The Big ‘Racist’ Fail in Virginia

Elected Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears takes the stage with her family during an election night rally in Chantilly, Virginia. Picture: AFP

One salutary result from Glenn Youngkin’s victory in Virginia Tuesday is the failure of Democratic racial demagoguery. Throughout the campaign Democrats and their media allies assailed Mr Youngkin and his supporters as closet white supremacists. MSNBC’s Joy Reid said the issue of education and critical race theory is “code for white parents don’t like the idea of teaching about race.”

On PBS the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart said that if Mr Youngkin won it would be because Republicans decided that “tap-dancing with white supremacy is their way back into power.” Terry McAuliffe was especially nasty as he closed his campaign this weekend, saying of his rival: “He’s run a racist campaign from start to finish.” So what did all these racist Virginia voters do Tuesday night? In addition to electing Mr Youngkin as Governor, they elected Winsome Sears as Lt. Governor. She will be the first African-American woman to be elected to statewide office in Virginia history. These same “racists” appear to have rejected Mark Herring, a Democrat who admitted he’d appeared in blackface. Instead they chose Jason Miyares, who will be Virginia’s first Latino attorney general.

Glenn Youngkin holds hands with Winsome Sears, left, and his wife Suzanne, right, during a group prayer. Picture: AFP

If the press were doing its job, it would have alerted Virginians to what was really going on. Especially after the Lincoln Project admitted it had sent five people with tiki torches—meant to evoke the ugly, white nationalist march in Charlottesville in 2017 — to be photographed outside Mr Youngkin’s campaign bus. If there are white supremacists with Mr Youngkin as the Lincoln Project claims, why did it have to send five phony ones there for their smear?

In the end, voters shrugged off the racism accusations much the way Mr Youngkin did. Despite what Democrats say, voters know their neighbors, and they don’t see a racist society or country. Most Americans don’t want the racial divisions that Democrats keep fomenting for political gain.