Strong rebuke for Trump, GOP ahead of 2020 election

US President Donald Trump and his Republican allies suffered stinging defeats Tuesday as Democrats were projected to win closely-watched elections in two states, results that signal troubling headwinds for his 2020 re-election campaign.

The Republican Governor Matt Bevin in deep-red Kentucky was ousted by his Democratic challenger Andy Beshear, who led by less than half a percentage point with 100 percent of the vote counted, the official overseeing the election declared.

Doubling the hurt, Trump’s party also lost control of both chambers of the legislature in increasingly blue Virginia, US media including The New York Times projected.

“We have called it for Attorney General Beshear to be the Kentucky governor-elect,” Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes said on CNN.

The US president tweeted that Bevin “picked up at least 15 points in last days, but perhaps not enough (Fake News will blame Trump!).”

Beshear, whose father was the last Democratic governor in the state, claimed victory, but Bevin did not throw in the towel.

“This is a close, close race. We are not conceding this race by any stretch,” the governor said.

Should Bevin’s loss be certified, it would be a shock defeat for a conservative in a southern state that Trump won by 30 percentage points in 2016.

In Virginia, Democrats will now hold all major statewide offices and rule the state assembly, a comprehensive consolidation of power not seen in the state since the 1990s.