Free Republic

After white supremacists spilled blood in defense of keeping up Confederate statues in 2017, the GOP candidate for governor of Virginia, Ed Gillespie, said the monuments should stay up as a matter of heritage and history. His TV advertising featured threatening images of Latino gangs, labeled illegal immigrants, involved in murder and rape. The racially loaded ‘Culture Wars’ campaign, straight from then-President Trump’s playbook, gave Gillespie a push but he ultimately lost the race to Democrat Ralph Northam.

After white supremacists spilled blood in defense of keeping up Confederate statues in 2017, the GOP candidate for governor of Virginia, Ed Gillespie, said the monuments should stay up as a matter of heritage and history.

There is a lesson from scandal of moonwalking Gov. Ralph Northam (D-Va.) being photographed in either in a KKK hood and sheet or blackface in his medical school yearbook. In 2017 Northam decisively defeated Ed Gillespie for governor 54 to 45. (As an aside, Bill Kristol backed Northam.) In that race, the Democrats played the race card for all it was worth, while Gillespie was as hapless as a deer in the headlights. This should not be a surprise. Democrats do what Democrats do -- play to win at any cost. And establishment Republicans do what establishment Republicans do --...

Across the country, Democratic officials are condemning party member Ralph Northam due to an unearthed medical yearbook photo of the Virginia governor dressed either as a man painted in stereotypical racist blackface or dressed as a KKK member. The photo from 1984 was first discovered by BigLeaguePolitics.com, has been confirmed, and has caused an uproar across the political spectrum as liberal elected officials call for Gov. Northam's resignation. Despite Democrats still praising an actual former Klansman from their party -- a la the dead Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia -- party officials are saying that Gov. Northam must resign and...

The Democrats are pushing for straight-up infanticide, and they're emboldened enough to not even bothering hiding it any longer. When asked about the controversial late term abortion bill presented in Virginia's House of Delegates this week, Governor Ralph Northam said a fully developed child born in the third trimester would be kept alive, but the physician and mother would get to discuss and decide whether to take its life or not. "If a mother is in labor... the infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that's what the mother and the...

I think I must have been ill that day. At some point, no one can say precisely when, libertarians apparently swore a feudal oath of fealty to the Republican Party. In response to an American Prospect article on libertarian disenchantment with the Bush administration, Reason's own former editor in chief Virginia Postrel explained that "real Dean voters don't like Jeff Flake. (I do.)" On the Crossfire view of politics, this makes sense: You pick your team and root for it, come hell or high water. The Platonic Real Dean Voter can't possibly hold any affection for a member of the...

There is plenty of Republican hand-wringing and media gloating this morning over the dramatic loss of a Republican-held U.S. Senate seat in the deepest red Alabama yesterday — the first time since a conservative Democrat won in 24 years. It is mostly much ado about nothing. It had nothing to do with the very liberal Democrat running, Doug Jones, who was originally just a “D” set up as a lamb to the slaughter in a state Republicans typically win by 25 to 30 points. Trump won Alabama by 28 points. It had everything to do with Republican Roy Moore being...

Virginia elected officials thought they had taken politics out of highway funding when they adopted a new way of scoring and ranking transportation projects three years ago. But maybe not in this election year. With three statewide offices and the House of Delegates up for grabs in three weeks, a regional spat over highway funding caught fire Monday, as Secretary of Transportation Aubrey L. Layne Jr. took aim at Republican political leaders in Southwest Virginia who have accused Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, of doing too little to fund critical road projects in their region. Layne told the House Appropriations...

If you wanted to predict the results of Tuesday's gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey, you would have been wise to ignore the flurry of polls and campaign events. You would have paid no heed to the conventional wisdom that Republican Ed Gillespie had a solid chance to beat Ralph Northam in Virginia. In fact, Northam's 9-point victory margin in Virginia was not much different from Phil Murphy's 13-point margin over Republican Kim Guadagno in New Jersey. And both almost precisely mirrored the 2016 presidential results. Hillary Clinton carried New Jersey by a 55-41 percent margin last year; Murphy...

Anti-establishment firebrand Corey Stewart wasted little time Tuesday night before offering his synopsis of why Republicans lost big in Virginia's elections: They picked the wrong guy. After watching Republican Ed Gillespie go down in defeat in the governor's race, Stewart, the chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors and the former chairman of President Donald Trump's Virginia campaign, blasted Gillespie in a statement, saying he "refused to stand with the grassroots of the party and refused to fight ultra left wing Democrats." "Tonight was a humiliating rejection of the failed Bush wing of the Republican Party," said Stewart,...

JFK once said, “victory has a hundred fathers; defeat is an orphan.” But in the wake of Ed Gillespie’s stunning, landslide loss in the Virginia governor’s race, it looks like defeat has at least two fathers. On today’s Morning Joe, Willie Geist reported: “The Gillespie campaign was whispering to reporters that this vote was a repudiation of President Trump.” Trump, in turn, laid the blame at the feet of Gillespie, tweeting “he did not embrace me.” What are Republicans and conservative to make of a very bad Tuesday night? There’s good news and bad news. Get the rest of the...

I just voted in SW Virginia. Rural area, goes usually about 58-42 for the good guys (or at least the less-evil guys). More cars than usual for off year elections but no real wait inside. This was about noon. I'd guess that it was half of 2016 (Trump), and about equal to when Cuccinelli lost a very close race without any establishment help in 2013 to McAuliffe. Although the Dems have an edge in VA now, I still think it is very winnable for Republicans. My hope is that we pull out a win in a close election. For those...

When he was attending Catholic University of America, Ed Gillespie worked three jobs, one in a campus dining hall, one as a short-order cook and one parking cars at the U.S. Senate. Through the job as a parking lot attendant, Gillespie learned of an internship opportunity that led to a job on Capitol Hill, and he has not stopped working in politics and public affairs since. Gillespie, communications ace, former lobbyist and senior aide to President George W. Bush, will find out Tuesday if Virginia voters will send a Reagan conservative to the Virginia governor’s mansion in the era of...

Republican Ed Gillespie is now narrowly leading the Virginia gubernatorial race by 3 points, according to a new poll, just three days before Tuesday's election. The new poll of likely Virginia voters by Republican firm Optimus/Firehouse Strategies over Wednesday and Thursday shows Gillespie leading his Democratic opponent Ralph Northam by 40.4 percent to 37.4 percent. His lead is just outside the poll's margin of error. Recent polls have suggested a late-game comeback for Gillespie, who trailed Northam by a small margin for recent months of the race, with a Friday poll showing the two locked in a dead heat at...

A new poll from Virginia Quantitative Research reveals that Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie leads over Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ralph Northam by two points. The poll shows that 45 percent of Virginians favor Ed Gillespie over 43 percent of Virginia residents who support Ralph Northam, while two percent prefer libertarian candidate Cliff Hydra. Virginia Quantitative Research also found that 43 percent of Virginians also prefer Republican lieutenant gubernatorial candidate Jill Vogel against 40 percent of citizens who favor Democrat candidate Justin Fairfax. For the Virginia Attorney General race, 43 percent prefer Republican John Adams compared to 42 percent who...

New campaign finance reports reveal that Virginia Democrat gubernatorial candidate Ralph Northam’s campaign coordinated with the Latino Victory Fund (LVF) on the LVF’s “sickening” ad, which even the Washington Post called “vile.” The Latino Victory Fund ran an ad that featured an Ed Gillespie supporter attempting to run down minority children. The Gillespie campaign decried this ad as “disgusting” and an “attack on the people of Virginia.” A report from the Washington Post suggested that the LVF allegedly created their controversial ad to spur minority support for Virginia Democrat Ralph Northam due to private polling that reveals low support for...

This week’s terrorist attack in New York City — carried out by an immigrant who won his spot in the U.S. through a lottery — has pushed the Virginia governor’s race onto turf claimed by Republican Ed Gillespie, who has made immigration and public safety cornerstones of his campaign. One group of Mr. Gillespie’s opponents, the Latino Victory Fund, already has pulled down an attack ad showing a truck with a Gillespie bumper sticker stalking children on a sidewalk — eerily similar to Tuesday’s attack in which a man mowed down people on a bike path in New York. For...

Terrorist sympathizers among the mainstream and social media pound the diversity message on their readers, listeners and viewers, but by lining up sheep-like together on the propaganda they disseminate, show absolutely no diversity among themselves Did the Latino Victory Fund’s ad, putting a pickup truck with a Confederate flag and an Ed Gillespie bumper sticker chasing down Muslim, Latino and black children on display, give inspiration to suspected terrorist Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov to, within days of the ad launch, plow a truck down a bike path, killing eight and injuring more than a dozen others, in Manhattan on Halloween afternoon?...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXB7vlBl_Vs

The Republican Governors Association (RGA) slammed Hillary Clinton’s ex-spokesman and CNN political contributor Brian Fallon in a statement on Saturday after Fallon derisively claimed Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie was a white supremacist. “Brian Fallon’s attack on Ed Gillespie is shameful, disgraceful, and has no place in American politics,” said RGA Chairman Governor Scott Walker. “Ralph Northam, Hillary Clinton and CNN should immediately denounce Fallon’s blatant attempt to score political points from a tragedy, and CNN should question whether it serves the network and the viewing public well by giving a microphone to Fallon’s hateful rhetoric.” Fallon claimed that...