Congressman, the issues were all watching besides trump is issue of the confederate statues. 3 of 5 people in virginia including all races and genders were for keeping the statues the way they are, dont want changes, yet that was position of gillespie the republican. Position of the democratic candidate northam was get them all down. Thats how he started anyway. Says to me, voters said thats where i am on this issue, didnt vote on this issue. It was not the issue. But gillespie and trump. Gillespie didnt know who trump was in Northern Virginia but ran a Television Ad campaign that absolutely invoked worst of the trump campaign. Southerner . This time it didnt work. Catholic guy who grew up in new jersey running down there waving the flag of stonewall
a controversial president in byelection. Anybody with any problems with the government party, any problem they lay on you. Right . Absolutely right. You take all the hell with trumps name on it. And historically thats how virginia performs
is toxic politically is is going to hurt republicans in the midterm elections in 2018. what gillespie was trying to do was harness as much trumpism as he could to energize those voters, energize trump s base at the same time he brought in more traditional republicans, suburban voters, and he obviously failed in that regard. this was republicans were hoping that this could be a model for them in 2018, and that model failed last night. so republicans are going to have to think long and hard about how they run with this unpopular president in office. perhaps tweeting against them all the while. and democrats, it s game-on for them. they re in a very good position. last night showed they re energized in a way maybe they weren t even in 2016. jeffrey, house speaker paul ryan says his republican colleagues have one important lesson to learn, they need to do what they re trying to do, get this tax bill passed, get it passed quickly, but there are a
gun policy in the news with tragedy in texas, split. half the people saying guns were issue, voting for gillespie, half voting for northam. different motivations. taxes, bread and butter issue. and immigration, what gillespie was playing up. republican voters here, gillespie voters. and interesting result. gillespie ran on the issue of heritage, he called it, confederate monuments, shouldn t be torn down, asked this question, confederate monuments on government property, what should be done? 38% remove, almost 60% with gillespie on that. leave them in place. gillespie was trying to build a winning coalition out of that percent but didn t materialize, biggest issue wasn t in the exit poll, might just have been donald trump himself.
well for a republican up here when he ran for the senate a couple of years ago. he actually didn t do as well as republicans should do maybe in the rural parts of virginia. last year when donald trump was running, we re seeing trump get 75%, 85% in should have these counties. what gillespie was trying to pull off is culture issues he ran on aggressively. he was trying to get that 85% in places down here. doesn t look like he quite reached that number. but through the tactics you re talking about, he was still trying to be the ed gillespie of 2014. the ed gillespie of the bush era up here. the voters didn t buy it at all. again, this is going to be a debate, i think, was there a backlash? could it have worked without the campaign he ran? or was this just set in stone? what we are seeing in northern virginia tonight, was this just set in stone by that election result last year? by donald trump winning, by donald trump being the president, a version of the president that he was as a candi
chris christie is arguably the least popular governor in the united states, and he seems to revel in it to a certain degree, he likes being the guy that they don t like being the heel, and he kind of digs it. i think he s down with that. i think his lieutenant governor probably wishes that his numbers were a little better, but new jersey is a state that likes to flip-flop its governorship. martha: that s true, kim, the race is far from over in new jersey, as we know. molly, your thoughts on sort of the situation that chris christie was in, and maybe put his lieutenant governor in? chris christie might be dragging down his side of the ticket there, but i think what s interesting about all these races is what it teaches us about how people are going to run in the next year. i think as chris said, what gillespie did here by creating a coalition of establishment republicans and bannon-ites. that is a way forward for republicans. i think you will see people taking lessons from all of