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The Story Is with Elex Michaelson

Democrats Sweep The First Major Elections Of Trump's Second Term; Californians Approve Democrats' Anti-Trump Redistricting Push. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired November 05, 2025 - 04:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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ELEX MICHAELSON, CNN ANCHOR: This special edition of The Story Is coming to you live right now from Sacramento. That is a look at the state capital of the most populous state in the union, one of the most democratic states in the union. And tonight that state is siding with its governor.

I'm Elex Michaelson live in Sacramento where it's now one o' clock here on the west coast. And I've got some company tonight.

BRIAN ABEL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We got the coast covered. Brian Abel here in Washington with you, Elex. And it's now 4:00 a.m., Democrats celebrating in New York City, New Jersey and Virginia.

MICHAELSON: So officially, good morning to you then, Brian. Today the story is a Democratic sweep of those major races across the U.S. securing important wins against Republicans in a year of these contentious battles between the White House and of course now the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

And we're looking at the results right there when we're talking about what we're seeing in New York, Brian, and a big win for a new face for the party.

ABEL: Yes, there is that big win CNN is projecting Democrats Zohran Mamdani. He is the city's new mayor, beating former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. New York's Board of Elections they say more than 2 million people voted in the election, the most since 1969, if you can believe that. Democratic socialist mayor elect remains unapologetic for the things that set him apart from the other candidates.

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ZOHRAN MAMDANI, NEW YORK CITY MAYOR-ELECT: The conventional wisdom would tell you that I am far from the perfect candidate. I am young, despite my best efforts to grow older. I am Muslim. I am a democratic socialist. And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this.

(END VIDEO CLIP) ABEL: And Andrew Cuomo congratulated Mamdani on the win, telling supporters not to boo the new mayor-elect. He reminded them what the purpose of his campaign was.

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ANDREW CUOMO, FORMER NEW YORK GOVERNOR: This campaign was to contest the philosophies that are shaping the Democratic Party, the future of this city and the future of this country.

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ABEL: CNN also projects U.S. House Democrat Mikie Sherrill will win the New Jersey governor's race. It makes her the first female Democratic governor in the state's history. Sherrill campaigned heavily against President Trump and his policies, often comparing him to her Republican opponent.

During her victory speech, the governor elects, stressing the importance of her new office amid current issues across the country.

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MIKIE SHERRILL, NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR-ELECT: Here in New Jersey, we know that this nation has not ever been nor will it ever be ruled by kings. We take oaths to a constitution, not a king. We've chosen liberty, the very foundation of democracy, and we've chosen prosperity necessary to create opportunity for all.

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ABEL: Republican nominee Jack Ciattarelli says he called Sherrill and offered his best wishes, hoping she will make the state a place where everyone feels like they can achieve the American dream.

Democrat Abigail Spanberger has flipped the top office in Virginia for from Republican leadership. CNN projects Spanberger will become Virginia's first female governor. She is a 46-year-old mother of three who served in law enforcement and the CIA before winning a seat in Congress.

Spanberger is vowing to serve all Virginians, even those who voted for her opponent, Republican Winsome Earle-Sears. Her campaign was focused on affordability and the impact of federal job cuts as well as the government shutdown.

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ABIGAIL SPANBERGER, VIRGINIA GOVENOR-ELECT: We sent a message to the whole world that in 2025, Virginia chose pragmatism over partisanship.

[04:05:04]

We chose our commonwealth over chaos.

(END VIDEO CLIP) MICHAELSON: And here in California, CNN projecting California voters are proving Governor Newsom's push to redraw the state's congressional map, Proposition 50, in response to Texas Republicans redrawing their map to help the GOP. It will replace lines drawn by an independent commission with a map that could net Democrats as many as five new seats in next year's election.

Governor Gavin Newsom spoke out behind me. Here's what he said after his big win.

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GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D) CALIFORNIA: We stood tall and we stood firm in response to Donald Trump's recklessness. And tonight, after poking the bear, this bear roared with an unprecedented turnout in a special election with an extraordinary result.

None of us, however, are naive. This is a pattern. This is a practice. Donald Trump's efforts to rig the midterm election continue to this day.

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MICHAELSON: Let's break this all down with our panel. Meghan Hays is a Democratic strategist and former White House director of message planning. And Katie Frost is a Republican strategist and former aide to Ted Cruz and Roy Moore. Ladies, welcome.

MEGHAN HAYS, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Thank you.

KATIE FROST, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Good morning.

MICHAELSON: Good morning to you. Good night. Good evening. I don't even know what time it is, but I appreciate that you're with us. So let's talk about this Governor Newsom, Donald Trump fight. And Governor Newsom tried to make this about Donald Trump. He's been mocking him on social media.

We've got a new post that he put late into the night. We want to show for the first time, this is on Governor Newsom's social media account. And he has an AI generated image of Donald Trump crying with a hat that says Newsom was right about everything.

Katie, what do you make of this as a strategy for Governor Newsom, who's really leaning in?

FROST: He really is trying to lean in. But, you know, there is only one Donald Trump. And when you see someone like Governor Newsom trying to replicate what has made President Trump successful in his social media Persona, it doesn't resonate. It's kind of like when you try, someone gives you an impossible burger, wants to pass it off as a real burger, it kind of reminds you of the real thing, but deep down, you know it's just fake.

This is fake from Governor Newsom. Everybody sees through it. He desperately wants to be president. It's practically tattooed on his forehead. And so he's trying to get out there. He's trying to be edgy. He's trying to separate himself with pack for 2028.

I frankly don't see it playing well when he has to get out of his California bubble and, you know, get away from having his wonderful dinners at the French Laundry while he's making everyone else stay home during COVID he is going to be faced with the radical policies he pushed in California. It's not going to play well in the rest of the country, but, hey, at least he's getting some likes on social media in the short term.

MICHAELSON: And Meghan, he's also getting some love from the voters of California. The number we just put up there, more than 60 percent support. It's a big win for him. And his take is that fighting Donald Trump is really important.

HAYS: Yes, absolutely. And to Katie's point, there is only one Donald Trump. Thank goodness. And what Gavin Newsom is doing is a joke. And that's what the Republicans don't understand. I'm from California. I'm actually from Sacramento. Talked to family there yesterday. They were very excited to vote. This is really an important issue to them. They understand Gavin Newsom has a unique opportunity to push back against the MAGA Republicans and Donald Trump to actually take back the House in '26.

If the Republicans want to play dirty, the Democrats are going to return in kind. However, they're doing it with their voters' permission, unlike Texas, who started this entire redistricting and just did it with the legislator with no voter input whatsoever.

MICHAELSON: I mean, Katie, do you in some ways respect the fact that Governor Newsom is being aggressive in the way that President Trump has been aggressive, and is there maybe some value in that?

FROST: Well, he's trying to catch up with what other states have already done. And when you look at the way some of these maps are drawn, particularly somewhere like Illinois, it kind of amused me that Texas Democrats went left Texas and they went to Illinois to protest gerrymandering, when arguably Illinois is one of the most gerrymandered states out there. So maybe they went for a mass.

But like I said, Governor Newsom is trying to get some attention. He's trying to separate himself for the pack, and he's trying to do this right now. I don't see it playing well for him in the long term. He'll get some media attention. We're going to talk about him here. Shocking. California voted against Donald Trump. That shouldn't surprise a lot of people when this was the only reason people had to turn out.

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So I'm not shocked by this right now, but this, there's a long time between now and 2028. And at some point, Democrats are going to have to find a message other than we're not Donald Trump. They need a good message. They need a good messenger. Right now, they don't seem to have either one. But we still have three years to go.

MICHAELSON: Yes. And Meghan, there was a pretty clear message in New York City. We've got the new cover of the New Yorker just coming out overnight as well, which is highlighting Zohran Mamdani, whose message was a lot about affordability.

You see him there riding the subway, sort of, you know, a man of the people, the way they're suggesting, with a coalition of a lot of different folks on that subway. What do you make of his victory and the way he was so unapologetic about it during his pretty aggressive speech tonight?

HAYS: You know, I think that all the victories that we had, whether it's in Virginia, New Jersey or New York, is sending a message that the Democratic Party cares about affordability most. We got more independents they broke from Donald Trump, the ones that voted for him in 2024. And they are turning to the Democrats saying, we like your message. We like your solutions. And there are different solutions across the platform, whether it's in New York or in New Jersey or in Atlanta, where we won again.

You know, we won a lot of marriage races last night. We won a lot of down ballot races. I just think that the American people are tired of Donald Trump's antics. They are tired of not having solutions. And they showed up last night overwhelmingly all over the country to rebuke his failed economic policies.

And I think that is the most important message to take away. And we may not have one single leader that is leading our party right now, but we do have a message of fighting back on affordability and making this country more affordable. And we have so many great leaders all over the country in their own communities.

MICHAELSON: And Meghan, there's been a pretty consistent message when it comes to health care and this government shutdown. There's been some indications that maybe we're close to a deal as condition continues to get worse, the conditions on the ground. Do you feel like we're close to a deal?

HAYS: It'll be interesting to see how the election from last night plays this morning in Washington and how Republicans and Democrats, you know, start to work together. I have been a firm believer in these -- all these members need to be back in Washington working. They need to be negotiating each other, and they need to get the government back open.

There are actual people who are suffering. People aren't getting their SNAP benefits. Health care premiums are going to rise drastically if they do not figure this out. So I hope that they figure this out very quickly. But the Democrats have stood firm on affordability issues, on health care and making it more affordable. And I just -- that is a winning message. And I think the Republicans saw that last night. And I would be pretty sure that they're going to be back in Washington today wanting to negotiate.

MICHAELSON: Yes, Katie, when it comes to the government shutdown, it seems like conditions are getting more dire when it comes to SNAP benefits, when it comes to Air Transportation Secretary Duffy warning that they may have to stop basically flying in some areas. Do you feel like we're getting close to a deal?

FROST: We could have had a deal a long time ago. But Democrats continually vote no in the Senate. They are voting again and again to keep the government shut down. They're voting to deny people their SNAP benefits. They're voting to make these things very difficult for the American people, especially as we're getting ready to go into the Thanksgiving holiday.

And when the Democrats say, well, no, this isn't how it is. You need to give us a better deal, you know, you can't complain and say you're trying to starve me just because you personally are refusing to eat the food that's put in front of you. The House did their job. They sent a deal to the Senate and Senate Democrats continually refused to open the government.

So the ball is in their court. They need to open the government. They need to restore SNAP benefits and everything else to the American people.

But as far as what happened last night, we talk about the governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey, breaking news, Democrats win in blue states. New Jersey is a state that has not voted for Republican for president since 1988. Virginia has not voted for a Republican for president in the last 20 years.

I'm not surprised we see Democrats winning in those states, especially when the very first election after a presidential election is usually a swing course correction.

So if I was a Democrat, yes, of course I'm going to be excited. I'm going to be happy about this. But I would not become overly confident and thinking that elections in two blue states are somehow going to protect what's going to happen in the midterms. Republicans have a lot ahead of them.

MICHAELSON: Well, Katie, we have seen, there is no doubt that Republican voters show up for President Trump when he's on the ballot and he's not going to be on the ballot next year. He most likely is never going to be on the ballot again.

So are you concerned about the midterms that President Trump himself, the great driver especially of some of these, you know, folks who are not college educated, who vote in big numbers in presidential years, but not necessarily in midterm years, might not show up?

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FROST: Here's something my Republican colleagues and I talk about a lot is, you know, we are very much a party of it's going to be turnout for us. And it's really, as you look across the map, is becoming more and more a turnout election for both parties as there are fewer and fewer actually truly swing voters out there. It's more about getting people out to vote who already agree with you but just may not always show up. It's going to be that way for both parties.

I believe the message is very clear. If you support President Donald Trump and you want him and his agenda, you want him to be effective, you have to show up and vote in the midterms. You have to get out there and you have to make sure he has a Republican Congress.

Otherwise the Democrats are going to try and stonewall him in everything he wants to do. That's a message I believe he can very effectively convey to his supporters. And I ultimately believe that they will show up for him and we'll have a good night.

MICHAELSON: And Meghan, as we now sort of start the midterms officially, what's the real concise message for Democrats?

HAYS: I think we focus continually to focus on affordability issues. I think we saw how well that worked for us last night in the election. But I do agree with Katie. It's a long road till next November. We have a whole another year. Democrats cannot get complacent here. They need to keep pushing forward and keep pushing forward on the failed economic policies of Donald Trump and his administration and how their costs are not going down like he promised.

So I think if the Democrats can stick to that and we put up really great candidates, I think we have a good chance of winning back the House and taking some Senate seats.

MICHAELSON: And we've got a long way to go. And here in California and other states potentially as well, very different maps. So we don't even know who's going to be running in what districts because that's all going to be different now as well. Meghan Hays, Katie Frost, thank you so much for getting up early for us. We really appreciate it.

HAYS: Thank you.

FROST: Thank you.

MICHAELSON: As we just were talking about, President Trump was not technically on the ballot, but CNN exit polling shows his second term as president had a big impact on this election. We'll talk about that next right here on a special edition of The Story Is.

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ABEL: Democrats delivering a strong rebuke of President Trump in the first major electoral test of his second term. CNN projects Democrats will sweep the Virginia and New Jersey governors' races as well as New York City's mayoral race and California's congressional redistricting plan.

The president is attributing Republican losses to the government shutdown and the fact that he was not on the ballot. But CNN's exit polling suggests more than half of the electorate see their vote as a message to Mr. Trump, with a large majority disapproving of his performance.

Here to help us unpack all of this is Mike Leon. He's the director of strategy at the Free and Equal Elections Foundation and host of the "Can We Please Talk?" podcast.

Mike, great to see you. I know you've lived in New York. You've lived in New Jersey. So I know you were paying maybe a little extra attention to the races there. What are your big takeaways this election's results?

MIKE LEON. HOST, "CAN WE PLEASE TALK?" PODCAST: Yes. Good to see you, Brian, this morning. You know, I mean, a mixed bag of results. I think the first thing for me, especially on the Jersey side, we thought the Jersey race would be a lot closer. Right. Mikie Sherrill and Jack Ciattarelli over the last few weeks, you know, RealClearPolitics had the polling right around, you know, maybe 2, 3 percentage points and then you look at the margin of victory on our screen here, and it's over 13 percentage points. Right.

You look at the margin of victory in Virginia, right. In the governor's race there with Abigail Spanberger, I mean, 15, 16 percentage points. You look at everybody telling Curtis Silwa to drop out of the race so that way they could go to Cuomo in terms of the voting and it still wouldn't have made a difference.

So I think the margins of victory are really telling in all three of these races. But not only that, Brian, I mean, if you just look at the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, one, two Democratic judges, for lack of a better term, you know, there was other measures, obviously. We talked about Prop 50 in the California that's been talked about on the network at length here. So a lot of victories for the Democratic Party to champion going into 20, for sure.

ABEL: Yes. Senator Adam Schiff from California said earlier on CNN, what a night for Democrats. It's been a long time since I've been able to say that. So you do see this momentum, do you see the momentum carrying over to the midterms, carrying over to other states?

LEON: Well, I mean, I think that's the hope, obviously. But I also think that, you know, one of the things that was echoed tonight from Congressman Seth Moulton, who's been on my show was that you saw a mixed bag of what the Democratic Party could offer. Right. Because of Zohran Mamdani and the Democratic socialism aspect of this and whether or not Democrats will embrace that. Abigail Spanberger, a more moderate Democrat.

But either way, as Meghan Hays said before on the panel prior to me coming on, it's really about what Donald Trump has done over these last nine, 10 months. Right. Tariff policy and how it's affected has a secondary and tertiary effect on different sectors of the economy. Those have impact. Right. He talked about lowering grocery prices and grocery prices across the board on different parts of the grocery store are not down. Right.

And so when you don't deliver on those promises and now we're in an off year with elections, this is what's going to happen. Will it carry over? I think the big thing for me, Brian, is that voters have a short attention span. They're creatures of the current moment. And in the current moment, Democrats went out there and said, look, you are not paying cheaper prices. This is not what he promised. He is not doing what he promised. And will that carry over into 2026? We have to see how the first half of 2026 goes for sure.

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ABEL: Yes. We do know that elections have impact also on candidates. So how do you see Republicans responding for the midterms? Because it seems there was a rebuke of Donald Trump and his policies here. Do we see Republicans start distancing themselves from the president?

LEON: Well, I don't think you're ever going to see that. I mean, it's something seismic would have to happen in that regard. I think one thing Vivek Ramaswamy said on Twitter, he posted this about identity politics, which I thought was the biggest oxymoron as a guy who wrote a book called "Woke Inc." But they really battled on this identity politics part of this, as opposed to talking about the things that got Donald Trump elected. Donald Trump got elected because he said, hey, in 2019, this was the economy. Are you still feeling that?

And Democrats ran a little bit more on the democracy side, which kind of flies over people's heads. I don't know why, but it does fly over people's heads. So I think Republicans need to regroup now. Trump is right about the government shutdown is not helping. He hasn't shown an inclination to help with that.

If Republicans truly wanted to do the pivot here, Brian, get into the negotiating table with Democrats, really work on taking this message about, hey, we're going to end this government shutdown. We're going to put everybody back to work. I think that would start the process for '26 in terms of them. And then obviously you get the candidate vetting process in terms of what candidates are going to run in '26 across these races.

ABEL: Let's talk about voter turnout for a moment. It's always something we are looking at to maybe be a bellwether of sorts. It seems that turnout was pretty strong here. The attorney general race, for example, in Virginia, despite a tech scandal erupting, the elected candidate there, Democrat Jay Jones, getting more votes than Terry McAuliffe did in the governor's race there four years prior. That's something.

LEON: It's something huge. It's one of the things that I always look for. I'm so glad you talked about it because the margin of error a lot of the times in politics, Right, is always magnified. And I just mentioned before how many percentage points these folks won by.

You know, earlier tonight, John King on the wall was showing a district, a red district in Virginia where Earle-Sears was getting about the same percentage of votes, but it was about half the amount of people that turned out. That's a huge number. And again, it was a small district, but it's a sample size. Right? It's a microcosm. It's a snapshot in time.

And so I think the voter turnout, especially in New York City, first time since I think, 1969 that you had that many people voting in the mayor's race, when you're seeing those large numbers in an off year, that sends a message. The California Prop 50 won by more than 2.1 million votes. That sends a message. And I think voter turnout like were talking about in terms of carrying

this over to '26, you know, it's very finding dory. Voters are very finding dory. They're not going to remember from next month to next month. So you just got to harp on the issues that are happening that current day. If Democrats do that, they could potentially flip the House and Senate in '26.

ABEL: All right. Mike Leon, appreciate your insight. Thank you.

LEON: Thank you.

ABEL: Still to come, we will discuss how California's verdict on Prop 50 could impact next year's midterm elections. You're watching a special edition of The Story Is.

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