The News
A government shutdown would unfold just weeks before statewide elections in New Jersey and Virginia, with furloughs and layoffs hitting while more voters are tuning in.
But neither party expects to get an advantage from the resulting chaos, in either state.
It’s a surprising reality that points to how little the risk of a shutdown has broken through with voters or outside-the-Beltway media. Democrats are confident that voters would associate a shutdown with the Trump administration and see any layoffs as an extension of Elon Musk’s unpopular DOGE, but they’re not planning to hammer it home.
And Republicans sense they have other, stronger issues to close out their off-year races, viewing the shutdown as more of a distraction.
“If you ask the average Joe or Jane at a diner what’s on their mind, I don’t think a shutdown is one of the first 10 things,” said Chris Russell, a strategist for Jack Ciattarelli, the GOP nominee for governor of New Jersey.
Strategists in both states said the government funding debate was not coming up organically outside of Washington. Even in Virginia, home to hundreds of thousands of federal workers who’ve been laid off or fear that they might be, Democrats said that gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger was well-positioned to talk about the impact — but not to seize on a reality that state voters have already internalized.
“Trump’s been firing federal workers, shutting down federal agencies; that’s kind of already baked in,” said Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va., who won a landslide victory in the DC suburbs this month. “I think that people will see this potential shutdown through that lens.”
As Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., put it: “I don’t think the Virginia voters are making a political statement, trying to figure out the politics of it.”
Know More
At the Capitol, Democrats were making as much noise around a potential shutdown as they could. House Republicans left the city after passing their funding resolution; Democrats returned to the House to demand a new vote that would add back health care funding.
Rep. Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic nominee for governor of New Jersey, did not return to the city for the party’s press conferences or protests. Spanberger was spending Tuesday in Bristol, Va., a six-hour drive from DC, campaigning against cuts to rural hospitals.
Democrats were fine with their non-involvement.
“The Republicans have shut down the government. I mean, they’re not even here,” Scott said after joining a Democratic protest on the House floor.
GOP gubernatorial nominee Winsome Earle-Sears “ought to be calling people, telling them to get in town,” he added.
Federal employee layoffs are less of an issue in New Jersey, where they make up a far smaller share of the workforce, than in Virginia. Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., said that Sherrill had effectively run as a brawler against the Trump administration, using her first debate with Ciattarelli to denounce education and health care funding cuts.
“She’s saying, ‘I’m going to fight,’ whereas Jack says he agrees with Trump,” said Pallone. “The bottom line is that Republicans are in charge of everything in Washington.”
Meanwhile, Republicans have run on other issues in both states and are upbeat about signs they’ve narrowed a polling gap from the summer.
Earle-Sears has campaigned at northern Virginia school boards against inclusive LGBTQ policies in schools and accused Democrats of fostering violent hate against conservatives.
Ciattarelli had run on cost-cutting — even the possibility of an “NJDOGE” — and, more recently, the release of military records that revealed Sherrill refused to turn in fellow US Naval Academy students involved in a cheating scandal.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if Democrats want to change the subject, away from Sherrill refusing to release her Naval Academy disciplinary records,” Russell said.
Some of the jump-ball politics of the shutdown in Virginia may stem from threats by the Trump administration to lay off more federal workers if Democrats don’t give in.
Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., who represents the DC suburbs closest to the city, recounted what he heard in a Monday night tele-town hall, which included some federal workers.
“There’s a lot of people who absolutely want us to stand firm and shut down the government if necessary,” said Beyer. “And then there are those afraid of the [OMB Director Russ] Vought threats that he may fire a whole bunch of them.”
Other Democrats, however, saw the president starting to hand them more fodder to paint him as unreasonable as the midnight Wednesday deadline drew closer.
“We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible and bad for them, like cutting vast numbers of people out,” Trump said at an Oval Office press conference on Tuesday. “Cutting things they like, cutting programs they like.”
That would not fly in his state, said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va.
“The idea of threatening to fire federal workers willy-nilly shows plain disrespect,” Warner told Semafor. “I don’t think that bodes well for people who say: No, we need to bring more MAGA to Virginia.”
Even as the president and his party tried to blame Democrats for what could happen next, some Republicans saw it as almost inevitable that Virginia voters would punish them somewhat.
“I do think that blame will be laid at Republicans’ feet, no matter what,” said Matthew Hurtt, the chairman of the Arlington County GOP. “It feels like the layoffs are exclusively going to Democrats, who were going to be voting for Spanberger anyway.”
Room for Disagreement
Mark Harris, a strategist for the Earle-Sears campaign in Virginia, said GOP surrogates had hammered Democrats on the shutdown, and that the candidate had been working it into her speeches.
He was ready to run an ad against Spanberger if the clock ran out with no deal: “She is a part of DC, and part of that dysfunction.”
David and Eleanor’s View
Every shutdown is different — and voters are starting to tune out of all of them.
Spanberger and Sherrill got to DC in January 2019, the first time that a new House was sworn in while the government was shut down. The legacy of that Trump-instigated shutdown: House Republicans had a pretty good 2020 election, gaining back seats they’d lost in 2018.
The proximity of this year’s elections to a potential shutdown — early voting is already underway in Virginia — hasn’t altered that thinking. Democrats believe Trump has associated the GOP’s brand with federal worker layoffs, including the sort of firings that would have been news had they been forced in prior shutdowns.
They could be proven wrong if Republicans lean harder into the “Schumer shutdown” messaging they’re dusting off from prior years. But so far, neither side is ready to rip up its late-game strategy.
Notable
- In the American Prospect, David Dayen and Whitney Curry Wimbish argue that the government has been “shut down for months,” lowering the political pressure of a shutdown.
- In the Daily Wire, Mary Margaret Olohan talks with one of the validators that Republicans will use if there’s a shutdown: The National Association of Police Organizations, which warns that a shutdown will lead to more crime.