For those with children, access to quality public schools and avoiding pricey private school tuition are primary reasons for moving to the suburbs. That dynamic can boost home values and thus family wealth and financial security. Top-rated public schools can drive up the cost of a suburban home and affect its resale cost. The reverse is true, too: Crumbling public schools can drive home values down and cause financial insecurity.

With President Joe Biden in the White House, Democrats in charge of Congress, and the Democratic Party strongly allied with the teachers unions, Republicans have vowed to prioritize parental concerns about public schools and empower parents to make changes at the local level. The message is resonating in the Virginia governor’s race and in recently Democratic enclaves such as the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and Richmond, GOP insiders say. Their claim is supported by McAuliffe’s defensiveness.

Republicans say Virginia is not the only state in which they will focus on education, nor the only state in which this focus will help them win campaigns.

“This is a middle-income, working family issue,” said Ron Wright, co-founder of Suburban Virginia Coalition PAC and a member of the Virginia Republican Party’s state central committee. “It’s definitely going to have legs.”