GOP can win with Youngkin or lose with Trump
The choice for Colorado Republicans in 2022 became very clear in the recent election for governor in deep blue Virginia.
Republican businessman Glenn Youngkin won an improbable victory by sticking to the issues that mattered not only to the Republican base in rural Virginia but to large numbers of suburban voters in Democratic northern Virginia outside Washington, D.C.
He refused to be pulled into absurd and politically lethal conspiracy theories about how the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald Trump who did not campaign for Youngkin in Virginia.
Youngkin gave voice to thousands of suburban parents who were tired of their kids losing academic ground due to teachers’ unions insisting that schools remain closed during the pandemic. These parents were also startled to learn of the far left indoctrination of their kids in the concepts of Critical Race Theory. CRT, contrary to what Democrats insist, is not the legitimate teaching of America’s history such as slavery and the struggle for civil rights. It is a harmful worldview being taught in mandatory diversity and inclusion courses.
The arrogance of non-responsive school boards — whether it’s COVID closures or CRT or gender identity — was personified by the sexual assault of two young women in high school restrooms by a gender-fluid teen who had arranged to meet the girls in the bathroom and then assaulted them. The Loudoun County Public School board refused to acknowledge the incidents had happened much less take action and transfered the student from one school to another allowing the second assault to occur. The young woman’s father was arrested when he tried to speak at a school board meeting. The assailant was recently found guilty of the assault in one case and the other is pending in court.
Meanwhile, the former Democratic governor, Terry Mcauliffe, who earlier this year was measuring the drapes for his inevitable return to the governor’s mansion, ran an intellectually bankrupt campaign almost exclusively accusing Youngkin of being Trump’s clone.
When he wasn’t yelling “Trump! Trump! Trump!” at Youngkin, Mcauliffe was resorting to the old Democratic standby of abortion. Maybe the Democratic strategists who crafted the all-abortion-all-the-time strategy for the aptly nicknamed Sen. Mark “Uterus” Udall when he was unseated by Republican
Cory Gardner in 2014, advised Mcauliffe as well.
According to CNN exit polls, only 8% of the Virginia electorate said abortion was the most important issue and of that group of voters Youngkin won 58% and Mcauliffe won 41%.
As impressive as Youngkin’s win was, Colorado Republicans should seriously note who was not the nominee for governor. Youngkin defeated several other candidates for the nomination including state Senator Amanda Chase, a “stolen election” conspiracy enthusiast who wanted Trump to declare martial law and overturn the 2020 presidential election.
It should go without saying that had Virginia Republicans nominated Chase rather than Youngkin, Virginia Democrats would have celebrated another big election night and Republicans would have been relegated to impotence and irrelevancy yet again.
And that disaster would have gone beyond the governor’s race. Virginia elected its first Black woman to a statewide office and she was a Republican. Winsome Sears, a former Marine who managed a homeless shelter, was elected lieutenant governor. Since Sears is a Republican, the national news media has been notably silent about this historic election of a Black woman.
Jason Miyares, whose mother escaped Castro’s communist
Cuba, is the newly elected Republican attorney general. Both Sears and Miyares defeated Democratic incumbents. Republicans also elected a new majority in the Virginia House of Delegates
Thus, this is the choice before Colorado Republicans in 2022 in races for U.S. senator, governor, attorney general, secretary of state, a newly created 8th congressional district, and a reapportioned state legislature:
Will Colorado Republicans nominate candidates who will speak to the real issues facing Colorado that can not only solidify the Republican base in El
Paso, Douglas and Weld Counties along with rural Colorado, but also in the suburbs of Arapahoe and Jefferson Counties that have strongly trended towards Democrats in the past twenty years?
Colorado Republican State Chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown asked former Republican U.S. Senators Hank Brown, Wayne Allard and Cory Gardner to speak at a recent dinner. During a conversation moderated by Chairwoman Brown, it became very apparent why they won tough elections while so many other Republicans, both “tea party” and “establishment,” have failed in the last twenty years.
Brown, Allard and Gardner ran substantive, mainstream conservative campaigns that attracted unaffiliated swing voters rather than repelling them. They aggressively defined contrasts with their Democratic opponents while offering positive agendas for the future. Gardner was swept away in the anti-trump 2020 election.
Many will argue that Colorado’s massive growth has permanently altered Colorado’s political landscape as deep blue Democratic. Indeed, unaffiliated voters now make up 43% of the electorate and they certainly voted against Trump and Republicans in 2018 and 2020.
But immediately after the election, Dr. Larry Sabato of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia moved the Colorado U.S. Senate race with incumbent Democratic Senator Michael Bennet from “Safe Democratic” to “Lean Democratic” due to similarities of the suburban electorates in Virginia and Colorado.
Jessica Taylor of the non-partisan Cook Political Report declared that “suburban voters are back in play” after the Virginia results.
Whatever opportunities emerge for Colorado Republicans in 2022, they will slip away if conspiracy theorists, not candidates in the mode of Virginia Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin, are nominated.
Christine Moser, Vice President, Advertising; Justin Mock, Vice President, Finance and CFO; Bob Kinney, Vice President, Information Technology
Dick Wadhams is a political consultant and former Colo. GOP state chairman.