Youngkin Talks A Moderate Game But He's A Phony
Last week ex-Republican and Virginia former Congressman Denver Riggleman admitted that the very first week he joined the House “Freedom” Caucus he wondered like his colleagues could have been elected. Unlike most of them, Riggleman is very tech savvy so his mind was blown when they introduced him to a crackpot conspiracy theory called the “one world algorithm,” which promoters claim can shut down conservative speech across all social media platforms. “‘It’s impossible,’ Riggleman said of the purported algorithm. ‘Here I am sitting in my first Freedom Caucus meeting, as my head explodes, thinking, How did these individuals get elected?’ he said. ‘The old saying is, It takes you six weeks ... to figure out how did all these other people around me get elected. Well, it took me six minutes.’ It was incredible to me to listen to that,’ he added. Riggleman quit the GOP last year, citing its transformation into a cult of personality to Trump. Besides Riggleman, Virginia had 3 other extremist kooks in the “Freedom” Caucus: Bob Good, Ben Cline and Morgan Griffith.
Despite DCCC strategists, the most flippable congressional seat in Virginia is VA-01— primarily Chesterfield, Henrico, Hanover, James City, York, Gloucester and New Kent— where Herb Jones held incumbent Rob Wittman down to 56% last cycle. Jones is taking him on again and reminded me yesterday that “The U.S. is at a historical inflection point. Collectively, if we make the wrong decision, the United States as we know will be forever changed, and not for the better. Donald tRump is a world-class idiot who has no respect for the law or the Constitution. He attempted to overthrow the United States on January 6, 2021!!! Virginia is the bellwether state. As Virginia goes, so goes the country in the ensuing year. It is critical that Democrats do well in November to keep Youngkin in check. I am confident that Virginians will do the right thing and keep the Senate and take back the House. And, in 2024, we— Virginians— need to build on our 2023 successes.
He’s not talking about his own race; he’s talking about the state legislative races, in which early voting starts in two weeks. Yesterday, Trip Gabriel reported that these off-cycle races are “closely watched as an indicator of the national mood [and that] with every seat in the Legislature up in eight weeks, the stakes are unusually high, with Republicans in position to swing the entire state, just four years after Democrats did the same. Democrats have made abortion rights their top issue, warning that if Republicans win full control of the General Assembly, then Virginia will join other Southern states by sharply restricting abortion access. A winning night for Democrats on Nov. 7, however, will show that abortion remains just as potent a get-out-the-vote issue for the party as it has been in a string of state elections since the reversal of Roe v. Wade.”
Pretend moderate, Governor Glenn Youngkin is leading the GOP charge without talking about the red meat issues Trump, DeSantis and the other national candidates are talking about— particularly avoiding banning abortion, which is what the Virginia Republicans want to do… but without making their case to the voters. Instead, Youngkin discusses “tax cuts, job creation and parental influence over schools, who calls “common-sense conservative policies.”
On abortion, Youngkin, who is not on the ballot, wants to ban the procedure after 15 weeks with exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. If Republicans take majorities in both legislative chambers— and both are in play— the takeaway is likely to be that the party cracked the code with suburban swing voters on abortion by offering a more middle-of-the-road position than the near total bans passed in deep-red states.
“This election is going to matter, it’s going to set things up for 2024,” said Don Scott, the Democratic leader of the Virginia House of Delegates, who is one his party’s lead strategists. “If Virginia goes the wrong way, the narrative is going to be the Republicans have figured out the right election combination to overcome their extremism on abortion.”
And it could be a road map for Republicans in other states who are looking to defuse the issue after election losses following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.
“Folks, hold our House and flip our Senate, we know how to do this,” Youngkin urged a crowd on Saturday in a swing House district south of Richmond. He added: “Virginia is the test case.”
He did not mention that another upshot of Republicans’ taking full control of state government is that Youngkin would further ascend as a national figure. Although he earlier teased a presidential run for 2024— encouraged by many wealthy out-of-state donors and conservative media outlets who still yearn for him to get in the race— he has batted away the calls for months, saying his sole focus is turning the state.
…Youngkin, a wealthy former financial executive, has raised record sums for the Spirit of Virginia, his political committee supporting legislative candidates. The group says it pulled in $3.3 million in August and has raised $12 million since March. It is underwriting a tour of swing districts with Youngkin urging supporters to sign the side of a bus to show their commitment to voting early starting Sept. 22— a practice that Trump had made toxic with the GOP base, but has recently embraced.
With Democrats lacking a comparable state leader this year, Virginia’s Democratic U.S. senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, have raised alarms in recent weeks that the party was falling behind in fund-raising and mobilization.
The White House heard the pleas, and President Biden directed the Democratic National Committee to funnel $1.2 million to the Majority Project, the Democratic group in Virginia coordinating door-knockers and other voter outreach in key districts.
During Trump’s presidency, Virginia Democrats won full control of state government in elections in 2017 and 2019. In 2021, Youngkin and down-ballot Republicans profited from a backlash over pandemic-era school closures as well as rising inflation under Biden.
“I’d love to have said that Virginia is solidly blue; that’s clearly not the case,” Warner said in an interview. Control of each chamber is likely to come down to a handful of races: four seats in the Senate and seven in the House that are considered tossups, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project.
Many of the seats are in the exurbs of Virginia’s metropolitan areas— greater Washington, Richmond and Hampton Roads— a frontier of swing voters, many college-educated, the kind of voters who have had starring roles in elections across the U.S. in recent years.
Democratic strategists said they needed to win only one of the four tossup Senate seats to hold their current majority. They are encouraged that Democratic congressional candidates carried all of the districts in the 2022 midterms. Republicans counter that Youngkin won the same districts in his 2021 election, and that he remains popular.
One of the most closely watched races is between two first-time Senate candidates in Loudoun County, a Washington exurb that became a national flashpoint in 2021 after conservative attacks on its public school policies on diversity and transgender students.
Youngkin seized on those cultural issues to brand himself the “parents’ rights” candidate, which helped power his victory. In office, he banned critical race theory in K-12 schools (although educators said C.R.T. had no influence on curriculums), set up a tip line for parents to report about teachers and gave parents control of the names and pronouns their children used in school.
Whether these issues still motivate voters is one of the unknowns in this year’s election. Youngkin is betting that they do and is holding a “Parents Matter” town hall-style event in Loudon County on Tuesday. On Sunday, the governor went on Fox News to announce he had pardoned a father arrested in a 2021 incident at a Loudoun County School Board meeting where he criticized officials after his daughter was sexually assaulted in school.
Russet Perry, the Democrat running for the open Senate seat in the county, said that when she knocks on the doors of swing voters, the top education issue she hears is concerns over school shootings, not culture-war matters.
“Parents are a little tired of the politics intentionally injected into the schools by people who do not live here, including Glenn Youngkin,” said Perry, a former prosecutor with a daughter who is a high school freshman in public school.
Across the state, the Democratic message is that Republicans are “extremists” and if they win full control in Richmond, they will seek strict abortion limits.
But Youngkin has mostly focused his message elsewhere. In his 18-minute speech to rally Republicans on Saturday in Prince George, Va., he did not utter the words “abortion” or “pro-life,” instead stressing “common sense” policies.
About a half-hour of greeting supporters, as aides hustled him to his car, he responded to a reporter’s shouted question about whether he would sign a six-week abortion ban.
“Virginians elected a pro-life governor,” he said. “At the end of the day, I think we can ask all kinds of hypothetical questions. What I’ve been very clear on— and I’d appreciate you writing it clearly— is that I support a bill to protect life at 15 weeks.”
I think this would be a good point to note that Blue America has endorsed 3 legislative candidates this cycle and you can contribute to their races here— Jessica Anderson and Kannan Srinivasan fro the House of Delegates and Victoria Luevanos for the Senate. I asked Senate candidate Victoria Luevanos if Democrats are going to prevail against this massive tsunami of Republican cash flooding into Virginia.
"This year's election is an important one and sadly there isn't momentum like we're used to seeing during a big election. As a voter, I feel like a lot of us are just tired of this constant fight for decency, basic human rights, and freedoms; a feeling like no matter what we can't protect the things we just mobilized support for. Republicans have the wolf in sheep's (lobbyist's) clothing down to an art form. We've seen about every southern state break down voting rights, endanger and turn pregnant women and doctors into criminals overnight because their ‘pro-life’ bills are contradictory and a mess, hospitals/clinics close due to reproductive rights being stripped, public schools underfunded and closing, bus driver shortages, teacher shortages, medical staff shortages, and all-time record high tax cuts for the rich and corporations. Taxes fund city workers, they fund our firefighters, public school teachers, police, road maintenance, and all local jobs and local projects; so this big push to cut taxes... that never happens for working-class families but does for the wealthy once they secure office, is just another long game ploy to fool low-income and working families.
“We know what Republican candidates do once they secure office, they forget about all those patriotic ideals and kitchen table issues and begin the underfunding of public services, and the push of extreme conservative lobbyist bills. It has happened in every state they got the majority in since the Trump wave, and Virginia is another domino piece to knock down. Our Governor is playing the non-problematic silent type to secure good standing for his aspirations for President, and if no one takes the threats of covert extreme conservatism disguised as Traditionalism seriously we're only going to get more candidates like Trump sneaking their way in on the backs of labor force. My only hope when meeting voters in my run for state Senate is that they care about all Virginians, regardless of party or background, like I do. Families need help, we need representatives who care about all the constituents in their district not just their supporters, we need policies that help everyone connect to opportunities for economic growth and liberty."
This morning, Fergie Reid of 90For90 told us that “the Loudoun County state Senate contest between Russet Perry (D) and Juan Segura (R) is considered one of the marquee contests among the 99 contested 2023 Virginia legislative races. Loudoun County is particularly important to Youngkin and his future political ambitions. It‘s among the wealthiest counties in America; and Youngkin lost it decisively to Terry McAuliffe in 2021. Youngkin has tried to energize his base voters in Loudoun Co. with several media stories in the years during & since his gubernatorial campaign. Most recently, on a Sunday talk show, he issued a pardon for a man accused of ‘disorderly conduct’ at a school board meeting.”
Reid added that “There is a separate, ugly, politically and sexually charged story involving this man, which preceded the behavior for which he was pardoned. That story, described in the links, inflames the passions of Youngkin’s anti-public school, pro-Trump base voters statewide. Youngkin, sensing impending disaster for his political future (after previous attempts to discredit powerful Democratic leaders in Loudoun failed miserably), chose this moment to provide a pardon to this man, who is seen as a “parental rights” lightning rod in Loudoun Co. It’s a desperate move on Youngkin’s part. The pardoned man assaulted law enforcement officers in a public space, in full view of many witnesses. It’s hard for Youngkin to claim that he ‘backs the blue’ now. If this move is enough to win this Loudoun Co. Senate contest, that remains to be seen. Virginia’s early voting begins in less than 2 weeks. Ground game, grassroots activism, door-to-door communication, and a whole lot more, will determine the ultimate winners in 2023. Those ‘stories’ haven’t been completely written yet.”