FAIRFAX, Va. — Mary Wagner, a retired public schoolteacher from Fairfax, was raised Republican — but today she's handing out sample ballots at the Democratic booth outside the Fairfax Government Center, “hoping and praying” that Terry McAuliffe (D) will win out over Glenn Youngkin (R) in the state’s gubernatorial race.
"I taught in the public schools for 39 years, and education is extremely important to me," said Wagner on what pushed her away from the Republican party. "If anybody is a good governor for this state for education, it would be Terry McAuliffe."
Youngkin, on the other hand, "would like to take money and give it to the private schools, and make charter schools. And McAuliffe knows better than that."
Wagner is also wary of Youngkin’s affiliation with former President Donald Trump, and stories she’s heard of Youngkin promising to let Trump have a hand in governing Virginia.
“That’s just awful. I want no part of the Republican party like that,” Wagner said. “No part of it.”
-- Julia Mueller
FREDERICKSBURG, Virginia — For some voters outside of Hugh Mercer Elementary School on Election Day, which gubernatorial hopeful gets their vote comes down to education.
Caryn Vezina, 38, voted for Republican Glenn Youngkin. She said she likes his education politics and wants Virginia to go in another direction.
Vezina said Youngkin appeals to her experience as a mother and a preschool teacher.
“It didn’t make me happy that McAuliffe said that, you know, parents shouldn’t be involved with their children’s education,” Vezina said.
Vezina was referencing a statement Democrat Terry McAuliffe made in a gubernatorial debate on Sept. 29: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
Lawyer Shana Gertner, 42, cast her vote for the Democrat. She said she cares about access to education and wants to keep the state blue.
“My child is in private school, but I do care about public school and I do feel as though a lot of parents don’t really grasp the issues,” Gertner said.
-- Isabel Miller
STAFFORD, Va. — On a rainy Tuesday at H.H. Poole Middle School, voters expressed opposing sentiments on how views toward President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump will affect today’s elections.
Kayla Thrasher, a 23-year-old student and assistant manager at Weis Markets, is a Democrat who describes herself as “very liberal.” She equated voting for Glenn Youngkin with voting for Trump.
“I’m not completely happy with how Biden is running the country right now, but I’m definitely 100% against Trump, so I’m kind of just voting against him,” Thrasher said, explaining her vote for former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe.
However, some Republican voters criticized the role that Trump and Biden have played in local elections.
“The role that that’s playing in the [political] game right now is actually, I think, getting a little old,” said Michelle Merritt, a Republican, 38, who works as a realtor.
Merritt pointed to the McAuliffe ads that target those who oppose Trump, saying they wrongfully assume an association between local and presidential elections.
“I don’t think people are coming out today to vote for one [candidate] or the other because of the hatred of another candidate,” Merritt said. “I think they’re voting on their own opinion and making their own opinion based on just that candidate, not the hatred or the love of another candidate.”
-- Courtney Degen
Voters who identified as Democrats and Republicans said they were concerned about wages — an issue that both Terry McAuliffe and Glenn Youngkin have said they would address if elected.
Debbie Johnson, 56, voted for Youngkin after the candidate promised to increase pay for teachers. As Johnson’s daughter is a teacher, she said she feels strongly about the issue.
"I think teachers need to get paid more. I think increasing standards is important in schools," she said.
Danny Lopez, 51, voted for McAuliffe as a result of the Democrats' stance on paid family leave. “[It] is something that I’m kind of most interested in. I want him to win," Lopez said."
Another voter, Alex Fleche, 39, tied the issue of wages back to the pandemic and said, “I want to see the middle class built back up and people being able to have an opportunity to have a living wage.”
Fleche said he is a “Democratic supporter across the board,” and remains optimistic about the outcome of today’s election.
-- Allison Novelo and Annie Klingenberg
RICHMOND, Virginia – Education dominated concerns among voters outside the Richmond Public Library’s main branch in Henrico County.
“I think if teachers were to be fully respected — as politicians all say they should be — then they are in charge of children’s health and well-being and curriculum,” said Patti Wright, 69, of Richmond. “I am a little worried about that with this election.”
Wright, a retired schoolteacher, said she hopes people “will vote respectfully.”
Parental concerns over closures, mask mandates and so-called bias against white people in school curriculums pushed education issues to center stage in the gubernatorial race.
In their final campaign rallies ahead of Tuesday’s election, both Terry McAuliffe and Glen Youngkin discussed education.
McAuliffe on Sunday called for greater teacher diversity across the commonwealth. “We’ve got to diversify our teacher base here in Virginia,” the Democrat said at a rally in Charlottesville. He also promised to create a program to attract teachers of color, should he win the election.
Youngkin on Monday reaffirmed that he will “ban critical race theory in our schools,” despite an absence of material covering how racism operates in U.S. laws and society in the state’s K-12 curriculum.
“What we won’t do is teach our children to view everything through a lens of race, where we divide them into buckets and one group is an oppressor and the other is a victim and we pit them against each other and we steal their dreams,” Youngkin said to a crowd of several thousand in Loudoun County.
Youngkin's line of thinking mirrrored a concern of 22-year-old Virginia Commonwealth University medical student Douglas Hogan when casting his vote.
“Specifically, not teaching critical race theory, things like that, in our schools,” Hogan said. “Teaching kids to think for themselves, not based on their race.”
For Whitney Tidwell, 33, of Richmond, the election gave her an opportunity for a different kind of education: to teach her young son about the electoral process.
“We’ve been talking about voting and choosing who represents our community, the values, so to show him that process and to talk to him about how we vote for people that we want to represent our community,” said Tidwell, who is Black.
– Cristobella Durrette, Medill
LOUDOUN COUNTY, Virginia – “We gave raises to the teachers for the first time in more than a decade,” said Wendy Gooditis outside the Ida Lee Park Recreation Center in Leesburg.
Gooditis, a Democrat, is up for reelection as the delegate for the 10th District of the Virginia House.
Education has been a hot button topic among Virginia voters. Gooditis, a former teacher, said she and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe are “committed to doing more for teachers.”
Outside the polling center in Leesburg on a drizzly Tuesday morning, Gooditis greeted voters after they cast their ballots and thanked poll workers.
This was one of a host of stops throughout her district, where she said she plans on discussing education and COVID-19 misinformation with constituents.
“(If) some percent of the population is being told stuff that just isn’t true, that’s not a referendum on the policy. It’s basically a referendum on who’s believing the lies, because there’s so many lies out there,” Gooditis said.
– Andrew Marquardt and Jonathan Lehrfeld, Medill
The two candidates are running in a district that favors the GOP to replace former Rep. Steve Stivers, a Republican who resigned to take a job in the private sector.
Carey also has gotten a boost from national Republican groups and a campaign visit from former Vice President Mike Pence, according to The Columbus Dispatch.
Piner said the county only gave the precinct about 300 ballots for the day. They had surpassed that before noon.
"We've been very steady ... more than I expected," she said.
About 50 people in the precinct opted to vote early and more than 300 out of a total of 1,000 registered voters had voted in the morning — a number that shocked Piner.
"Normally, I would have thought we'd have 350 people for the entire day," she said. "We're going to surpass that, and it's not even noon."
Virginia's polls close at 7 p.m.
ATLANTA — Former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed is trying to return for a third term and City Council President Felicia Moore is seeking to move up to the top spot as voting concludes Tuesday in the city's mayoral race.
Confronting rising crime has been a major focus, but candidates have also addressed concerns about affordable housing, bolstering struggling city services and keeping the wealthy Buckhead neighborhood from seceding. Attacks on Reed over corruption in his administration have been a major subplot, although Reed says the federal investigation regarding him was closed without charges.
With a total of 14 candidates in the nonpartisan race, a Nov. 30 runoff is likely. Other top candidates include attorney Sharon Gay and council members Andre Dickens and Antonio Brown, with large numbers of voters undecided.
Meanwhile, Republicans are watching for any mistakes in Atlanta that could justify a state takeover of elections in heavily Democratic Fulton County, under a sweeping new state law approved amid unproven claims of fraud by former President Donald Trump and his allies.
The race was jolted when Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced in May that she wouldn't seek a second term. Bottoms broke a decades-long tradition of mayors serving eight years, saying she wasn't interested in a reelection bid. The last Atlanta mayor who served only a single term was Sam Massell, who lost to Maynard Jackson in 1973 as African Americans took power in city government.
– Associated Press
People with disabilities showed “large gains” in 2020’s voter turnout, said Steve Flamisch of Rutgers University’s Program for Disability Research, referring to a report by the university and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
Turnout rose to 17.7 million, up from 16 million in 2016, thanks to mail-in ballots and other initiatives, according to the group, which looked at national data.
In Boston, the contest between city council members Annissa Essaibi George and Michelle Wu means whomever wins will become the city’s first woman and first person of color elected mayor.
The candidates, both Democrats in a nonpartisan race, have chiefly clashed over issues such as affordable housing, public education and transportation. But differences on policing and crime have also emerged.
Wu, daughter of Taiwanese immigrants and a protégé of liberal Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, has called for major police reforms. Before she was a candidate, Wu joined other city council members in calling for a 10% cut to the police department’s budget.
Essaibi George, who describes herself as Polish-Arab American, has opposed reallocating the money and has called for hiring several hundred more police officers. She was endorsed by former Boston police Commissioner William Gross.
– Associated Press
Eleven Democrats, two Republicans and a handful of other candidates are running in the southern Florida district.
The special general election is scheduled for Jan. 11.
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