What appears to have been a clean sweep of statewide offices in Virginia has energized gun owners across the country and sent a message to Democrats that pushing radical extremism is not a winning political strategy.
Now, Republicans Glenn Youngkin, Winsome Sears and Jason Miyares have been elected governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general in a clean sweep of statewide offices. Until Tuesday night, most political prognosticators were expecting a Terry McAuliffe victory. PBS News Hour posted his post-election remarks on YouTube.
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said gun owners made the difference in Tuesday’s tight election victories, shepherding in “a return of common sense to the Commonwealth.”
In a state Joe Biden carried in 2020, and Democrats took over in 2019, voters evidently thought it is time for a change, especially after McAuliffe declared a few weeks ago he didn’t think parents should be involved in what their children are taught in school. It was a major blunder that enraged parents.
Gun owners were already prepared to fight, after outgoing Democrat Gov. Ralph Northam pushed through a gun control agenda in 2020 with a newly-achieved Democrat majority in the House of Delegates. Apparently, Democrats didn’t think gun control was an issue, perhaps taking for granted the public’s penchant for short memory, but this time around, it became clear from the turnout in rural counties that Commonwealth gun owners havenb’t forgotten the way they were treated last year.
According to CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “Old Dominion gun owners were not about to allow anti-gun Democrats enjoy another two years of power after what happened in January 2020.”
Even a last-minute attempt to portray Youngkin as a gun control proponent didn’t work.
“What is most gratifying,” Gottlieb said in a post-election statement, “was to see savvy gun rights voters ignore the despicable last-minute ad buy by desperate Democrats to suppress the gun vote by painting Republican Glenn Youngkin as an anti-gunner, when it is their own candidate who has a deplorable record on gun rights.”
Youngkin is a political newcomer, and his defeat of veteran politician McAuliffe, who brought in big name supporters including Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Barack Obama and other prominent Democrats, amounts to a dire warning about what to expect in the midterm elections in 2022.
The Virginia election was not only an example of voters taking back their state, it was a referendum on Joe Biden’s big government administration and Capitol Hill Democrats who have allowed radicals to take over their party, CCRKBA suggested.
“McAuliffe’s brand of socialism, with its strong anti-rights component, has been soundly rejected,” Gottlieb said. “We are hopeful the new leadership will quickly reverse the extremist policies adopted by the previous radical Democrat administration. If Republicans capture the Assembly, as it appears they have, they should move immediately in January to repeal Northam’s one-handgun-per-month law, and restore state preemption for gun law uniformity across the Commonwealth.”
“Virginians made their choices loud and clear Tuesday,” he observed, “and we are optimistic the incoming governor will exercise good judgment and common sense where gun ban zealotry and social prejudice against gun owners have guided the agenda for the past four years.”
