Virginia

Gillespie comeback collides with Trump in Virginia

By KEVIN ROBILLARD

Ed Gillespie has been preparing for this moment for years. But he was not prepared for President Donald Trump.

The Republican nominee for governor of Virginia once said that he could not envision his party winning the White House without carrying the state. But Trump managed just that in 2016 — and, in the process, he shifted the party away from the moderating strategies Gillespie championed in a near-miss Senate run three years ago. Trump antagonized the increasingly diverse and upscale electorate Gillespie now faces in Virginia. And on top of that, an increasingly strident GOP base nearly denied Gillespie the nomination Tuesday night, when he only narrowly dispatched Corey Stewart, the Trump-channeling Prince William County supervisor.

Gillespie ran the Republican National Committee, shepherded Dick Armey’s rise in the House of Representatives and oversaw GOP dominance of redistricting this decade. But winning the governorship in a state where Trump’s approval rating is in the 30s will be the stiffest political test of his 55 years.

“If you’re Gillespie, you have to say that you’re in a state that leans to Democratic, that the current Republican president lost by 5 points,” said Curt Anderson, who helped run the Republican Governors Association during the 2013 cycle, when Republican Ken Cuccinelli lost to current Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe. “And you’re an underdog.”

Stewart’s close call Tuesday night only magnifies Gillespie’s obstacles. The anti-illegal immigration hawk, staunch Trump supporter and outspoken defender of Confederate monuments lost to Gillespie by fewer than 4,000 votes, despite being massively outspent. Public polling had shown Gillespie cruising to easy victory, but Stewart’s showing may indicate the former lobbyist has problems with Trump fans in his party’s base. (“There is one word you will never hear from me, and that’s ‘unity,” Stewart told supporters Tuesday night in Woodbridge, according to the Washington Post.)

Gillespie has proved doubters wrong before. His 2014 race against Sen. Mark Warner was considered hopeless, and Gillespie nearly won. He has a reputation as a strong fundraiser with connections to Republicans across the country from his time at the RNC and with President George W. Bush and Mitt Romney.

Indeed, Anderson puts his hope in Gillespie’s own strengths. “Ed is going to be a better candidate than whoever the Democrats nominate,” he added.

Democrats would dispute that. Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, a former Army doctor-turned-pediatric neurologist from the state’s rural Eastern Shore, will also compete hard for swing voters this fall. Northam defeated former Rep. Tom Perriello Tuesday in a Democratic primary with record-breaking turnout, with Northam highlighting his progressive bona fides and repeatedly calling Trump a “narcissistic maniac” — rhetoric he may continue even as he shifts to the general election.

When Gillespie was first considering a run for office, the Republican Party’s famous post-2012 “autopsy” was still the game plan. It called for the GOP to become more welcoming to immigrants and minorities, the two groups that have transformed Virginia’s electorate from a Southern Republican redoubt to an increasingly reliable piece of Democrats’ Electoral College calculations.

Gillespie adopted many of those tactics in his 2014 run, exemplified by his campaign’s considerable outreach to Muslim voters in Northern Virginia. It was part of his blueprint for Republicans winning back power in Virginia and beyond.

“I don't see any path to the White House for a Republican nominee without carrying Virginia,” Gillespie told POLITICO in 2015.

Instead, Trump bypassed Virginia on his way to the presidency. The GOP doubled down on its base of white voters and further alienated the Muslims, Latinos and Asian-Americans who are plentiful in vote-rich Northern Virginia. And all of that has made Gillespie’s job more difficult, especially since Democrats plan on tying Trump around Gillespie’s neck.

“Virginia needs a governor to stand up to Donald Trump, not stand alongside him like Ed Gillespie,” Virginia Democratic Party spokesperson Christina Freundlich said in a statement. “Gillespie endorsed Trump, asked Trump to campaign for him, and even bragged about his friends working in the Trump administration.”

The state Democratic Party also launched a website, TrumpGillespie2017.com, after Tuesday’s primary linking Gillespie to the president.

Stewart criticized Gillespie as “Establishment Ed” during the GOP primary and said he was insufficiently supportive of Trump. But despite Stewart’s criticisms, Gillespie’s out-and-out breaks with Trump during his primary campaign have been rare. (He did criticize Trump last fall, after the Access Hollywood tape showed the then-GOP presidential nominee bragging about sexually assaulting women.)

Gillespie said Trump’s travel ban was smart, once you factored out “misinformation and media hysteria.” Trump’s decision to leave the Paris accord? “We can protect our environment while ensuring that we don’t act in a manner that hurts job creation in the Commonwealth,” he said.

At the same time, Gillespie hasn’t been subtle about differentiating himself from Trump in smaller ways.

His campaign’s advertising has emphasized Gillespie’s working-class and immigrant roots (his parents owned a small grocery store and his father was born in Ireland). Gillespie also released versions of his ads in Spanish and Korean, continuing his outreach to minority groups. And it’d be difficult to mistake Gillespie’s traditional GOP talking points for Trump’s populist bombast.

The broader game plan matches what every candidate in a tough national political environment looks for. “It’s not a big secret,” said a Republican with ties to the Gillespie campaign. “It’s not sexy. We have to focus on Virginia.”

The problem with a Virginia focus is that the electorate often looks as much to D.C. as it does to Richmond. In 2013, the race spun in response to the federal government shutdown and problems with the rollout of Healthcare.gov. “The lion’s share of the swing voters in Virginia are in the D.C. media market,” Anderson noted. “And those voters are the most susceptible to the national environment.”

Gillespie’s television advertising in the primary avoided social issues, mostly focusing instead on his major policy proposal: an across-the-board income tax cut. And Gillespie's ads consistently ended with him promising to be “governor for all Virginians.”

His strategy was on display the week before the primary, when he campaigned in heavily Democratic Arlington County at a start-up coffee company, Commonwealth Joe.

He met with the store’s owners to discuss how to improve the state’s business climate and shook hands with a few of the store’s customers. But he pointedly declined to address how Trump could affect his campaign over the next five months.

“I’m going to keep the focus on the policies that resonate with the people of Virginia,” Gillespie said.