Democrats swept the three major local elections in the US on Tuesday by wider-than-expected margins, giving the beleaguered party a much-needed boost 10 months into President Donald Trump’s second term.
From New York’s City Hall to Virginia, where Democrats picked up a gubernatorial seat, and out to California, the victories will bolster morale in a party that’s been reeling after failing to win the White House, Senate and House of Representatives just a year ago.
The small number of races didn’t offer a simple profile for successful Democratic candidates, but they did show how the party can get past last year’s defeats by rallying around pocketbook issues like grocery and housing prices and a rejection of the president’s less popular policies.
“We turned that page by listening to our neighbors, focusing on practical results, laying out a clear agenda and leading with decency and determination,” former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger said in Richmond after winning Virginia’s governor’s race.
Trump was quick to parcel out blame after the major races were declared, hours before the federal government shutdown officially became the longest in American history at 36 days.
The president routinely characterizes his 2024 swing state sweep as a mandate for the sprawling actions he’s taken in his second term, from the imposition of tariffs and ramped up deportations to the remaking of the federal government and stretching of executive branch authority.
“TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT,” the president wrote on Truth Social, citing “Pollsters.”
The Democratic victories, while predicted by polls, were anything but uniform. Stretched along the Atlantic seaboard, Tuesday’s elections represented a microcosm of the party’s internal debates, between a faction of largely younger progressive activists and a more moderate wing that harkens back to the pre-Trump political era.
In New York, voters elected 34-year-old Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, as mayor after he deployed a social media-savvy campaign and joined up with two progressive icons, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Mamdani — who will be New York’s first Muslim and South Asian mayor when he takes office Jan. 1 — campaigned on making the global business hub more affordable by using higher taxes on the wealthy to pay for free buses and city-run grocery stores, overcoming many voters’ concerns about his pro-Palestinian views.
And on Tuesday night, it was Mamdani invoking an electoral mandate in a fiery speech that hit directly at Trump.
“New York, tonight you have delivered a mandate for change, a mandate for a new type of politics, a mandate for a city we can afford, and a mandate for a government that delivers exactly that,” Mamdani said at his victory rally, which he began by quoting the late socialist leader Eugene Debs. “In this moment of political darkness, New York will be the light.”
He vowed to hire thousands of teachers, “hold bad landlords to account,” and ensure New York remains a city of immigrants and “as of tonight, led by an immigrant.” Addressing the president, Mamdani said his mayoral victory showed “not only how we stop Trump, it’s how we stop the next one.”
It was a different campaign in New Jersey and Virginia, where voters sent two politically moderate female leaders with deep national security credentials to their states’ governor’s mansions.
Spanberger, a 46-year-old former CIA officer who left the House of Representatives after three terms in January, will be the first female governor in Virginia, a state that’s front-and-center in the battle over the government shutdown and efforts to trim the federal workforce.
Likewise in New Jersey, Representative Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot, won a race in which pocketbook concerns about utility bills, health care and schools were more central than culture war issues or government giveaways.
Linking the disparate results, “the races show that Democrats who have an economic message win votes,” said Celinda Lake, a long-time Democratic pollster.
About 6 in 10 voters in Virginia and New Jersey described themselves as “angry” or “dissatisfied” with the current state of the country, according to an exit poll conducted by the Associated Press, compared to just one-third who said they were “enthusiastic” or “satisfied.”
That aligns with national polls showing that the majority of voters now disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy. In addition, the president’s policies on immigration and foreign policy aren’t uniformly appealing to independent or swing voters who determine elections.
Trump’s Influence
Even in races not in the national spotlight, Democrats performed strongly. The party held onto three Supreme Court seats in Pennsylvania and won two seats on a public commission in Georgia that helps set electricity prices, leading to a Democratic sweep in an off-cycle election year.
For Republicans, the losses weren’t shocking, but they underscore the limits to Trump’s influence when he isn’t on the ballot, a looming challenge for the party going forward.
While the president took a relatively hands-off approach, holding telerallies for the two Republican gubernatorial candidates on Monday night and never endorsing the party’s top candidate in Virginia, he ramped up his social media posts about the elections in recent days, threatening to cut even more federal funding for New York if Mamdani won.
At the same time, he warned voters in New Jersey and Virginia that energy prices and crime would soar under Democratic leadership.
None of it was enough.
“The story of the night is the repudiation of the president,” former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat seen as a potential 2028 presidential candidate, said on CNN.
Both parties will now jockey for the battles ahead. Trump and Republicans have made clear they’ll use Mamdani’s win in New York as evidence of a tilt toward progressivism in the Democratic Party — and they plan to paint all future Democratic candidates in that vein in an effort to alienate moderate and independent voters.
The two parties will also seek to accelerate plans in states across the country to redraw congressional districts — a fight that favors Republicans heading into the 2026 midterms.
California Governor Gavin Newsom’s bid to win voter support for his own redistricting effort passed on Tuesday. This measure will redraw California congressional districts enough to potentially tip five House seats to favor Democrats, countering a similar effort by Texas Republicans.
If gerrymandering doesn’t completely change the electoral map, then Republicans will need to find a way and a message to motivate Trump’s unusual “Make America Great Again” coalition of 2024 voters — white working class voters, Hispanics, Black men and traditional Republicans — and drive them to the polls.
Don Scott, the Democratic Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, got at this point as he arrived at Spanberger’s election night party. “It’s not good to be MAGA, if MAGA ain’t on the ballot,” he said.
(Reporting by Nancy Cook)
Disclaimer: This report is auto generated from the Bloomberg news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.