“The drama that played out in upscale Loudoun County, Virginia over the last year or so,” Matt Taibbi writes at Substack, “cost Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe the governorship. . . .”
McAuliffe, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and previously governor (2014-2017) under Virginia’s one-term consecutive limit, lost to Republican Glenn Youngkin by 2 percentage points in Tuesday’s off-year election. That’s big news because Virginia is a blue state where just a year ago Democrat Joe Biden beat President Donald Trump by a 10-point margin.*
“[T]he Loudoun County story,” notes Taibbi, “involves furious disputes between local parents and the school board over a variety of issues, including a pair of sexual assaults.”
Those two attacks involve a “skirt-wearing teen who raped a female classmate in [the] girls’ bathroom.” Convicted in juvenile court on two counts of sexual assault for the first incident, the lad has been accused of attacking another young female student — also in a school bathroom, but in a different school (having been transferred).
Yet, during a school board meeting discussion on transgender bathroom policies, one month after the assault occurred, school officials claimed there had been no incidents.
The lie was exposed only after the girl’s father, in attendance, became angry.
And was arrested.
“It was the woke cover-up that electrified the Virginia governor’s race,” declares the UK’s Daily Mail headline on their Election Day exclusive interview with the rapist’s mother.
That school officials would attempt to hide such incidents speaks to the crying need for accountability.
And for the right of parents to control their kids’ education.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Republicans triumphed across the board, sweeping all three statewide offices — which breaks a Democratic Party streak dating back to 2012 — as well as winning back the Virginia House of Delegates. The GOP Lieutenant Governor-elect Winsome Sears will be the first black woman in that position and the Attorney General-elect Jason Miyares will become the state’s first Latino AG.
NOTE: Decided is this question: “How much say should parents have in what their child’s school teaches?” In a Washington Post exit poll, a majority of Virginians answered, “A lot.” Of those, 77 percent voted for Youngkin.
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6 replies on “Louder in Loudoun”
I am glad that my earlier expectations about the Virginia gubernatorial race were falsified. But I’d love to understand why, after his initial misstep on the issue of parental direction of education, McAuliffe was psychologically unable to claim, with some apparent humility, that he’d expressed himself badly, well understood why people were upset, and had really meant [fill in the blank]. He was still in the lead even after he made his initial slip; his subsequent behavior helped to erode what remained of that lead.
It was unbelievably backasswards. Youngkin used McAuliffe’s “gaffe” that parents shouldn’t tell teachers what to teach when much of his campaign was based around exactly the same point, that parents have a right to tell teachers what (and what not) to teach. Insane. It’s fashionable in the immediate aftermath to attribute Youngkin’s win to the incessant dog whistling ads he ran on this subject in the final weeks. Surely that helped. But was it a major factor? In 2020, Biden carried Loudon County, the hotbed of all the fighting at school board meetings, by 10%; McAuliffe carried it by, you guessed it, 10%. No change. McAuliffe’s real gaffe was running against Trump and 1/6, instead of against his opponent. And, as always, the real deciding factor was Bill Clinton’s mantra: “It’s the economy, stupid.” It always is…
If Biden and McAuliffe carried Loudon County by the same margin, that means Loudon County voters didn’t matter. It suggests Loudon County voters were not sufficiently bothered by the issue. However, other Virginia voters were not nearly as complacent and rightly viewed this issue as a warning of what might come their way in the future. What happened in Loudon County wasn’t guaranteed to stay in Loudon County. Voters took heed.
Doug, when someone calling himself “doug” claimed in a comment to an earlier enrry that McAuliffe’s remark had been taken out of context, I asked that doug to supply the missing context, but doug did not respond. I later listened and read as McAuliffe repeatedly refused to clarify or to distance himself from his remark. Do some of the Dougs commenting here live in a parallel universe, but somehow cross-over at this ‘blog?
Doug,
Your analysis of the 2020 & 2021 Loudoun County vote is way off. McAuliffe won the county by 11 pts (55.3 to 44.2%) this year (2021), but Biden won the county last year (2020) by a whopping 25 pts (61.5 to 36.5).
A 14 percentage point change in the state’s fourth most populous county is a big deal. Plus, the events in Loudoun County electrified the entire state electorate.
2021 VA Gubernatorial results — county by county
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/11/02/us/elections/results-virginia.html
2020 VA Presidential results — county by county
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-virginia.html
Personally I think the vote was not as close as reported. Considering the reports from last year of a 1.7 million vote discrepancy in Virginia, it was probably actually more like 75/25. Guess they didn’t cheat hard enough.