Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin (D), the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, brushed off suggestions that the Virginia governor’s election was closer than expected because of a rocky Obamacare rollout.
“I do not think that Obamacare had any impact on the Virginia election,” Shumlin said Thursday at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast adding that “really what Virginia was about was not about Obamacare.”
“I believe the voters of Virginia rejected the same radical social agenda” that other conservative Republican governors implemented in their states, Shumlin continued.
Shumlin’s comments come a few days after Democrat Terry McAuliffe narrowly beat Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) to win the governor’s race. McAuliffe’s victory was much closer than some public polls before the race suggested. Observers suggested that Cuccinelli narrowed the gap by focusing his attacks on linking McAuliffe to the rollout of the Obama administration’s health care reform law.
Later on in the breakfast, Shumlin said Democrats had been polling the race from the start and it had always been a close race.
“The point is we knew this was going to be a tight race,” Shumlin said.
