Primary Day Prediction: Va Dems will nominate a ticket today less diverse than the @VA_GOP ticket then spend the next 5 months calling the more diverse ticket racists.
— John Whitbeck (@JohnWhitbeck) June 8, 2021
by Kerry Dougherty
Well, it looks like at least half of what the former chair of Virginia’s Republican Party predicted last night has already come true: the GOP slate is more diverse than the Democratic ticket.
In fact, Virginia’s Democratic primary voters shunned African-American candidates for governor and attorney general to nominate two white men. Retreads at that: Terry McAuliffe for governor and Mark Herring for attorney general.
They also nominated a woman for Lt. Gov., Del. Hala Ayala who describes herself as “Afro-Latina, Lebanese and Irish,” making her the lone minority on the Democratic ticket.
Frankly, I don’t care about the race or ethnicity of public officials. I want good government. It’s Dems who relentlessly use race as a political weapon. Anyone else remember the 2017 gubernatorial race when Ralph Northam was willing to smear a mainstream Republican — Ed Gillespie — as a bigot just because the Republican supported a crackdown on MS-13, a ruthless street gang? Yet all the while, Northam had an ugly secret hiding deep in a copy of his medical school yearbook.
The audacity of that man.
In fact, these three Democratic nominees all have on thing in common: They boldly called on Gov. Ralph Northam to resign in February of 2019, when those racist photos surfaced.
Yet Northam didn’t slink away, and the trio will proudly campaign with the governor whose nickname in college was “Coonman.”
In the fall, the Dems will face Glenn Youngkin for governor, Winsome Sears — an African American former Marine — from Winchester, for lieutenant governor and Jason Miyares — a Cuban-American — for attorney general.
McAuliffe will do his best to link Youngkin to Trump. He’s already started. Even though Youngkin was the least “Trumpian” candidate in the GOP contest for the nomination.
If they’re smart, the Republicans will focus on issues.
Their campaigns should be laser-focused on education and public safety. The Democrat’s love affair with teachers unions should hurt them if Northern Virginia’s pinot noir moms are still seething over closed schools this fall, as they should be.
NoVa once boasted some of the best schools in the country before militant unions kept them shut down for months after private schools safely reopened. Fairfax County’s remote learning program was an unmitigated technical disaster in the spring of 2020 and teachers union leaders there were loud and clear about not wanting to return to the classrooms.
The parole board scandal won’t help Democrats, either. Tossing murderers and sex offenders into the community rarely wins over suburban voters.
Will Trump, Trump, Trump be enough to win?
Perhaps, But Youngkin is a human ATM machine. He can flood the Republican ticket with enough money to counter the millions of out-of-state dollars that will pour in from trade unions, abortion enthusiasts and anti-gun groups who helped turn the General Assembly blue last time out.
Let the games begin!
This column is republished with permission from Kerry: Unemployed & Unedited.
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