While much of the media class has already shifted focus to the 2024 races, this off-year Election Day will feature a number of consequential races across several states, including Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio.
Virginia Legislature Up for Grabs
In Virginia, one of four states with legislative races this year, all 140 of the legislature’s seats are up for reelection. Control of the legislature, which is currently divided with Democrats holding a slight majority in the state senate and Republicans narrowly controlling the state house, could come down to roughly a dozen seats across both chambers.
Tuesday is the first Election Day since the state completed its decennial redistricting process.
Massive sums of money have flowed into the races, with candidates raising $46 million over about four weeks in October. While the Virginia Republican Party chairman, Rich Anderson, asked the Republican National Committee for money to boost the party’s candidates, senior staffers at the RNC denied the request, as National Review previously reported.
On the Democratic side, former president Barack Obama recorded two get-out-the-vote robocalls that will be sent to more than 100,000 households in key battleground districts ahead of Election Day by the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.
The outcome of the legislative races could serve as a bellwether ahead of the 2024 presidential cycle.
Unrestricted Abortion and Legal Marijuana on the Ballot in Ohio
Democrats are banking on abortion being an election-winning issue this cycle, more than a year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The party’s focus on abortion will serve as a test run of how successful the issue might be for Democrats next year, a major election year.
In Ohio, there are two ballot measures to watch: one that would effectively outlaw any restrictions on abortion and other procedures that involve reproduction, including gender-transition surgeries, and a second that would legalize recreational marijuana in the state.
The measure on abortion, Issue 1, would also remove parental-consent and notification requirements for minors who undergo the procedures.
The amendment includes vague language about prohibiting any law that “directly or indirectly” would “burden” or “interfere” with “reproductive decisions.” Opponents of the measure argue it would also outlaw nearly any restrictions on abortion or other reproduction-related procedures, removing requirements for parental-consent and parental notification, as well as protections for people who undergo the procedures, including requirements that a qualified physician perform them.
Opponents warn the overly broad use of the phrase “reproductive decisions” would mean the measure would very likely extend to gender-transition treatment. The proposal does not distinguish between minors and adults, either.
The amendment was written by the ACLU, which has spent years fighting to remove parental involvement from abortion and gender-transition procedures. The group says on its website that parental consent and notification laws restrict “teenagers’ access to abortion.” In 2016, the ACLU sided with Planned Parenthood in an Alaska lawsuit that aimed to overturn parental-notification laws in the state. One year later, the ACLU argued that parental consent laws in Indiana created an “unconstitutional undue burden.” The group is currently campaigning for a constitutional amendment in Oregon that would allow children to get an abortion without parental knowledge.
ACLU of Ohio attorney Jessie Hill was straightforward with reporters about the Ohio proposal’s intent, saying it would “mean that laws that conflict with it cannot be enforced, should not be enforced,” including existing laws on parental consent.
Issue 2 would legalize the sale of marijuana to people 21 and over, and permit growing the plant as a cash crop. Any person of legal age would be able to grow up to six plants at home. Marijuana sales would be taxed at 10 percent.
The two ballot measures come up for a vote months after Ohio voters rejected a measure that would have increased the threshold required to pass a constitutional amendment.
Ohio has used a simple-majority requirement since 1912, but the measure, which came up for a vote in August, would have bumped the threshold up to 60 percent. The “no” choice to keep the simple-majority threshold under current law won with 57 percent of the vote.
Voters in Kentucky and Mississippi Choose Their Next Governors
In Kentucky, state Attorney General Daniel Cameron is taking on incumbent Democratic governor Andy Beshear. A new survey from Emerson College Polling found Beshear and Cameron tied at 47 percent. Four percent of respondents said they were undecided, and 2 percent said they’d support someone else. Cameron has a one-point edge when undecided voters are asked whom they’re leaning toward.
“Cameron appears to have gained ground by consolidating Republican voters who supported former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. In October, 54 percent of Trump supporters supported Cameron; now, as election day approaches, that number has jumped to 79 percent – a 25-point increase,” said Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling.
“Notably, October’s poll was of registered voters in Kentucky, while this final election poll includes only those who are very likely or have already voted in Kentucky,” he added.
The Cook Political Report has rated the race “Lean Democrat.”
Beshear, who narrowly won his first term in 2019 against then-incumbent Republican Governor Matt Bevin, has focused heavily on abortion, while Cameron has attacked the Democratic governor on Covid-era restrictions and his past support for gender-reassignment surgery for minors.
In Mississippi, incumbent Republican Governor Tate Reeves won an endorsement from former president Donald Trump last week in his race against Democratic challenger Brandon Presley.
“Joe Biden’s people are funding Brandon Presley’s campaign. They own him. He’ll do whatever they want him to do,” the former president, who won Kentucky by more than 16 points in 2020, said.
Cook Political Report recently shifted the race’s rating from “Likely Republican” to “Lean Republican.” Republicans have held the Mississippi governor’s office for the past 20 years.
Presley, a distant relative of Elvis Presley, has centered his attacks on a welfare corruption scandal involving former NFL star Brett Favre. The governor has denied involvement in the scandal. The scandal involved at least $77 million in federal funds that were intended for the state’s poorest residents but were instead misspent or given to wealthy residents between 2017 and 2020.
Presley’s campaign aired TV ads that claimed, “Under Tate Reeves, millions were steered from education and job programs to help his rich friends.”
Meanwhile, Reeves’s team ran its own ad countering the claims.
“Tate Reeves had nothing to do with the scandal,” the narrator says. “… It all happened before he was governor.”
In the event that neither candidate secures more than 50 percent of the vote, there will be a runoff election on November 28.
In Philadelphia, two former city council members are competing in an open-seat race for mayor. Democrat Cherelle Parker is favored to defeat Republican David Oh to become the city’s first female mayor. The city has not elected a Republican mayor since 1947.