BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY
Former President Barack Obama joins New Jersey Democratic candidate for Governor Mikie Sherrill at a ‘Get out the vote’ rally. Credit: Getty Images
If you’ve long awaited or eagerly anticipated your chance to speak your mind, or have just been really frustrated with the state of our country, the wait is over. You can express all those feelings at the ballot box tomorrow.
We have read your comments and feel your pain. Here’s the remedy: Vote, even if the guy you’d like to vote against is busy upending democracy and not on any ballot in Tuesday’s off-year elections. Your vote matters. Your vote counts.
Election Day 2025 represents the first opportunity to do something consequential since the president took office. Gatherings like the No Kings rallies are important, opinion polls give us a glimpse, but voting is the best way to actually enact change and send a decisive message.
For the Democratic Party, the races are a chance to recover from their trouncing in 2024. For Republicans, it will be the first test of their ability to measure and weather the popularity of the current occupant of the White House. For the candidates in almost every race around the country, he is very much top of mind.
Virginia Is For Bellwethers
This state is in his backyard and is home to one of his many golf courses, but the president has yet to campaign for Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears. He has only recently and tepidly endorsed her. Earle-Sears’s opponent, Rep. Abigail Spanberger, has been leading in the polls since January. The latest has her up by double digits.
Spanberger is a former CIA operations officer and mother of three who felt compelled to run for Congress after the MAGA cult swept into power in 2016. She was part of the “Blue wave” that wrangled back the House in 2018.
Virginia’s proximity to Washington, D.C. means it is home to about 150,000 federal workers, who have either been laid-off, furloughed, or are currently working without pay. So, although the president’s name won’t appear on the ballot, the effects of his policies will play a big role in who will become the next governor.
Pulling Out All The Stops In New Jersey
Many eyes are on the governor’s race in New Jersey, a blue state where the president made significant inroads, especially with Latino voters. Though he lost the state in 2024, he lost by 10 points less than he did in 2020. And New Jersey has a long history of flipping between parties in its gubernatorial elections, with no party holding the office for three consecutive terms in more than 60 years.
The race is between Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy pilot and federal prosecutor, who is another member of the 2018 “Blue Wave”and her opponent, Jack Ciattarelli, a former state representative, who has run and lost in the two previous governor’s races.
Ciattarelli has been endorsed by the president but has not seen him on the campaign trail. A Rutgers University poll found that 52% of New Jersey voters said Donald Trump was a “major factor” in the governor’s race, which is why Sherrill is trying to tie Ciattarelli to Trump and his unpopular policies.
While Sherrill is leading in the polls, it is only by single digits. Democratic heavy hitters such as President Barack Obama and former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg have been campaigning for Sherrill to try to widen that gap.
Mayoral Mayhem In New York
The race for New York City mayor is often one with considerable national attention. This year, it’s even drawing heavy international interest. There’ll be books written about this for years to come.
After Eric Adams, the failing and corrupt current Democratic mayor, was saved by Trump, he tried unsuccessfully to secure the Democratic nomination for mayor, as did former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Both men were beaten by political upstart Zohran Mamdani, a 34 year-old, three-term state assemblyman, who is a democratic socialist.
Mamdani has energized an often jaded New York electorate by focusing on the city’s affordability crisis. He has a rabid and young fan base and 90,000 volunteers. Polls have him with a double-digit lead over Cuomo, who is now running as a Trump-endorsed independent candidate, and Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate.
Come Wednesday, pundits and strategists will dissect these three races to suss out what it means for Democrats and Republicans across the country. Democrats need all the help they can get as they attempt to craft a message and an agenda that resonates nationally ahead of the 2026 midterms.
While Mamdani is considered far-left and Spanberger and Sherrill are centrists, what the three candidates have in common is authenticity and campaigns focused on affordability.
California’s Redistricting Gambit
While not a race, a ballot initiative in California is being called a national campaign.
After the Texas legislature voted in favor of questionable legal, mid-decade redistricting at the behest of the president, California Governor Gavin Newsom decided to fight electoral fire with fire. He put Proposition 50 on the ballot. California requires a state-wide ballot initiative to change the redistricting rules. If it passes, California’s redistricting will counter Texas’s going into the 2026 midterms.
Newsom has raised more than $114 million in less than three months to support Prop. 50. All indications are that the measure will pass, as voters are motivated to stop the president’s anti-democratic schemes.
The election comes at a particularly bad time for Republicans, if you believe the latest polls. Two new ones out today have Trump’s unfavorability at its highest level since taking office in January. In both the CBS News/YouGov poll and the ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll, 59% of Americans disapprove of Trump, while 41% approve.
The president is underwater on every issue, especially the economy, Americans’ top concern. In a new CNN poll, the president’s approval among Independents, young people, and people of color, voters who helped him win back the White House, has dipped significantly. They are all below 30%.
The government shutdown and the subsequent fight over funding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) have not improved Trump’s popularity. While both parties are catching blame, Trump and Republicans are shouldering more of the criticism.
SNAP has become the third rail of shutdowns. You don’t let people go hungry to prove a political point. All while the president is building multimillion-dollar ballrooms, buying private jets for his cabinet members, and traveling around Asia rather than working to end the shutdown. Not only is he not working to end it, he is actively avoiding meeting with Democrats.
No one likes politics or politicians much these days, but our representative democracy asks us to participate in the process by voting. So, even if you don’t live in Virginia, or New Jersey, or California, or New York City, there is a better than even chance an election is being held in your city or town right now.
As former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill famously and accurately quipped, “all politics is local.” So go vote for that vacancy on the school board, for a local proposition to change a state or local law, or for a new judge. Exercising your right to vote is the most patriotic thing you can do. It is also essential to preserving our fragile democracy.
NYA Thanks Dan Rather and Team Steady!