But in the meantime, we have put a link to our Docket episode with our own Nina Totenberg about the high court and abortion in the episode description. So look for that. All right.

Time for a quick break and then Can't Let It Go. And we are back and it's time to end the show like we do every week with Can't Let It Go. This is the part of the show where we talk about the things from the week that we just can't stop talking about, politics or otherwise. And I'm going to self-centeredly go first, and I'm going to be self-centered and actually serious for once. I got married last weekend, and that is legitimate. I'm not doing News of the Weird this week. I'm not doing something funny. This is a real can't let it go.

I cannot. I am six days married. It's bliss. It also marked for me like a feeling of breathing like, right, the pandemic can't last forever. We got a bunch of vaccinated people together. We all had fun. People that I haven't seen in years. We walked up the aisle to Purple Rain.

We walked down the aisle to All Star by Smash Mouth. I mean. Yes, I love it. We did it our way. It was great. But yeah, just getting people together gave me, both of us, I think, some hope that, you know, this can't last forever. People are still out there and you get to see them every once in a while. So that is my heartwarming can't let it go.

Well, congratulations. Oh, my God. Congrats. Thank you. Yeah, that is lovely. That is so awesome. The last time we talked, you were trying to find the dress. So I'm just, oh, my God.

I'm shook. This is amazing. Congrats. I found a dress. It's purple. I decided to not wear white. Let's do it different. So, yeah, I found the dress.

It was great. I actually tweeted a photo. People can see it. Oh, yes. I'm going to look it up. All right. Enough about me. Claudia, what can't you let go of this week?

Oh, well, this is the perfect segue. I've got to talk about something purple, too. And so my can't let it go has to do with a website I've never heard about until this past week. Thank goodness for our colleague Lexi Schapittle. She pointed out this website. It's called Unclaimed Baggage. And apparently somebody left behind in one of these unclaimed bags that are left at the airport, this organization keeps track of them. They resell the

items. They might donate, recycle some of these items. But one of these items that is left behind in luggage at airports included this beautiful purple Christian Siriano dress. By the way, it's marked off from 2000 to 399. Yes, it can be yours. It's still on there. So I don't know how it is. It's amazing. Then I went down a rabbit hole. This is what our Washington desk editor said, Shirley Henry, and I did the same thing. I'm like, what else is on this website? Who has left this stuff behind? Who is forgetting their luggage? And then, you know, it got a little dark. I'm like, what if these people are dead or they're detained somewhere? They want their Christian Siriano dress. But so I don't know if I'm going to go all the way and buy

anything yet. But I'm shopping. I have a new place to go shopping. And I'm just utterly psyched by the idea of being able to look through other people's luggage. So this is really cool. Well, to make you feel better about, you know, thinking that like they may be lost somewhere and wondering where this expensive dress is, you know, usually people who can afford that kind of thing can afford that kind of thing. Exactly right.

They'll get another Siriano dress. They're all good. And I'll take this one. Just a casual disposable evening gown like you do. Oh man, I'm looking at a photo of it right now. It's gorgeous. I'm take this one. Just a casual, disposable evening gown like you do. Exactly. Designer. Oh, man. I'm looking at a photo of it right now. It's gorgeous.

I'm kind of jealous. It's only $3.99. See, if Danielle knew about this before the wedding. I know. I could have saved so much. You know what? Too little, too late. All right, Domenico, let's hear what you can't let go of.

Oh, you know, because I'm such a big TikToker. I don't even have the app. Like, let's be honest. Oh, that's funny. I love it a big TikToker. I don't even have the app. Like, let's be honest. Oh, that's funny. I love it. I'm glad people are on TikTok. I'm sure it's lovely and fun. And it is.

I often see some of the videos, but not on TikTok. And that's what happened this time. There was a video that went viral so much that, and I don't know if I have a purple theme in this unless ghosts are purple. So this involves, what's not to love about this, ghosts and dogs. And there's this video that was posted. Now it's some 15 million views where you see these two dogs on this kind of like home security camera, you know, just kind of barking at each other or whatever.

And then all of a sudden they get spooked at about the 22 second mark. They both kind of stop. And then randomly one of the dog's collars just falls off its neck. And then it like bolts to the back of its crate. Like, and it just set the internet, TikTok, whatever other apps people use on fire, I guess, with all kinds of suspicions. Was it a ghost? Was it edited? Nobody quite knows, but it's spooky stuff at the spooky time of year. Oh, man.

I'm watching it now. I'm going to go with the ghost. I think this is us capturing more evidence of ghosts. That's what I'm going to go with for now. There was one person who tried to ruin all the fun and said that they can they zoomed in and could tell it was a cut and that you know clearly somebody must have come in and dropped the collar um but you know at least until october 31st or november 1st we can think it was a ghost exactly this is the halloween theme this is awesome i love it i love any animal video especially if they make it in a tiktok i'm all into it this is as much of a scary movie as I can handle also. So this is perfect for me. And this TikTok user apparently thinks her entire house is haunted.

So she has a series of videos showing kind of weird stuff happening. You know, a bear mask falling down. I don't know why she has a bear mask. But things like that is kind of what she's posted on. Unless she's gotten really good at making it seem it's haunted, you know. It's like the homemade Blair Witch Project. Yeah. All right.

Well, before I get creeped out, that is a wrap for today. Our executive producer is Shirley Henry. Our editors are Mathoni Maturi and Eric McDaniel. Our producers are Barton Girdwood and Elena Moore. Thanks to Lexi Schapittle and Brandon Carter. I am Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover demographics and culture. I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.