Youngkin manager: “Education was our gateway issue.”

by Rubachox

Last month, for the first time in 12 years, a Republican won the governorship in Virginia. Republicans in New Jersey sometimes forget that while Chris Christie was winning re-election in 2013, Republicans in Virginia were going down to defeat.

As the New York Times put it, “Glenn Youngkin Was a Traditional Republican. Then He Became a Culture Warrior.” The Times (11/03/21) provided this assessment:

“A natural campaigner running his first race, Mr. Youngkin found a way to enlist both the Republican base still in thrall to Donald J. Trump and less ideological Republicans who rejected the party in the Trump era. Furious Democratic attacks that he was a Trumpian wolf in suburban-dad fleece never quite stuck because, in both biography and manner, Mr. Youngkin did not fit the former president’s bullying, self-aggrandizing profile. His ability to direct multiple messages — red meat to the G.O.P. base via interviews with right-wing media, and a less divisive pitch to swing voters — will serve as a blueprint for his party in the midterms.

… His victory running as a conservative in a seemingly Democratic redoubt — no Republican had won statewide in Virginia in a dozen years — could make Mr. Youngkin, 54, a contender within his party nationally if its voters decide they are ready to move on from Mr. Trump and Trumpism.”

Some of Governor-Elect Youngkin’s resume mirrors that of Pastor Phil Rizzo, who ran in New Jersey’s GOP primary. Youngkin is a devout evangelical Christian who founded an independent evangelical congregation – the Holy Trinity Church – that operates a 358-acre horse farm and “Christian retreat ministry.” Much of the 31.5-acre property surrounding Youngkin’s family home in the Washington suburbs is owned by a foundation affiliated with the Holy Trinity Church.

The Texas-based political consultants who took on and won the Virginia Governor’s campaign have been doing quite a few interviews since their win and what they have to say is instructive. Jeff Roe ran Senator Ted Cruz’ campaign for President in 2016. Kristin Davison works for Roe. This is how they described their respective roles in Glenn Youngkin’s campaign to Politico:

Kristin Davison
“I was more minute-to-minute, day-to-day here in Virginia, working with Jeff and the Youngkin campaign.”

“We had an opponent who focused on every political talking point the DNC probably gave him. And Glenn stayed focused on things like cost of living, education and safety — [which] were on the forefront of conversations that families were having every day.”

“You had two choices. Glenn and our message was that we believe parents should be involved and have a say — and not just on school safety, but on standards, not just on one specific issue. Terry and Democrats had framed it so that teachers unions and political agendas would have a bigger role in your child's education than you do. And that's a powerful message, and it's very different and deeper than just a CRT message.”

Jeff Roe
“The strategy and the narrative of the campaign is probably the most important thing that I focused on. A lot of times, the tyranny of the immediate can get in the way of the narrative and strategy. So I tried to stay out of the weeds.”

“We won the suburbs — big gains over 2017 and 2020, and it's because they [Democrats] are now the revolutionaries. They're talking past the voters, talking to their own base, [talking] into their own microphones and their own Twitter accounts about "defund the police"; taking away the power of police officers with qualified immunity, which is kind of a technical issue, but it's important; forced unionization; [eliminating] school resource officers; higher taxes — you know, ‘tax the rich,’ ‘soak the rich,’ and suburban voters might even agree to tax a billionaire or to raise the debt and spend trillions of dollars in D.C., but it doesn't impact them, it doesn't help them, and it certainly doesn't apply to them when you say parents shouldn't be involved in their children's education. And so these — ‘critical race theory,’ or pick your poison — all the issues we ran on play into an actual daily voter's life. And most political issues don't.”

“The Democrats have talked so far past their own voters and their own swing voters that they've become radicals and revolutionaries. And Terry McAuliffe — because he's a national Democrat, and actually, frankly, I don't even mean that as a critique — he's operated at the highest levels of government for 43 years. He's a political boss. If you constructed what a political boss looks like, it would be him.”

“You can't have too many messages, or you don't have any. On Election Day, Terry had 11 commercials running. We had three.”

Kristin Davison also wrote an interesting piece at the Spectator on Youngkin’s win, in which she made the following points:

“Education is an issue that Republicans all too often cede to Democrats, and that was not going to be the case with our campaign. Democrats love straw man accusations that Republicans are cutting education budgets and firing teachers, which we expected and were prepared to fend off.

We knew early on we had to go on offense on education or we would be playing defense. That’s why one of our first events during the general election campaign was at Thomas Jefferson High School in Fairfax County. It’s why, even before Youngkin launched his Day One Game Plan, he unveiled a plan to restore higher standards in our schools — standards Terry McAuliffe had lowered during his time in office — to a crowd of nearly 1,000 excited, impassioned, bipartisan parents.

…From the start, we were not going to accept the notion that education was a ‘Democrat’ issue. Yet with that comment, in that debate, McAuliffe shifted the Democratic National Committee education-attack script. The result of that, and of our planning, was that we ended up winning education-voters by six points, and in turn the election.

So how did we do it? The first thing to understand is that education is not a linear issue. It’s not just advanced math, or critical race theory, or charter schools, or school safety, or higher standards. Each of those components is important and affects how our children learn and think, but we also didn’t want to box ourselves in to only half of the discussion or one fragment of the population.”

“We spoke to each individual education voter on the issue that mattered most to him or her, and when it became clear that parents’ rights were being called into question and our children’s safety was at risk, we were able to bring those education voters under a single umbrella.

Education was our gateway issue. It allowed us to make inroads in the suburbs outside of Washington, D.C., Richmond, and Virginia Beach; it enabled us to break into communities that have not considered voting for a Republican in a long time. One week before the election, we held a Latinos for Youngkin event in Prince William County, where over 200 energized Latino supporters packed a restaurant and waved their “Parents for Youngkin” signs. We went on to win 55 percent of the Latino vote. By turning a message into a movement, we ignited our base to turn out at levels that far surpassed the last presidential election.

Youngkin was able to frame the education debate as a choice: did Virginians believe they should have more of a say in their children’s lives? Or should the responsibility go to bureaucrats with a political agenda?”

There’s a lot of good advice there if the NJGOP has the humility to acknowledge and accept it.

"Education was our gateway issue... We went on to win 55 percent of the Latino vote."

Kristin Davison
Glenn Youngkin campaign manager/consultant

“In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

George Orwell

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