Virginia’s Popular Governor Risked It All on Abortion. Oops.

When you get down to it, being the Republican governor of a blue state is a pretty good gig. With the legislature typically controlled by Democrats, your Larry Hogans and Chris Christies can spend their time tinkering with the state budget or railing against the excesses of the other side without having to worry too much about enacting a conservative agenda that would make them unpopular with the liberal-leaning people who elected them.

That could have been the path for Glenn Youngkin, the lanky, boyish governor of Virginia. Cut some deals with Democratic lawmakers, enjoy a little friendly sparring with the crew of Morning Joe, and head into retirement with a book deal, some corporate board seats, and maybe a stint at the Harvard Institute of Politics.

But Youngkin chose a riskier path, putting all his chips on new restrictions on abortion, and on Tuesday, he lost that bet. Democrats have won back control of the state House of Delegates and kept the state Senate, a resounding win that means they can not only block his attempts to limit abortion, but begin the process of putting a constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion access before voters—a move he can’t yet veto.

Election night dashed a plan long in the making. A former hedge fund manager who had never served in office before being elected governor, Youngkin had put on his signature red sweater-vest, barnstormed the state, and spent down his campaign war chest to boost Republican candidates for the Virginia General Assembly. His goal was to cobble together a narrow majority that would give the GOP total control of a state that Joe Biden won by more than 10 percentage points.

The candidates predictably focused on bread-and-butter issues like crime and education on the campaign trail and in most of their ads. But Youngkin’s focus-grouped and poll-tested Big Idea was to neutralize the issue of abortion—a losing issue for Republicans since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year—by focusing on a 15-week ban, with exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.

If the plan had worked, Youngkin would have instantly been a national Republican hero, showing the party how to overcome its greatest weakness with suburban women voters in a key state. Already, some big-money donors nervous about Donald Trump’s chances of winning next November had been talking up Youngkin as a potential savior who could swoop into the Republican presidential primary and be offered as an alternative.

That was about as likely to happen as, well, Larry Hogan or Chris Christie beating Trump. But it’s definitively over now, and Youngkin’s abortion plan is a big reason. Voters keep telling Republicans they want to protect access to abortion. In 2022, they rejected anti-abortion measures in Kansas, Kentucky, and Montana and backed abortion rights measures in California, Michigan, and Vermont. Earlier this year, they flipped the majority in the Wisconsin state Supreme Court over the issue. And on Tuesday, they enshrined abortion rights in the Ohio state constitution. Virginia proved no different.

Youngkin’s team, which included some heavy-hitters of the powerful Republican consulting world, thought they’d cracked the code because independent-leaning women in focus groups were more supportive of a 15-week ban than six-week bans. So they included exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother—a sticking point that has tripped up other Republican candidates. They very carefully avoided the word “ban,” preferring to call it a “limit.” And Youngkin promised that Republicans wouldn’t try to pass anything stricter than his proposal.

It didn’t work. But the whole exercise raised the question of why he tried in the first place. After all, the easiest way to neutralize the issue of abortion would have been to vow not to sign any bill. Take Hogan, the popular two-term governor of Maryland. Although he describes himself as a pro-life Catholic, he basically took a pass on the issue, saying it was “settled law,” and only vetoed a bill that would have expanded abortion access in his last year in office, as he was mulling his own presidential bid.

It’s possible Youngkin feels strongly on the issue, personally. I once watched him take the stage at a campaign rally to “Spirit in the Sky,” pointing upward when Norman Greenbaum sang “gotta have a friend in Jesus” with the energy of a youth pastor putting on a show at Vacation Bible School. And he once said he would sign any bill restricting abortion “happily and gleefully.” These are not the words of a man who thinks this is settled law.

But Youngkin also knows Republican primary voters care about abortion. If he wanted to jump into the presidential race against Trump, he’d need to establish his bona fides on the issue. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a 15-week ban in 2022 and then followed it up by signing a six-week abortion ban a year later.

Youngkin’s also running out of time. Virginia governors cannot serve consecutive terms, which means they start thinking about their next job almost as soon as they take office.* In recent years, that’s led most of them to gaze northward across the Potomac River and wonder if they have what it takes to be president. In fact, since the 1980s, every governor of Virginia except Ralph Northam and Tim Kaine has either run for president or been talked about as a potential contender. The closest any of them came was when Kaine was picked as Hillary Clinton’s running mate, which (as you may remember) did not end well.

Youngkin will now join that rogue’s gallery. The state once known as “the birthplace of presidents” for producing eight of them—including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Woodrow Wilson—is now more like the graveyard of presidential ambition.

But if there’s any solace for Youngkin, it’s that he remains popular there, with a 57 percent approval rating over the summer in one poll—numbers Biden can only dream about. That rating would have tanked if he’d won control of the legislature and started doing things like restricting abortion—and actually running for president would have doomed him even more in his home state. But this is the Faustian bargain of a Republican governor of a blue state, doomed to be popular only because you can’t really do what you want.