美国国家公共电台 NPR In Virginia, Both Parties Use Trump To Turn Out The Base（在线收听）

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

There's no such thing as an off year for voters in Virginia from politics. The state holds a gubernatorial election Tuesday. The race looks tight. The state's often seen as a political bellwether, and the stakes feel especially high this year following the 2016 presidential campaign. As NPR's Sarah McCammon reports, both major parties in Virginia wrestle with internal divisions in a year that's all about turning out the base.

SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: Republican Ed Gillespie's resume is arguably straight out of the D.C. swamp that President Trump has promised to drain. He's a former Republican National Committee chairman, George W. Bush administration adviser and lobbyist. His Democratic opponent, Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam has tried to paint Gillespie as a Washington politician out to benefit himself, in contrast with his own background as a pediatric neurologist. None of that bothers Trump supporter Laurie Posner who came to hear Gillespie speak this week.

LAURIE POSNER: Everything that Trump wants for America, Gillespie wants that, too.

MCCAMON: Posner is a retired paramedic. She wore a black Make America Great Again hat to a Republican get out the vote event in Fredericksburg, Va. She says Gillespie is saying what she needs to hear about issues like immigration.

POSNER: He will follow the agenda of our president, and that's what we need.

MCCAMON: Gillespie has been working to energize Trump supporters like Posner without turning off moderates by aligning too closely with the president. He's run controversial ads focusing on crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. But he's never brought his own party's sitting president to Virginia to campaign for him. Onstage in Fredericksburg before a nearly all-white audience, Gillespie alluded to the racial and identity politics that have popped up in the campaign.

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ED GILLESPIE: And I'm sure you've seen this vile, despicable ad that was running.

MCCAMON: That ad by an outside group, the Latino Victory Fund, depicted children from racial and religious minorities running away from a pickup truck with a Gillespie bumper sticker. It was quickly pulled, and Gillespie criticized Northam for not disavowing it.

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GILLESPIE: But the lieutenant governor defended that ad and failed to disavow it. Is that the kind of leadership we need in Virginia right now?

UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: No.

GILLESPIE: No, it is not.

MCCAMON: Meanwhile, Northam has also faced attacks from the left wing of the Democratic Party. This week, he told a Norfolk TV station he'd be willing to sign a bill banning sanctuary cities for undocumented immigrants.

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RALPH NORTHAM: If that bill comes to my desk, Andy (ph), I sure will. I've always been opposed to sanctuary cities.

MCCAMON: The liberal group Democracy For America responded with a scathing statement calling Northam's campaign disastrous and racist. In an effort to shore up support with core voters, Northam has been campaigning with prominent black Democrats.

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NORTHAM: Are you all fired up?

(APPLAUSE)

UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: Yeah.

NORTHAM: Ready to go?

UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: Yeah.

MCCAMON: Northam borrowed President Obama's famous line while campaigning with New Jersey Senator Cory Booker in the D.C. suburbs this week. He painted Virginia's governor's race as a referendum on Trump.

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NORTHAM: We cannot let what we saw in 2016 and now what we're watching in Washington, D.C. - we can't accept that as being the new normal. And I don't know about you, but I'm proud to be a Democrat.

MCCAMON: In this off-year campaign where turnout is low, both parties are making the race about President Trump.

Sarah McCammon, NPR News, Fredericksburg, Va.

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