ANNANDALE, Va. — Katherine White spent numerous hours this yr organizing voters to again Joseph R. Biden Jr. for president.
One in every of tens of millions of suburban girls who turned politically energetic for the primary time after Donald J. Trump’s election in 2016, Ms. White is among the many coterie of Biden voters processing his victory by enthusiastic about what comes subsequent.
She won’t have to attend lengthy — Virginia’s 2021 governor’s contest is already underway, with three main Democratic candidates declared and two extra planning to enter the race as quickly as subsequent week. The massive query Ms. White and different Democrats within the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington are asking themselves now could be whether or not the Biden political template — a gentle, skilled white man — is what they need from Democrats within the post-Trump period.
Mr. Biden’s victory was powered by suburban voters, particularly girls like Ms. White, who have been motivated through the major and the final election by what they perceived because the existential risk of a second time period for the president. With out Mr. Trump on the poll, Ms. White and different liberal suburban girls want to see the Democratic Celebration put ahead extra candidates that appear to be them — and they don’t seem to be fascinated by ready for much longer.
“We’re past what the nation was searching for after they elected Biden, I believe Virginia is past that,” mentioned Ms. White, 56, whose group, Network NoVA, serves as a collective for dozens of liberal teams within the Washington suburbs. “That’s the place we’ve to guide; that we don’t want a white man to take us again to get us elected. We are able to do that in Virginia.”
Fairfax County, which incorporates Ms. White’s hometown, Annandale, has in a single era remodeled from a spot that George W. Bush carried within the 2000 presidential election to one of many nation’s most dependable Democratic strongholds. Fairfax gave 70 percent of its vote to Mr. Biden, a bigger proportion than the occasion’s conventional battleground state strongholds in Milwaukee County, Wis., or Wayne County, Mich., which incorporates Detroit.
In close by Arlington and Alexandria, greater than 80 p.c of voters picked Mr. Biden. Loudoun County, a battleground as not too long ago as 2016, gave Mr. Biden 61 p.c of its vote and Mr. Biden carried exurban Stafford County, the primary time a Democratic presidential nominee won there since 1976.
Northern Virginia is anticipated to supply about half the vote within the June Democratic major for Virginia governor, a race that for months has included two Black girls — Jennifer McClellan, a 15-year state legislator; and Jennifer Carroll Foy, a member of the Home of Delegates first elected in 2017 — and Justin Fairfax, Virginia’s lieutenant governor, who can be Black.
Virginia legislation forbids governors from searching for consecutive phrases. The outgoing governor, Democrat Ralph Northam, served as Mr. McAuliffe’s lieutenant governor and in February 2019 was ensnared in a cascading scandal when he apologized for, then later denied, posing in blackface in {a photograph} that appeared in his medical college yearbook. On the similar time, Mr. Fairfax was accused by two women of sexual assault years earlier. He denied the allegations.
Interviews final week with greater than a dozen Democratic activists in Northern Virginia discovered a bunch of voters thrilled with Mr. Biden’s success and craving for him to comply with by on marketing campaign guarantees to cease the unfold of the coronavirus, tackle revenue inequality and racial justice disparities and reverse Trump administration insurance policies on the setting.
But it surely additionally discovered an citizens hungry to transcend Mr. Biden’s heal-the-soul-of-America politics and set a marker for progressive politics in a Virginia that Mr. Biden carried by greater than 10 proportion factors. That end result gave each Democrat interviewed confidence that whoever wins the first will win the final election subsequent November.
The 2 introduced Republican candidates within the race are Kirk Cox, a former speaker of the House of Delegates, and Amanda Chase, a state senator in the mold of Mr. Trump.
“I by no means had any doubt that there could be an issue getting Joe Biden elected in Virginia,” mentioned Joanne Collins of Reston, Va., who’s a frontrunner of a neighborhood chapter of Indivisible, the progressive grass-roots organization that started after the 2016 election. “That didn’t even cross my thoughts. And I believe the governor’s race goes to be related.”
Robbin Warner, who formed an organization that mailed more than 460,000 postcards to voters this fall, mentioned her volunteers have been energized concerning the prospect of Virginia electing its first feminine governor after an unbroken string of 73 males that started with Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson.
“We like our Jennifers, and we’re very enthusiastic about having two great girls working,” she mentioned. “They’re succesful, they’re articulate, they’re responsive, they perceive Virginia. They’re what we have been so excited to work at, bringing extra progressive concepts, extra grass-roots concepts, specializing in girls.”
The issue for each girls working for governor is that, as occurred within the presidential major, they threaten to cancel one another out, leaving a large lane for Mr. McAuliffe amongst voters who worth his expertise as governor at a time when the nation is struggling to handle the coronavirus and resuscitate an financial system that by the point of the June major could have been battered by the pandemic for greater than a yr.
“The disappearance of Trump isn’t going to alter the truth that folks’s youngsters aren’t in class and jobs have disappeared, and so they’re going to be searching for individuals who can resolve these issues,” mentioned Dan Helmer, a Democratic state lawmaker who represents western Fairfax County and is unaligned within the governor’s race.
Although Mr. McAuliffe has not but entered the race, aides to candidates already within the race have lengthy assumed his entry into it and have wasted little time in addressing his potential political liabilities. Virginia’s turnout in 2013, when Mr. McAuliffe was elected governor, was simply 43 p.c, among the lowest turnout figures in the state’s modern history. The lone time Virginia Democrats nominated a Black candidate for governor, in 1989, 67 p.c of the state’s registered voters turned out to elect L. Douglas Wilder, the nation’s first elected Black governor.
And Mr. McAuliffe, as did Mr. Biden, has a protracted political file that may seem totally different in 2021 than it did when he was governor. In 2015, Mr. McAuliffe ended the issuance of Virginia license plates bearing the Accomplice flag however, like most of the state’s main Democrats on the time, opposed taking down Accomplice statues in Richmond, the state’s capital.
“It is part of our heritage,” he said then. “It’s who we’re in Virginia. And it’s an essential a part of our heritage. The flag is totally different.” In 2017, after white nationalists marched on Charlottesville, Va., Mr. McAuliffe modified his thoughts and called for the monuments to come down.
Mr. McAuliffe’s supporters describe him because the steadiest hand to guide the state throughout what is anticipated to be a well being and financial disaster. And his aides level out that his political motion committee was the largest single donor to the state Democratic Party through the 2019 elections, when Democrats flipped management of each the State Senate and the Home of Delegates.
And Mr. McAuliffe’s aides are sure to say assist from Mr. Biden, who during a March campaign rally in Norfolk referred to Mr. McAuliffe as “the as soon as and future governor of Virginia.” (A Biden aide declined to say if the reward constituted an endorsement.)
Monique Alcala, a former president of the Democratic Celebration of Virginia’s Latino Caucus, was a supporter of Senator Elizabeth Warren through the 2020 presidential primaries earlier than taking a job as Mr. Biden’s coalitions director for Virginia. Now she mentioned Mr. McAuliffe was the only option as a result of he is aware of the right way to handle Virginia’s authorities.
“As we’re coping with unprecedented challengers with Covid, as we’re coping with financial uncertainty, persons are going to take a look at his experiences as governor,” mentioned Ms. Alcala, who lives in Alexandria. “They will need someone with expertise main throughout occasions of disaster, and I believe Terry is the one to do this.”
But among the many crowd of Northern Virginia Democratic activists who have been girls, Ms. Alcala’s valuing of expertise is outweighed by the prospect of electing the commonwealth’s first feminine governor.
“It will ship an actual message to Virginia and possibly the nation that Virginia is on a distinct path,” mentioned Heidi Zollo, who began an Indivisible chapter in Herndon, Va., after the 2016 election.
Ms. Zollo supported Mr. Biden within the 2020 major as a result of she noticed him as having the most effective probability of beating Mr. Trump. Now she needs Virginia Democrats to place ahead both Ms. McClellan or Ms. Carroll Foy, she mentioned, to “present that we take girls and girls of shade critically and we’d be assured and comfy of their management.”
And Lisa Gross sales, who’s the chairwoman of the Fairfax County Fee for Ladies, mentioned she “loves and adores” Mr. McAuliffe however that the time had come for Virginia to elect a lady as governor.
“The one means we get our points addressed is by having extra girls in workplace,” she mentioned. “This concept {that a} white man being essentially the most electable, it’s a false premise. Electing a lady governor is lengthy overdue. White guys must get behind girls, and males must get behind girls, particularly girls of shade.”