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From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.

With less than a month now left until Election Day 2025,

gubernatorial candidates in Virginia and New Jersey get set to debate this week

as Republicans try to protect the work of their outgoing Virginia Governor Glenn Yonkin,

and Democrats try to fend off a surprisingly competitive challenge to succeed Governor Phil Murphy.

Welcome, I'm Kyle Peterson with The Wall Street Journal. We're joined today by my colleagues,

editorial board members Kate Batchelder, Odell, and Mene Uqueburua.

Let's start in Virginia, which I believe is the only state in the country that limits its governors to a single consecutive four-year term, no running for re-election, meaning Governor Glenn Yonkin, who narrowly won the state in 2021, is trying to hand off leadership

to his lieutenant governor, winsome Earl Sears. But some of the polling suggests she is trailing

by a significant margin about nine points in the Real Clear politics average against the Democratic

nominee former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger.

Early voting has already began something like about 400,000 ballots already cast,

according to some reports, and a debate, the first and final debate, scheduled for Thursday.

Kate, you've been following this race.

Give us a sense of how it's shaping up and what each of these

candidates are saying. Well, Kyle, I'm heading to the debate tomorrow in Norfolk in the Hampton Roads area.

The action in the race right now, the focus in the race is largely on the attorney general's race

because of some conduct of the Democratic nominee there that we'll get to in a moment. But just zooming out

a little bit, I think this is a challenging year for Republicans just at a basic level. You have

...