Richmond, VA — Tomorrow, Virginia GOP insiders will select their nominee for governor in a chaotic convention that has been shrouded in confusion, uncertainty, and brutal infighting. Today, new reporting from The New York Times highlights the defining issue in the Virginia GOP: complete allegiance to Donald Trump and his dangerous extremism.
See below for key excerpts and read the full report here.
The New York Times: Virginia G.O.P.’s Choices for Governor: ‘Trumpy, Trumpier, Trumpiest’
By Trip Gabriel
One candidate brands himself a “conservative outlaw.” Another boasts of her bipartisan censure by the State Senate for calling the Capitol rioters “patriots.” A third, asked about Dominion voting machines — the subject of egregious conspiracy theories on the right — called them “the most important issue” of the campaign.
These are not fringe candidates for the Republican nomination for Virginia governor.
They are three of the leading contenders in a race that in many ways embodies the decade-long meltdown of Republican power in Virginia, a once-purple state that has gyrated more decisively toward Democrats than perhaps any in the country. In part, that is because of the hard-right focus of recent Republican officeseekers, a trend that preceded former President Donald J. Trump and became a riptide during his time in the White House.
The party’s race to the right shows no sign of tempering as a preselected group of Republicans gather on Saturday at 39 sites around Virginia to choose a nominee for governor. That candidate will advance to a November general election that has traditionally been a report card on the party in power in Washington, as well as a portent of the midterms nationally.
After a monthslong G.O.P. schism, Virginia Republicans decided to hold a nominating convention rather than a primary, which would attract a broader field of voters. At the party’s “disassembled convention,” as it is called, delegates who have been vetted by local Republican officials will choose the nominee, which critics say perpetuates the party’s narrow appeal.
Al and Julia Kent, moderate Republican voters in the Richmond suburbs, won’t be participating.
“It’s so confusing,” said Mr. Kent, an Air Force veteran who found the paperwork to register for Saturday’s nominating process to be intrusive. He said it had asked questions that “the Republican Party doesn’t need to know.”
His wife, a retired preschool teacher, said, “I don’t think the Republican Party is listening to anybody — the normal class of people, what they want.”
The Kents both voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 and 2020, but they are worried about his legacy of divisiveness, in America and the G.O.P. “I think he’s ruined the Republican Party,” Ms. Kent said.
Once a Republican stronghold, Virginia did not vote for a Democratic presidential nominee in 10 elections before 2008. But ever since 2009, Republicans have lost 13 consecutive statewide elections.
Changing demographics are part of the reason: A booming economy in Northern Virginia has drawn educated, racially diverse professionals from out of state, as well as immigrants. Both groups have shifted the populous region leftward.
Suburban changes have also remade greater Richmond, including Chesterfield County, south and west of the capital city, where the Kents live. President Biden carried Chesterfield County in November, becoming the first Democratic presidential candidate to win here in 72 years.
But demographics don’t tell the whole story. Republican candidates and their messages have also undermined the party’s appeal, G.O.P. elders said in interviews. In response to a changing state, Republicans have nominated ideologues who fanned polarizing social issues like abortion, illegal immigration and preserving Confederate statues. This year’s No. 1 priority for most candidates is “election integrity,” the base-rousing cause fueled by Mr. Trump’s false claims of a rigged 2020 vote. [...]
Larry J. Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said the Republican candidates for governor this year fit into three categories: “Trumpy, Trumpier, Trumpiest.”
By embracing the former president, who lost Virginia by 10 percentage points last year, Republicans are trading electability in the general election for viability in a primary. “They play the Republican nominating game very well, but they go so far to the right that most people find them offensive,” Mr. Sabato said. “It’s not respectable anymore for well-educated people to identify with the Trump G.O.P.”
Many Virginia Republicans said the party’s decision to hold a nominating convention with preselected voters typified the party’s self-inflicted wounds. The move was made after a bitter public squabble among central committee members of the state party.
The choice of a convention — to be held at disparate sites because the state has banned mass gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic — has historically favored candidates who appeal to party activists, rather than to the more ideologically diverse voters who show up for a primary.
“We don’t just preach voter suppression, we practice it,” said former Representative Tom Davis, a moderate Republican who served seven terms in Northern Virginia. “Why don’t we try to build the party and be a welcoming party instead of being exclusionary? Frankly, it says a lot about where we are as a party.” [...]
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