The Virginia Governor’s Race Has Exposed A Big Immigration Problem For Democrats

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The Federalist

The Virginia Governor’s Race Has Exposed A Big Immigration Problem For Democrats

By making immigration an issue, Republican Ed Gillespie is challenging Democrat Ralph Northam to answer for his party: do Democrats believe in borders?

 By John Daniel DavidsonOCTOBER 27, 2017

The gubernatorial election in Virginia is less than two weeks away, and of course it’s drawing national attention as a bellwether for the prospects of both major parties in the age of Trump, which to a large extent it is.

The odd thing about the race is that Republican candidate Ed Gillespie and Democratic candidate Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam don’t belong to the rising populist factions of their respective parties. Gillespie, a former Republican National Committee chair, is more or less a centrist Republican who beat a Trumpian candidate in the GOP primary. In the Democratic primary, Northam beat former Rep. Tom Perriello, a progressive who had the endorsements of progressive Democratic standard-bearers Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

So you might think the race wouldn’t be about supposedly “populist issues” like illegal immigration, sanctuary cities, and how many Central American MS-13 gang members live in Fairfax County. But it has been.