There’s no sugar-coating it: Sanity had a bad night Tuesday. Democrats, energized by having President Donald Trump to rail against, turned out at the polls and brought some radical candidates across the finish line in key races across the country.
Just a brief recap: Muslim democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won the New York mayor’s race. Abigail Spanberger won the Virginia governor’s race. Mikie Sherrill won the New Jersey governor’s race. Even Jay Jones, the Democrat who infamously fantasized about the deaths of Republicans’ children, prevailed in the Virginia attorney general’s race.
This doesn’t necessarily bode ill for Republicans in the midterms next year, but it does disappoint those of us who expected better from our fellow Americans.
Here’s my list of winners and losers from the night.
Winner: Shutting Down the Government
Democrats stoked anger by shutting down the government. Sure, technically, they just refused to vote for a “clean continuing resolution,” i.e., a spending bill that would have funded the government at Biden levels, but they’re truly the ones responsible for the current impasse.
Even the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest government employee union, had urged Democrats to vote to fund the government, but the tactic seems to have worked.
Anger over the shutdown seems to have helped Democrats encourage more of their voters to go to the polls.
Especially in Northern Virginia, home to many of the disgruntled federal employees who either have to work with no pay or have been anxiously awaiting news of when they can go back to work, the government shutdown may have driven animosity to Trump and support for Spanberger.
While the shutdown strategy may have helped Democrats, Senate Democrats may unwittingly reveal that this was an election strategy all along by finally starting to work with Republicans in the coming days.
Winner: Karl Marx
Imagine an outright socialist who wants a government takeover of grocery stores winning an election to govern the heart of American capitalism.
That’s what we saw Tuesday night. Zohran Mamdani achieved something most Bolsheviks thought impossible, and it bodes ill for the Big Apple going forward.
Winner: Political Violence
It’s hard to capture just how disgusting Jones’ texts supporting political violence truly were.
Jones did not deny reports that he sent messages fantasizing about shooting Todd Gilbert, the Republican former speaker of the House of Delegates. He said he would rather shoot Gilbert twice than kill Adolf Hitler or Pol Pot. He later said he wished Gilbert’s young children would die in their mother’s arms, after warning that Gilbert and his wife were “breeding little fascists.”
He sent these messages to a Republican and, when she asked him to stop, he sought to justify these violent thoughts with one sentence:
“Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy.”
This isn’t just a youthful indiscretion: Jones sent these texts in 2022.
If anything should disqualify a candidate for political office, it would be text messages like this. Yet not only did Jones remain in the race, but he also eked out a win.
This sends a message to any other Democrats who might have fantasized about dead children: Democrat voters won’t consider such things disqualifying.
Winner: Pushing Trans in Schools
Both Mikie Sherrill, the Democrat who won the New Jersey governor’s race, and Abigail Spanberger, the Democrat who won the governor’s mansion in Virginia, have records supporting the Equality Act, a bill that would force transgender ideology on the country.
While Spanberger hemmed and hawed on the issue—suggesting she supports local control, not a top-down approach—Sherrill unequivocally stated that she opposes a parental opt-out for transgender lessons in schools.
“I believe that parents have the right to oversee their children’s education,” Sherrill said in a debate. “I would push an LGBTQ education into our schools. Parents have a right to opt out of a lot of things, but this is not an area where they should be opting out, because this is an area of understanding the background of people throughout our nation.”
Parents who don’t think that boys become girls just by saying so—and who want to protect their girls from the indignity and danger of boys in girls’ bathrooms and boys competing in girls sports—should beware that New Jersey and Virginia are likely to undermine their daughters’ safety and privacy.
Loser: Survivors of 9/11
When New Yorkers put their lives back together after the World Trade Center’s destruction on Sept. 11, 2001, they could not have predicted that their beloved city would elect not only a Muslim, but a Muslim who condemns Israel’s actions in Gaza as a “genocidal war” and who declines to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada.”
Islam is not incompatible with American freedom—reformers like M. Zuhdi Jasser demonstrate true Muslim patriotism—but Islamism is a threat, and if anyone should know that, it should be New Yorkers. Mamdani may not be seeking to establish a caliphate, but his unhealthy obsession with Israel raises significant questions.
Loser: Glenn Youngkin
Virginia’s current governor, Republican Glenn Youngkin, has achieved a great deal in terms of promoting economic growth, unleashing American energy, and lowering taxes. Even so, his legacy will struggle under a Spanberger governorship.
He may not have deserved a rebuke at the ballot box, but it is likely his Democrat successor will reverse a great deal of his policies.
Loser: New York City Homeowners
Even before reports of Mamdani’s success Tuesday, homeowners in New York City had been relocating to Connecticut. The uncertainty is likely to worsen as residents of the Big Apple realize just what a Mamdani mayorship means.
Loser: Charlie Kirk
When Charlie Kirk became a free speech martyr in September, I hoped that moment would mark a turning point on political violence, leading all Americans to oppose the demonization of political opponents that encourages hatred against the other side. Yet not two months after Kirk’s assassination, voters in Virginia—the birthplace of presidents—elected a man whose politically violent texts shocked the nation.
Apparently, those text messages did not shock Virginians enough to reconsider his candidacy.
Words fail me in seeking to describe just how tremendous a shame that is.
