Recent Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races have substantially raised GOP 2022 midterm election expectations amid voter rejections of radical progressive policies and plummeting Biden administration poll numbers.
In an era where woke culture wars dominate debates, Democrats are already experiencing howling wake-up calls.
Yes Virginia, Santa is a Multi-Racial Patriot:
Democrats gave Virginia Republicans a wonderfully cherished seasonal gift in former Carlyle Group CEO Glenn Youngkin’s upset defeat of their gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe.
This is, after all, a formerly deep blue state that President Biden easily won less than a year ago by 10 points.
The culture contentions around education are potent.
McAuliffe, a former governor, had made a heavy mistake in lightly dismissing heated parent and teacher protests of divisive critical race theory (CRT), anti-patriotic, and inappropriately age-and-sexually-explicit materials being taught in the Commonwealth’s K-12 public schools.
During a campaign debate, McAuliffe said: "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach."
Former President Barack Obama did neither McAuliffe nor his party any favors when he amplified the toxic issue by accusing Youngkin of deflecting from "serious problems that affect serious people."
Stone tone-deaf Obama said: "We don’t have time to be wasting on these phony trumped-up culture wars, this fake outrage that right-wing media peddles to juice their ratings."
This was after a tragically disgusting national spectacle involving efforts of Loudoun County School Board Superintendent Scott Ziegler to cover up two sexual assaults by a teenage student which occurred at separate schools in the same district on May 29 and October 6.
During the first instance, the male student "wearing a skirt" who allegedly attacked a ninth-grade female in a girl’s bathroom was charged with two counts of forcible sodomy, one count of anal sodomy, and one count of forcible fellatio.
The victim’s very legitimately outraged father, Scott Smith, was forcibly confronted and arrested while subsequently voicing loud opposition to transgender bathroom policies at a fiery school board meeting.
Nevertheless, in a pointed letter addressed to the White House (with their participation in drafting it), Smith’s protest was referenced as the action of a "domestic terrorist" by the National School Boards Association (NSBA), triggering an order by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland directing the DOJ and FBI to investigate such "threats."
Regarding school safety, Obama also suggested that Youngkin’s rejection of COVID vaccine and mask mandates for young schoolchildren is unjustified.
"Instead of stoking anger aimed at school boards and administrators, who are just trying to keep our kids safe … we should be making it easier for teachers and schools to give our kids the world-class education they deserve, and to do so safely while they are in the classroom," he added.
Whereas Governor-elect Youngkin is a full-throated advocate of vaccines, he opposes school mask and injection mandates.
Youngkin’s Virginia GOP win — while huge — isn’t the only big one. Republican Winsome Sears defeated Democrat Hala Ayala — another Black woman candidate — for the lieutenant governor’s spot, and Republican Jason Miyares denied Democrat Mark Herring a third attorney general term.
Many Voters in the Garden State Race Go Brandon:
An even far greater anti-woke backlash surprise involved the razor thin near-defeat of "shoo-in" New Jersey incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy by former Republican state legislator Jack Ciatarelli.
In a state arguably even deeper blue than Virginia with more than a million more registered Democrat than Republican voters, Ciatarelli lost by only about 19,000 votes out of more than 2.4 million ballots cast.
With strong financial ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, uber-liberal Gov. Murphy has embraced the left wing of the party, hosting Vermont Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders for a campaign rally last month.
Ciattarelli has criticized Murphy’s profligate spending policies in a state with the nation’s highest property taxes relative to home value.
Murphy has supported enforcing COVID stay-at-home orders and mandated vaccines and masks during COVID-19 outbreaks. He also supports requiring masks in public and mandating vaccines and masks for businesses, whereas Ciattarelli does not.
In addition, Murphy wants Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) to be taught in K-12, whereas Ciattarelli doesn’t want DEI to be taught to anyone, either in schools or the workplace.
Murphy also wants to institute a mandatory buyback of "assault style" weapons.
On a related liberal policy topic, Minneapolis voters rejected a referendum to disband and replace their police department with a "Department of Public Safety."
Meanwhile, Ed Durr — a Republican truck driver with a $153 campaign budget (including $66 spent on doughnuts and drinks) and no political experience — unseated Democratic New Jersey State Senate President Steve Sweeney, the longest-serving legislative leader in the state’s history.
"I guess what motivated me more than anything was I went for my concealed carry," Durr explained. "And I was told flat-out by the local sheriff, 'Don't even bother.' And that kind of angered me ... I've never been arrested, and I couldn't get a concealed carry?"
Three Painful 2022 Midterm Election Messages for Progressives:
Tuesday’s election results indicate that through progressive overreach, incompetence and intolerance, Democrats badly lost control of three key gut-level voting issues: education, the economy and law and order.
Of these epic defeats, the biggest shock was New Jersey, where Jack Ciattarelli, the underfinanced Republican nearly defeated Murphy with a 16-point swing and considerable down-ballot Democrat carnage.
Quoting Daniel Henninger in The Wall Street Journal: "If the Youngkin win in Virginia was an earthquake, that New Jersey governor’s result — win or barely lose — is a volcano."
Virginia’s contest was a test of whether Americans wish their children to be branded as either oppressors or oppressed based upon skin color.
And apparently, they don’t.
According to an AP survey, a quarter of Virginia voters said continuing debate over whether schools are teaching CRT was the most important factor in their vote … more than 7 in 10 supported Youngkin on this.
Ciattarelli’s New Jersey campaign focused much attention on the cost of living after Murphy had said in 2019: "[If taxes are] the only basis upon which you’re going to make a decision, we’re probably not your state."
Amid rising crime rates, voters nationwide rejected the broad progressive woke agenda, and particularly the anti-police movement, one of the most misguided political rallying cries of modern times.
Accordingly, my strategic 2022 mid-term advice for progressives:
Don’t change a thing!
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 10 books, "What Makes Humans Truly Exceptional," (2021) is available on Amazon along with all others. Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.