There’s been a lot of analysis and hand-wringing about Virginia’s recent gubernatorial elections. The exit data indicate that it was a pretty straightforward referendum on the presidency of Donald Trump, in a state he lost by five points in 2016.
A surge in turnout of nearly 300,000 “presidential year” Democrats who don’t typically vote in Virginia’s gubernatorial elections gave Democrats an unprecedented 11-point partisan advantage in a wave that cost Republicans at least 15 seats in the House of Delegates and handed a nine-point loss to my friend Ed Gillespie.
What is often lost in the hot rhetoric and swirling commentary that dominated the end of that campaign is the genuine effort by Ed, from the beginning of his campaign, to be a candidate and ultimately a governor for all Virginians.
Ed and I have worked together for years to expand our party by appealing to all voters, wherever we found them, because we believed the values and principles of conservatism not only still mean something but matter to a broad cross-section of Americans.
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So, I wasn’t surprised to see him campaigning in public housing communities, ethnic festivals, black churches and barber shops, NAACP and minority media forums. And I wasn’t surprised when he condemned the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who invaded Charlottesville — and did so with stark moral clarity, calling their “twisted mindset” inherently dehumanizing and “the presence of evil in our world.”
His hard work resulted in an increase in his share of the African-American vote from 10 percent in his 2014 U.S. Senate race to 12 percent this year — a significant improvement over President Trump’s 9 percent in Virginia last year. In fact, Gillespie garnered more African-American votes than any non-presidential-year statewide Republican in recent history.
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Gillespie’s campaign tried to avoid the race being about President Trump. However, the media, especially the national media, covered everything through that filter. So, when that filter was applied to issues that touched on race, like sanctuary cities and restoration of felons’ rights, the “Trumpian” narrative undercut the campaign’s theme of being a governor for all Virginians.
Ed said recently in an interview with David Axelrod that his polling data showed these issues resonated with suburban women in Northern Virginia — where the economy is strong but concern about gang activity has grown — and yet by Election Day it was not enough.
That narrative distracted from the incredible policy emphasis of Gillespie’s campaign and all the ads he ran in support of it. But more important, the narrative distracted from how well it was received by Virginia voters, especially in minority communities across the state.
Longtime Virginia public policy expert Jim Bacon wrote in September, “I don’t recall any gubernatorial candidate ever digging this deep into the public-policy weeds before.”
The dedication to innovative policies is why seven major daily newspapers endorsed Gillespie for governor. But Gillespie also put his money where his mouth is, spending more campaign dollars on ads focused on the economy and jobs than on restoration of rights, more on highlighting his Democratic rival’s failure to attend meetings as lieutenant governor than on sanctuary cities, and more on ads about education than on Civil War statues.
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There are lessons to learn from Gillespie’s campaign as Republicans prepare for the 2018 midterms and try to counter a wave that only seems to be growing.
First, show up. Ed’s increase in the African-American vote proves the value of engaging in a broad cross-section of voters. The recent special election in Alabama makes clear that minority voters are energized, and Republicans ignore them at their peril.
Second, there is a symbiosis between a campaign and its candidate: letting the candidate be him or herself is important to establishing a narrative and vision. Aligning the candidate’s positions with all aspects of the campaign becomes very important.
For example, Ed’s positions on immigration and restoration of rights — for deporting MS-13 gang members, but not “dreamers;” for automatic restoration of rights for non-violent felons but having a review process for the most violent — were nuanced.
But there was no nuance in his 30-second ads. Having worked with Ed for many years, argued with him over strategies, taken counsel from him and given it, I know what many have said about him and his campaign does not reflect either the man or the candidate.
Third, for too many now, opinions on issues at odds with their worldview are too quickly reduced to charges of “racism” and “bigotry.” Such unjustified slurs should not go unchallenged — and not just because they are unfair to the objects of their derision or threaten the open public discourse our democracy depends upon, but because loosely hurling such serious charges ends up diminishing their impact when it is truly needed. If everyone’s a “racist,” no one’s a racist.
Ed Gillespie ran a policy-focused campaign, drawing sharp but fair policy contrasts on important issues. Despite the decisions toward the end of his campaign, he did something Republican candidates are little known for: He moved outside our party’s comfort zone — sharing in the vulnerabilities and hopes of the people he wanted to represent as governor and reinforcing along the way why I call him my friend.