Biden enters fray as poll looms as referendum on presidency

Joe Biden has come out fighting in a state election deemed a referendum on his presidency.

US President Joe Biden takes a selfie with supporters at a campaign rally in Arlington, Virginia, on Wednesday. Picture: AFP

Joe Biden has come out fighting against a Trump-backed candidate in the race for the Virginia governorship in what is shaping as a referendum on the US President and an indicator of how Democrats will fair in next year’s midterm elections.

In a state Mr Biden won by 10 percentage points, polling has Democrat Terry McAuliffe running neck-and-neck with Glenn Youngkin, with a late surge for the Republican being attributed to the President’s own plummeting ratings.

Mr McAuliffe, 64, is seen as a close ally of Mr Biden, whose approval ratings are at 43.4 per cent – lower than any of his predecessors at this point in the presidency except Donald Trump – while his disapproval is at a high of 50.9 per cent.

A week out from the election, several thousand Virginians braved a windy 14C evening on Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT) to catch a glimpse of the President at a rally where Democrats repeatedly attempted to cast Mr Youngkin as a right-wing extremist.

“He’s gone from banning a woman’s right to choose (abortion) to banning books,” Mr Biden said of Mr Youngkin, branding the former chief executive of the Carlyle Group, one of the world’s biggest private equity firms, as an “acolyte” of Mr Trump.

“Let’s be clear, this is a guy who doesn’t know much about anything.”

Mr Youngkin, 54, has made parental rights over schooling a central theme of his campaign, tapping into growing concern public schools have been teaching a divisive curriculum based on historical grievances. Last week he argued that parents should be able to protect their children from violent and sexually explicit books.

Mr McAuliffe, who served as governor from 2014 to 2018, has promised to lift the minimum wage to $US15 an hour and increase teachers’ pay above the national average. He has also played down the role of parents in choosing the curriculum, prompting a ferocious backlash from Republicans.

The November 2 election, the second state poll this year after Gavin Newsom was returned as Governor of California in September, is seen as vital for the Democrats – who hold a wafer-thin majority in congress – as they prepare for next year’s midterms.

Public support for Mr Biden, 78, has declined steadily following the withdrawal from Afghanistan in August, his ongoing failure to pass vaunted infrastructure and social spending bills, and amid questions about his mental ability.

Mr McAuliffe has criticised the White House’s failure to pass infrastructure and climate change bills ahead of the President departure on Thursday for a G20 summit in Rome and then the COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow.

At Tuesday night’s rally, Mr McAuliffe repeatedly linked Mr Youngkin to Mr Trump’s ambivalent condemnation of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2018.

“We all remember Donald Trump said they were ‘very fine people’ and, after all that, Glenn Youngkin said Donald Trump represents so much of why he’s running for governor,” he said.

“Youngkin is not a reasonable Republican. It’s not just banning books and conspiracy theories – it’s education, taking money from public schools and sending it to private schools.”

A succession of Democrat speakers, including Virginia senator Tim Kaine, a former presidential candidate, contrasted the party’s record in the state of abolishing the death penalty, reforming voting rights and expending healthcare with the prospect of restrictions on abortion if Mr Youngkin wins next week.

“They may not be wearing camp Auschwitz T-shirts but they are repeating the same big lie about election integrity, the kind of thing Glenn Youngkin talks about,” Senator Kaine said of Republicans.

“They want to stop us from voting and they want to erase the votes,” he added, speculating a Youngkin government would seek to reform voting rules as Republican-controlled Georgia and Texas have.

Mr Biden, stumbling through a 15-minute speech during which he often appeared to be yelling at the audience, said the Democrats’ record on Covid-19 and the economic recovery was far superior to Mr Trump’s.

“Donald Trump is the only president since Herbert Hoover to see more jobs lost than gained for four years in office. In nine months we’ve created more than any president in American history,” Mr Biden said.

“Donald Trump left office with only two million people vaccinated. In nine months over 190 million Americans are fully vaccinated.”