RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Seizing his party’s first major Trump-era victory, Democrat Ralph Northam beat back a charge from Republican Ed Gillespie in the race for Virginia governor, a bruising election that tested the power of President Donald Trump’s fiery nationalism against the energy of the Trump resistance.
In Virginia, like in several contests across America on Tuesday, the Trump resistance won. And it wasn’t close.
Northam, a pediatric neurologist and Army veteran, led longtime Republican operative Gillsepie by several points as the final votes ticked in. Democrats also scored victories in the race for New Jersey governor and in Maine, where voters slapped the state’s Republican governor, a Trump ally, by backing a measure to expand Medicaid coverage under former President Barack Obama’s health care law. The Democratic mayors of New York and Boston, both vocal Trump critics, also won re-election easily. And Virginia voters elected the state’s first openly-transgender state representative, among more than a dozen state legislative pickups for Democrats.
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