Virginia Governor's Race Reaches Past Candidates

That kind of threat is exactly what Bannon has been delivering on the Republican side. He and his allies have pressured Gillespie, who won a close primary against an ultraconservative opponent, to run as an immigrant-bashing nationalist.

It's a big shift for Gillespie, a prototype Republican establishmentarian. He's a former party chair who is close to the Bush family and lobbies for powerful interests in Washington. (Northam rails about "Enron Ed," noting that Gillespie worked for the scandal-ridden and now defunct Texas energy company.)

In person, Gillespie remains that old-fashioned conservative. Appearing before a business group last week, for example, he talked about lower taxes, less regulation, small business job creators and the virtues of outsourcing government work to private contractors.

In his advertising, though, he's more in the Bannon mold. One Gillespie campaign commercial accuses Northam of enabling sanctuary cities, shielding illegal immigrants and protecting the murderous MS-13 gang members, replete with pictures of violent thugs. Virginia doesn't have sanctuary cities; the thugs had been photographed in a prison in El Salvador.

He's come out for keeping statues of Confederate war leaders on the state capitol grounds. And he attacked Democrats for restoring voting rights to some convicted felons even though Virginia remains one of only four states that don't automatically restore the right to vote after prisoners have served their sentences.

A Washington Post editorial called the ads "poisonous," convincingly arguing that they reflect "Trump's brand of divisive, scaremongering politics." This seems to have satisfied Bannon, who has been quick to attack other regular Republicans.

Still, Gillespie rarely mentions Trump, who remains unpopular in Virginia, a state he lost to Clinton by five percentage points. There's a debate in Republican circles over whether bringing in Trump next week to excite right-wing voters would help or hurt.

"Just as Trump doesn't reveal his military strategy, we don't reveal our political strategy," said Pete Snyder, the Gillespie campaign chairman. "Everything is on the table."

Gillespie, experienced and energetic, is a better retail politician than the low-key, folksy Northam, a former U.S. Army doctor and pediatric neurologist. On the other hand, unlike other recent elections, polls show that Virginia's Democratic voters are more motivated than Republican ones, which could boost their turnout above the levels that helped McAuliffe prevail four years ago.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

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