Tuesday was a big night for Democrats. Huge! as President Trump would say — or might say if he weren’t busy freaking out about the electoral smackdown voters just delivered him and his party.
The successes stretched all the way down to the Georgia Public Service Commission, where Democrats picked up two seats. But the biggest signals came from the three high-profile elections seen as a referendum on the president’s performance and on the Democrats’ scramble to revive their moribund brand: the contests for Virginia governor, New Jersey governor and New York City mayor. The blue team swept the table.
Now comes the what-does-it-all-mean phase for both parties. With the Democrats, there is much to dissect and digest. In Virginia, Abigail Spanberger ran explicitly as a pragmatist. In New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill, a self-professed purveyor of “ruthless competence,” charted a middle-of-the-road course. And in New York, Zohran Mamdani electrified much of the electorate with his rock-star persona and lefty politics.
While Mr. Mamdani’s win showed the power of a fresh-faced, charismatic candidate with a clear message, some of his advantages seem unlikely to transfer much beyond New York’s peculiar and left-leaning politics. It may well be that Ms. Sherrill and Ms. Spanberger, with their double-digit victories and mainstream visions, offer lessons that are more replicable for the party.
The numbers are impressive. In New Jersey, where the electorate had been drifting rightward in recent years, Ms. Sherrill’s strong performance led to Democrats improving their vote totals in nearly every county over four years ago. The turnout rate was on track to be the highest since 1997. The number of voters topped three million for the first time in a New Jersey governor’s race.
In Virginia, Ms. Spanberger’s coattails were long enough to help Democrats flip 11 to 13 seats in the House of Delegates. The party won all three statewide offices, attorney general included, even though its candidate, Jay Jones, faced an ugly, late-breaking scandal involving text messages he sent in 2022.
Neither Ms. Sherrill nor Ms. Spanberger, friends and housemates during their days together in Congress, was the type to electrify the party’s base. Their back stories and political records feel more suited to wooing independents and moderates. Both have impressive national security backgrounds. Both entered the House by flipping Republican-held seats in the 2018 backlash to the first Trump presidency. In Congress, they hung out with the national-security cool kids, staked out centrist positions and were known to buck their own leadership when the spirit moved them.
On the trail for governor, both women pitched themselves as die-hard pragmatists who could work across party lines but would stand up to any president in defense of their states. Like Mr. Mamdani, they leaned in hard on the economy and the issue of affordability. They largely steered clear of the culture-war issues that tend to put off less-partisan voters. And they were not shy about dragging Mr. Trump into their races and tying his excesses to their opponents.
Neither Ms. Sherrill or Ms. Spanberger is super charismatic. They will not be running a Mamdani- or A.O.C.-style campaign. Ms. Spanberger is the smoother retail politician. Even some of Ms. Sherrill’s fans acknowledge that she is a rambler. But both managed to strike a balance between serious and relatable, strong but likable — still something of challenge for female candidates seeking executive office. Their national-security backgrounds made it hard for Republicans to caricature them as weak and woke. And their experience as moms gave them credibility when talking about the challenges facing families.
Ms. Sherrill had the heavier lift, in part because of some political fundamentals that cut against her. A Democratic congresswoman was looking to succeed a two-term Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, in a state where the electorate tends to be politically swingy about its chief executive. Until Tuesday, New Jersey had not given the same party three consecutive terms in the governor’s mansion since 1961.
Worse, Mr. Murphy has a serious popularity problem, especially when it comes to the state’s high cost of living. Republicans spent this race lashing Ms. Sherrill to Mr. Murphy. She had to find a way to distance herself from him without alienating the Democratic faithful or giving the opposition more political ammunition.
Ms. Spanberger had the good fortune to be running to succeed a Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, for whom she could partly blame the state’s economic unrest — unrest fueled by a Republican president. Virginia almost always opts for a governor from the party that does not hold the White House. (Buyers’ remorse is so real!) But Mr. Trump has gone the extra mile in alienating many Virginians with his mass layoffs of, and open hostility toward, federal civilian workers — more than 300,000 of whom called Virginia home in recent years, according to a University of Virginia analysis.
Ms. Spanberger’s opponent, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, did not try to separate herself from Mr. Trump’s economic moves — or any of his moves. This turbocharged Team Spanberger’s warnings that a Trump/Earle-Sears era would be even more disastrous for the state than the current Trump/Youngkin era. This message clearly resonated.
A nod to Democrats inclined to focus on political downsides: Tuesday’s sweep will not settle the party’s identity crisis — neither the ideological tug of war between centrists and progressives nor the outsider-versus-insider split of recent years. Expect that tension to persist into next year’s midterms, as the competing wings brandish whichever winner from this week best fits their existing biases.
Democrats agonize and argue about everything. It’s in their DNA. But, practically speaking, a big electoral win usually drains much of the venom from such disagreements. And the constructive, if messy, path forward is to embrace an all-of-the-above approach, at least for now. Different races and different electorates often call for different types of candidates — all the more so when a party is in a rebuilding phase.
Mr. Mamdani has captivated New Yorkers. The Spanberger and Sherrill wins should have Democrats feeling upbeat as well. Competent, relatable centrists — or pragmatists, if you prefer — have a vital role to play in reviving the party’s fortunes outside of its urban comfort zones.
It turns out moderates can kick butt, too. Who knew?
Michelle Cottle (@mcottle) writes about national politics for Opinion. She has covered Washington and politics since the Clinton administration.
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Michelle Cottle writes about national politics for Opinion. She has covered Washington and politics since the Clinton administration. @mcottle
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