“A lot of the establishment said that I clearly didn’t get Virginia, that this was not a local issue that people expected from their governors,” Mr. Perriello said with evident satisfaction. “This was actually a matter of me having very much a sense of where Virginia voters were in terms of their concerns.”

It remains to be seen whether that claim is correct — the answer will come in the primary election on June 13. But if he is proved right, it will indicate that Trump-bashing is enough to transcend one’s own past apostasies on issues dear to the left in a Democratic primary race. And it will underscore how much this state has changed.

Scheduled in typically low-turnout elections the year after the presidential votes, Virginia’s primaries and conventions in governor’s races have been dominated by those engaged in politics, and particularly local and state government. So the issues discussed have largely been unique to Virginia, a history-drenched state with a healthy self-regard and a bipartisan commitment to business.

In Mr. Northam’s view, this year will continue in the same pattern.

“The most important thing for Virginia is our economy,” he said in an interview in his office adjacent to the State Capitol, highlighting the job gains the state has had under him and Mr. McAuliffe and outlining a message just as easily offered had Mr. Trump never left “The Apprentice.”

“If we’re not helping businesses grow and bringing in new business and new manufacturers to Virginia, then the rest of these things we like to talk about are not that important,” Mr. Northam said.

The two Democratic candidates are as stylistically different as their strategic calculations.

Mr. Northam, 57, could have been a candidate for governor here decades ago, before Virginia was transformed into a suburb-dominated and culturally diverse dynamo. The easygoing son of a judge who grew up across the Chesapeake Bay on the state’s rural Eastern Shore, Mr. Northam bears the state’s distinctive accent; a diploma from one of its venerated institutions, the Virginia Military Institute; and a direct connection to its painful history.

Addressing a black fraternity alumni group visiting the Capitol, he noted that his parents had kept him enrolled in public schools after Virginia’s leaders reluctantly integrated under federal order. “That’s something I’m very proud of,” he said.