Why Terry McAuliffe Made the Smart Call

Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D-VA)

This past week, something that normally would be run-of-the-mill but has since become a shock happened-a major, prominent Democrat decided not to run for president.  Terry McAuliffe, the former governor of Virginia and a longtime political ally of the Clintons, announced that he would decline a run for the White House in 2020, instead focusing on helping the Democrats win back the State Senate and General Assembly, both houses that the Republicans hold the slimmest of majorities in.  I thought this was worth discussing on the blog here, both because I'm already a little Democratic Primaried out (it will go in waves-I'll be into it once the first round of sniping at each other is over), and because it's always fascinating to watch how different, ambitious politicians approach their quest for further influence and power.

It's worth noting that Terry McAuliffe has always been an unlikely survivor when it comes to politics.  He spent most of the 1990's as one of the biggest figures in the Clinton circles, raising money for the 42nd president, but also gaining a rather seedy reputation for mixing his business connections with his political influence & fundraising (this was a problem that a lot in Bill Clinton's circle had during the 1990's, and indeed that continued to be a problem headed into Hillary's presidential runs).  He served four years as DNC Chair, eventually ending his tenure as an easy punching bag for not getting John Kerry elected in 2004, and eventually became a major figure in Hillary Clinton's failed 2008 bid for president.  After that, in 2009, he ran a distant second in the Virginia gubernatorial primary, and most people assumed he'd slide into the private sector, only to be heard of on primetime round tables on CNN election nights like all former DNC chairs.

But McAuliffe pulled off one of the most remarkable second acts I've seen in recent political history.  In 2013, Barack Obama had just won reelection, historically a bad harbinger for people of the same party in Virginia gubernatorial contests, but McAuliffe paid it no mind and decided to pursue a second run for Virginia's governor.  Many of the most serious candidates (people like Tom Perriello and Chap Peterson) declined to run in what was surely a losing race, and the Democrats appeared to suck-it-up and assume that at least McAuliffe would be a good fundraiser, perhaps helping the rest of the ticket, but that he'd ultimately lose and this would be the end of McAuliffe, leading the way for someone better in 2017.  That didn't happen though-the Republicans biffed by nominating AG Ken Cuccinelli, a hard-right winger who was too conservative for the purple-headed-blue state, and perhaps the only person that McAuliffe could beat, and he did.  More shocking-McAuliffe, given the first personal electoral victory of his career, enjoyed a celebrated tenure as governor.  He was popular when he left office, oversaw huge drops in unemployment, was a major figure in voting rights reform & on LGBTQ issues, and created the sort of left-of-center profile that would certainly play well in a Democratic primary.

So why isn't he running for president at the age of 62?  I think it's partially because McAuliffe is aware that some of the demons of his time in the 1990's aren't erased yet.  In the same way that Joe Biden is going to repeatedly hear the words "Anita Hill" for the next 12 months, McAuliffe's associations with the Clinton administration would be a liability.  Terry McAuliffe is someone no one would accuse of being uniquely self-aware (if he was, he never would've run for public office in the first place), but he certainly saw the writing on the wall here.  But I also don't think that he has given up on presidential hopes for himself, either, and knows that the best way to distinguish himself would be to regain power in an increasingly blue state, which feels exactly like what's happening here.

Virginia has weird term limit laws-you can't run for reelection as governor, but you can run for non-consecutive terms.  In the past year, Ralph Northam and Mark Herring both admitted to doing blackface in the 1980's, while Justin Fairfax has been accused of sexual assault.  Assuming that neither of the state's two senators were to run for governor (seems doubtful considering they both have turned down such opportunities in the past), that means there are no statewide Democrats who are scandal-free headed into the 2021 governor's race, and that's an opportunity of which McAuliffe could take advantage.  Considering his well-liked tenure as governor from 2014-2018, he'd start out as a frontrunner, especially with none of those men in the race, and if he were to be elected with a Democratic State Senate & General Assembly, he could quickly rack up wins on healthcare and other hot-button Democratic issues that could play well in a race for president in 2024 or 2028, when he'll still be relatively young, certainly compared to leading presidential candidates of this year like Bernie Sanders & Joe Biden.  Terry McAuliffe has had a knack in past years for seeing opportunity when others didn't-it's entirely possible that same instinct could pay off for him with his decision to focus on the local rather than national in 2019.