‘He’s pretty smooth’: Glenn Youngkin of Virginia may be a challenger for Trump

It looked, sounded and felt like the start of a US presidential campaign. “The stakes are high and the consequences couldn’t be greater,” said Glenn Youngkin in a glossy video that showed the Virginia governor walking in Ronald Reagan’s footsteps at the 40th president’s library in Simi Valley, California, complete with Air Force One and a fragment of the Berlin wall.

The ad, “It’s Time to Usher in a New Era of American Values,” was released by Youngkin in May, fuelling speculation of a White House run that never came. With Republican candidates struggling to stop the Donald Trump juggernaut, rumours that he could yet be drafted as the party establishment’s alternative have not gone away. The make-or-break moment for Youngkin could come on 7 November when Virginia goes to the polls.

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Every seat in the state’s general assembly is on the ballot. Both parties see a path to a legislative majority in a state that has been trending Democratic. Should Republicans – with Youngkin’s help on the campaign trail - manage to hold the house of delegates and flip the senate, donors may be unable to resist the conclusion that he has cracked the code for winning over suburban voters in swing states.

“If he wins both houses, then it will take about 10 minutes for the national media to say we’ve got a new challenger: ‘Glenn Youngkin, the giant killer, and Donald Trump’s never faced this before’,” said Larry Sabato, the director of the center for politics at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. “But if he doesn’t, if he loses even the state senate, the air will go out of this trial balloon very quickly.”

Youngkin, who stands 6ft 5ins tall, cultivates the persona of a sunny suburban dad in his signature zippered red vest. He is not weighed down by the baggage of Trump’s 91 criminal charges. At 56 years old, he would represent generational change on a debate stage with 80-year-old Joe Biden. Sabato acknowledged this, saying: “He’s a nightmare for the Biden people. He projects this image that even people in the press who know better can’t help but swallow.”

Youngkin was born in Richmond, the state capital that was also the capital of the confederacy during the civil war. When his father lost his job, the teenage Youngkin washed dishes to help support the family, who moved to Virginia Beach. He gained a basketball scholarship to Rice University in Houston, attended Harvard Business School and worked for blue-chip financial companies such as McKinsey & Company and the Carlyle Group. He and his wife, Suzanne, own a 31.5-acre property in Great Falls in northern Virginia.

He ran for governor as a political outsider in 2021 and his victory appeared to offer a “Trumpism without Trump” blueprint for Republicans struggling in purple states. Youngkin artfully kept the former president at arm’s length without alienating him and, harnessing a conservative backlash against pandemic lockdowns, made “parents’ rights” his defining issue.

He repeatedly criticised public schools on “culture war” issues such as transgender bathrooms and vowed: “On day one, I will ban critical race theory.” The fate of his opponent, Terry McAuliffe, was sealed when, during a debate, McAuliffe said: “I don’t believe parents should be telling schools what they should teach” – a line that was constantly replayed in the Republican’s attacks ads.

Youngkin claims that, as governor, he has passed the biggest education budget in Virginia’s history, cut taxes, encouraged investment and boosted military veterans. He remains a hugely divisive figure. He endorsed a 15-week ban on abortion with exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother.

He is facing Democratic calls for a federal investigation into why an unknown number of people were wrongly purged from Virginia’s voter rolls because they were mistakenly listed as felons, as well as a legal challenge for slowing down the process in which former felons’ voting rights may be restored.

He campaigned with election deniers such as Kari Lake of Arizona, calling her “awesome”. He set up a “tip line” for parents to report supposedly divisive practices in schools, only for it to be quietly shut down. When then House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul was attacked with a hammer by an intruder in their San Francisco home, Youngkin condemned the violence only to then quip: “But we’re going to send her back to be with him in California.”

Some of his early admirers have since recanted. In July last year, Karen Tumulty, an associate editor of the Washington Post, wrote a column entitled “Why Glenn Youngkin – or someone like him – must run in 2024.” Three months later, Tumulty followed up with “I’m sorry I said nice things about Glenn Youngkin”.

Abhi Rahman, the communications director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said: “It’s been an unmitigated disaster. If you were to ask anybody what are his accomplishments, they can’t name anything. He hasn’t done anything he said he would except for getting sued by school boards and trying to impose things on trans people. That’s what he’s spent his tenure doing while crime is getting worse in Virginia, education is getting worse, the economy is getting worse – all of that is happening under Glenn Youngkin.”

He added: “If this election is a referendum on Glenn Youngkin, I think we win. His approval rating is only in the 50s whereas, when you look at other governors across the country, theirs are usually in the 60s or even 70s. The more people know about what he’s doing, the worse it gets for him. If he wins, he’s going to do an abortion ban and that is something Virginians definitely don’t want.”

Youngkin is not on the ballot next month but he has a significant personal investment in the outcome. He is appearing in an ad for Riley Shaia, a candidate for the state assembly in a suburban district of Richmond that leans Democratic. His political action committee, Spirit of Virginia, has raised almost $20m for Republican candidates in key battlegrounds.

The Democrat Juli Briskman, a supervisor in Loudon county who represents the Algonquin district, said: “It’s a critical year for Loudoun county and for the entire state because abortion rights, voting rights, healthcare in general are all on the chopping block.”

Briskman, who is seeking re-election, is convinced that Youngkin would push for a national abortion ban if he swapped the governor’s mansion for the White House. “He’s pretty smooth. That’s how he got into the governor’s office. But he has shown his true colours since he’s been in here. He is just as Maga as Trump and I would feel just as horrible having him as president as I do having him as governor,” she said.

It is hard to discern whether Youngkin’s anti-woke populism is a facade cultivated for reasons of electoral expediency or whether he has become a true believer. A prominent academic in Virginia, who did not wish to be named, said: “For most of his life he’s been no more or less bigoted than a country club conservative. But he’s now involved in electoral politics, and the Republican party is the party of Trump.

“To enact the kind of policies that are most important to him, he’s convinced himself that things like abortion and trans rights and critical race theory – things I’m sure he has never given any thought to at all – suddenly have become important because they’re so important for Republican electoral politics.

“I don’t know if he’s playing a game. People do move, they shift, they change. ‘I have this moment of epiphany that not only is it required that I become fiercely anti-abortion to be a member of this Republican party but now I’m believing it too.’ The same thing over trans school kids and whatever they mean by critical race theory. We become what we pretend to be very often.”

Youngkin answers questions about his presidential prospects by saying he is flattered to be in the conversation but focused on Virginia, where his single term as governor ends in 2026. He has travelled across the country, made frequent appearances on conservative media, broken fundraising records and this week hosted his second annual Red Vest Retreat in Virginia Beach for big-money donors.

Such data points have given weight to the theory that he has still not ruled out a late entry in the race for the White House in 2024. For anti-Trump forces, disappointed by the failure of the Florida governor Ron DeSantis to dislodge the former president’s base, he would represent one last, desperate throw of the dice. Youngkin would face significant logistical campaign difficulties, ballot-access hurdles and scepticism from Republican voters, many of whom appear immovably devoted to Trump.

With fewer than 100 days until voting starts with the Iowa caucuses, Youngkin does not have the kind of campaign organisation a presidential hopeful needs to recruit supporters or get voters to turn out. The deadline to file for the second contest, New Hampshire’s primary, was 27 October, and other states’ deadlines follow hard upon that. Some argue that Youngkin would be better advised to keep his powder dry for a potential post-Trump era in 2028.

Paul Lott, a Republican candidate for the house of delegates from Ashburn, said: “Glenn doesn’t do anything unless he sees a clear reason for it and he does not speculate ahead. Right now – and this is from a person that knows him personally – he’s not thinking about it. He’s trying to get done in Virginia what gets done in Virginia. We need to focus on our problems. We have a senate that we need to flip. We have a house that we need to maintain.”

Rich Anderson, the chair of the Republican party of Virginia, heaped praise on the governor but dismissed talk of a presidential bid at this late stage. “He has the skill set to be chief executive of the United States just as I believe he’s done very well – and a majority of Virginians feel he’s done very well – as chief executive of Virginia,” he said.

“But he is definitely focused solely on Virginia when he and I are together. I’m not being cute or evasive about it. That’s not an issue we discuss. We are focused on this year’s election because the agenda that’s important to him and to Virginia Republicans hinges on holding the house and flipping the senate, and that’s taken all of our energy and attention and resources.”