In his ads, Ed Gillespie hit all the same notes as Donald Trump. He argued that his Democratic opponent was soft on MS-13, a brutal gang with origins in Central America. He criticized sanctuary cities, even though Virginia doesn’t have any. He argued for keeping up Confederate monuments.

But unlike Trump, he lost.

In a race closely watched by Democratic and Republican operatives from across the country, the former Republican National Committee chairman spent millions on ads that sounded Trumpist themes of the risks of immigration and the need to protect America’s heritage.

But Democrat Ralph Northam, the state’s not-particularly-inspiring lieutenant governor, roundly defeated Gillespie, 54 to 45 percent, as Democrats rode a wave of victories in other statewide offices and the state’s House of Delegates.

The nation’s foremost expert on all things Trump, one Donald J. Trump of New York City, had an explanation: Gillespie just wasn’t Trumpy enough. Taking advantage of Twitter’s new 280-character maximum, the president of the United States explained Tuesday night that Gillespie “did not embrace me or what I stand for.”

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