In a slick video posted on social media earlier this year, Virginia’s Republican governor Glenn Youngkin contemplates America’s future.
“We can usher in a new era of American values,” Youngkin narrates over images of him speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and strolling a White House-esque colonnade. “The stakes are high, and the consequences couldn’t be greater.”
The video, paid for by Youngkin’s fundraising vehicle, Spirit of Virginia, looks a lot like a presidential campaign advertisement.
But for months, Youngkin, 56, has insisted he is not running for the White House, even as deep-pocketed Republican donors have called on him to challenge GOP frontrunner Donald Trump.
At the same time, however, the former Carlyle executive and his aides have also quietly left the door open to an eleventh-hour entrance into the 2024 Republican primary field.
“The presidential pot is simmering, and he is happy to stir it,” said one former colleague from Carlyle, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Publicly, Youngkin says he remains focused on this November, when Virginia will hold off-year elections to determine which political party controls its state legislature in Richmond.
Yet the governor — who met wealthy out-of-state donors in the Hamptons and on Nantucket over the summer, and has an estimated personal net worth of almost $500mn — is also often coy when pressed on his presidential ambitions.
“I’m not in Iowa at the state fair,” he told Fox News earlier this month. “I’m campaigning in Virginia for Virginians, not around the country.”
The speculation surrounding Youngkin’s presidential ambitions underscores the meteoric rise of a former private equity boss who burst on to the political scene just two years ago, defeating a Democratic opponent in a state Joe Biden had won convincingly in 2020.
But it also exposes the sharp divisions in a Republican establishment wrestling with Trump’s grip on the party, and voters who are increasingly committed — or in some cases, resigned — to the former president being the GOP nominee in 2024.
Youngkin was a political novice when he left Carlyle in 2020 after losing a power struggle with his co-chief executive, Kewsong Lee. He had spent a quarter-century at the private equity giant.
But his electoral victory in Virginia the following year instantly boosted his standing with establishment Republicans, after he won over centrist suburban voters who had eschewed the GOP in the Trump era. Many pondered whether his Wall Street CV, mild manners and focus on education issues offered a new blueprint for the national party.
Youngkin’s campaign ethos was on display on a recent weekday afternoon in Leesburg, an affluent suburb about 40 miles west of Washington. More than 200 voters packed an auditorium at Cornerstone Chapel, an evangelical mega church, to hear the governor speak at what was billed as a “Parents Matter” forum.
For more than an hour, Youngkin — who had removed his suit jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeves after stepping on stage — fielded questions from voters and scribbled in a notebook, vowing to address their concerns on everything from classroom sizes to sex education to the rights of transgender students in schools.
A social conservative and evangelical Christian, Youngkin pointed to his faith several times. Parents should be “empowered to play the role in their children’s lives . . . God granted us”, he said. “There’s only been one perfect person in the history of this planet.”
Youngkin made no mention of national politics, or the former president, or the current race for the White House. But as he wrapped up, he made a pitch for his own brand of conservatism.
“Elections have consequences. At the heart of my conservative philosophy, I talk a lot about common sense conservative governance,” Youngkin said. “We need you to get to work.”
After the event, supporters heaped praise on the governor. Susan Cox, a ballroom dance instructor from nearby Sterling, called him a “class act”, adding: “I really do think he cares.”
But Cox hesitated when asked if Youngkin should run for even higher office.
“If in the future he ever decides to run for president, you can probably count me on board . . . but it is so new right now,” she said.
Paul Lott, a Republican candidate for the state legislature from Ashburn, said Youngkin would make a “wonderful candidate” for the White House — but said the former president’s Republican nomination appeared inevitable.
“If Trump is not derailed, he will be the nominee,” Lott said.
Their comments underscored Trump’s seemingly unassailable lead in the polls, despite facing an array of criminal charges. The failure of other GOP candidates to mount a credible challenge has disappointed anti-Trump donors and party operatives, who have called on popular Republican governors such as Youngkin and Brian Kemp of Georgia to make a last-minute bid for the nomination before the party’s primary season begins in January 2024.
The latest FiveThirtyEight average of national opinion polls shows Trump has the backing of more than 55 per cent of Republican voters, followed by Florida governor Ron DeSantis in a distant second place, at 14 per cent. The rest of the candidates trail in the single digits.
The most recent Roanoke College poll of Virginia voters paints a similar picture.
The survey, conducted last month, found that Youngkin enjoyed a job approval rating of 51 per cent among Virginians. But the same poll showed that among Republican voters Trump was the first-choice presidential candidate for nearly half of them, followed by DeSantis, at 13 per cent. Youngkin came in third, at 9 per cent.
“The former president remains incredibly popular among Republicans, not just nationwide, but certainly here in Virginia,” said Bryan Parsons, senior political analyst at the Institute for Policy and Opinion Research, which conducted the Roanoke survey.
“It is not surprising that there would be elements within the Republican party that would lean towards a candidate with Youngkin’s resume,” Parsons added. “But there are other elements of the party that are very mobilised and very supportive of the former president.”
Many campaign veterans agree. Mick Mulvaney, who was Trump’s White House chief of staff, said Youngkin was an “excellent candidate” and “very capable gentleman” — but was sceptical that either Youngkin or Kemp could pull more voters from Trump than the other challengers could.
“What does Glenn Youngkin bring to the race that isn’t there already?” said Mulvaney.
“Are there really Trump voters out there who say, ‘You know what, I was with Trump. I wasn’t with DeSantis or [former vice-president Mike] Pence or [former UN ambassador Nikki] Haley but I’d be with Glenn Youngkin’?”
Youngkin’s former Carlyle colleague said his one-time boss was playing the political game “brilliantly” by building name recognition without actually entering the presidential race.
They predicted he would keep his powder dry next year — and run for president in 2028. Virginia law bars governors from serving consecutive terms, meaning Youngkin is not eligible to run for re-election in 2025.
Several voters at the event in Leesburg also said the presidential race in four years’ time might be a better choice for Youngkin.
“I would love to see him as president at some point,” said Amy Riccardi, a local business owner and non-partisan candidate for the county school board. “Is it this cycle? Next cycle? I don’t know.”
Additional reporting by Antoine Gara in New York
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