teachers, he went out. this part here, look at the red there. i want to go back four years ago. it s not a ton. it s not a ton, but it s a lot more red here. you come back now, he went out and competed in what we would now call trump country, in rural, small counties that are becoming increasingly republican. he ran a complete race if you will. governor bevin tried to nationalize it at the end, trying to make it about impeachment, trying to link andy beshear to the quote, unquote, liberals liberals washington. again, let s not overread this. this is a very, very close race, but it s a democratic victory in a state that has been trending more and more red. john king at the magic wall. stand by, we have a lot more to get to. we re watching some other races around the country. i want to bring in now david chalian, dana bash, and david gregory. here we go, another election night, the gang s all here. david chalian, i m going to start with you. it s so close. i don t think bevin is going
texts and emails from republicans from kentucky to here in washington who were focused on working on this campaign, saying that this is bevin. he s a terrible candidate. he s disliked. he s the most unpopular governor in the country. so on and so forth. but i did get a very candid text as well to back up what david was just saying. somebody who works very hard in fund-raising and strategy broadly in the republican party saying that this if bevin does lose, it s a massive blow because the president went down there. the vice president, fund-raisers, the republican governors association, the republican national committee, and this person said, let s face it. a republican president having to do rescue missions in louisiana, kentucky, and mississippi means something is happening for the republicans and donald trump, and it s not good. well david gregory, i want to bring you in because to their point, republicans are going to say this was a referendum, right, on bevin. but the president
i might be surprised, and maybe they will because they have a lot of money in the trump campaign. but this is another sign that virginia, which was a big surprise when president obama won it, has gone way blue. as we re talking about tonight, the governor s mansion, both parts of the legislature, that was also, to use david s term, ground zero for the wave that we saw in 2018 for the suburbs, for the democrats to take back the suburbs. we saw that in really big ways not only in northern virginia near where we are in washington, but around richmond and so forth. so it could take virginia off the map. it wasn t really clear that it was going to be very intense, but, you know, it makes it, i think, pretty set. can i just say one of the things i think is so important to throw into the mix here, we are still in this off-year cycle where you can say, hey, i don t like how things are going. i don t like the republican brand, or i may not like trump.