Election Day 2025 is here. While it lacks the national stakes of a midterm or presidential year, it still matters deeply. From New York City and New Jersey to Virginia, California, and beyond voters, today, are making decisions that will shape local economies, cultural climates, and the moral direction of their communities. They will also serve as a litmus test for Democrats’ and Republicans’ standing in the midst of a government shutdown, ten months into President Trump’s second term.
This Election Day also arrives amid turbulence within the conservative movement itself. The infighting on the Right, between populists, traditionalists, and those flirting with much darker ideologies, has been impossible to ignore. In many respects, it is an important reckoning over the soul of the movement. But it is also, to some extent, a distraction from the work at hand. While Buckleyites, Buchananites, Groypers, and others battle online and influencers exchange accusations, real elections will be decided. The timing of Tucker Carlson’s latest provocations could not be worse, pulling attention away from critical state and local contests that will shape the future for many Americans.
In New York City, the mayoral race is shaping up as a referendum on the city’s identity. Socialist assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, faces Republican Curtis Sliwa and former governor Andrew Cuomo, running as an independent. Mamdani represents the most unapologetically far-left coalition in modern city politics, a movement that treats New York as a laboratory for endless government expansion, class warfare, and cultural radicalism. His vision is not merely reform, but revolution: redistribution, ideological indoctrination, and hostility to the businesses (and businesspeople) that keep the city alive.
A Mamdani victory would be disastrous for New York City, yet at this point, it is the most likely outcome. Driving out taxpayers, demoralizing law enforcement, and turning the world’s financial capital into a subsidized bureaucracy: should he win, many weary moderates and conservatives may look across the Hudson River to New Jersey for refuge.
Jack Ciattarelli, the Republican nominee in New Jersey, has quietly become one of the most intriguing stories of 2025. Ciattarelli’s platform of lower taxes, local control, and sanity (God forbid) in education has resonated far beyond traditional GOP strongholds. If he pulls off a victory while Mamdani claims New York, a new regional dynamic could emerge. Disillusioned New Yorkers, fed up with confiscatory taxes and progressive chaos, may head for the Garden State. Optimistically, such a shift could reshape New Jersey’s political balance for years to come, giving Republicans a chance to make inroads in the Northeast. Ciattarelli’s campaign also represents something deeper: a restoration of normal politics in an era of noise and extremism. He’s the kind of candidate Republicans need to win in a state like New Jersey.
Meanwhile, in Virginia, voters are weighing a different kind of moral test. Democratic attorney general candidate Jay Jones has come under intense scrutiny for a series of violent text messages in which he appeared to fantasize about seeing harm befall Republican legislators (or their families). These comments, which are beyond grotesque, have been the source of much discussion in recent months regarding politically violent speech, and a Democrat Party that condemns such rhetoric only when it does not matter. The controversy is not just about Jones; it’s about whether voters will tolerate that kind of rhetoric at all, from “their” candidates (my suspicion, sadly, is that they will). Jones’s remarks reflect a disturbing trend on the modern left: political opponents are not to be debated, but destroyed. Our words are “violence,” so their violence is merely in response to ours, so the logic goes. At the gubernatorial level, former congresswoman Abigail Spanberger faces off against Virginia’s lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears.
The contests in New York, New Jersey, and Virginia (among others which, to be honest, interest me much less) tell us something essential about where America stands. The Left has grown more radical, romanticizing and sanitizing socialism, excusing antisemitism, and glorifying violence in the name of progressivism. Conservatives must decide whether they will merely oppose these trends or actively offer something better: faith, family, hard work, and the rule of law. If Mamdani wins in New York, and if Jones prevails in Virginia, it will be a bellwether for the metastasizing cultural rot in blue-states, in response to Trump (and the broader Democrat Party’s deficiencies). But if voters in New Jersey choose Ciattarelli, it will be at least one positive counterexample.
Election Day is about more than just the candidates. Charlie Kirk, who dedicated his life to the conservative movement before his assassination roughly seven weeks ago, reminded us that politics is downstream of culture, and culture is downstream of faith. That is the challenge before us now. Conservatives must speak with conviction, but act with integrity. We must reject the hatred, antisemitism, and ideological cruelty that extremists like Nick Fuentes embody, simultaneously as we reject the moral relativism of the modern left.
New York, New Jersey, and Virginia may seem like three separate elections, but together they form a moral map of the nation. If New York chooses the far left, and if Virginia excuses violence, conservatives must be ready to build anew in the suburbs, in the heartland, and in New Jersey, where opportunity may soon bloom again. Whatever tonight’s results, a nation that abandons moral clarity cannot remain free for long. The task before us as conservatives is not only to win elections but to restore the conscience of the Republic.
Michael J. Hout is Editor-in-Chief of Liberty Affair. Based in Warsaw, Poland, he writes about politics, culture, and history. Follow his latest insights on X: @michaeljhout.
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