Winchester, VA — As a lifelong Republican in her home state of Virginia, Tammy Yoder faithfully casts her vote for those who want to lower taxes, oppose abortion, and support other conservative causes.
But the issue that transformed Ms. Yoder, a stay-at-home mother, from a trusted voter into the kind of person who brings three young children to an evening campaign rally, was not her Christian values or her pocketbook. .
It was something even more personal, she said: what her children learn in school.
“The past year has revealed a ton to me,” said 41-year-old Ms. Yoder, as she waited in this northern Virginia for Republican nominee for governor, Glenn Youngkin, to speech. “The more I listen and pay attention, the more I see what’s happening on schools and college campuses. And the things I see, I don’t want to corrupt my kids.”
From evolution to secession to prayer, the fight for education has been a major part of the nation’s culture wars for decades. But it is not like that at all.
After months of closed classrooms and lost learning time, Republicans in Virginia are making schools the focus of their eventual push to take over the governor’s office, hoping conservatives will see the mask mandate and mandatory vaccinations and their Their fears about children are expected to rally around both. are being taught.
Vocal groups of parents, some led by Republican activists, are organizing against the school curriculum, opposing public health measures and recalling school board members. And Mr Youngkin, a former private equity executive, capitalized on conservatives’ concerns about the directive on race and the rights of transgender children to argue that Democrats want to come between parents and their children’s education.
Mr Youngkin’s attacks have put Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic former governor on the defensive, in an attempt to win back his old job, and put local issues around schools in the middle of a scathing nationwide shout-out match.
The Virginia race provides an early election test of that conservative energy.
Mr Youngkin’s victory will mark the first statewide victory for Republicans in a dozen years and will likely spark a political panic about the Democratic Party’s prospects in next year’s midterm elections. Some Republican officials and strategists compared the rise of activism to the Tea Party, the anti-government movement that helped him regain control of the House in 2010 and revived the politics of resentment that would define his party for the next decade.
“There’s just so much focus on schools, and it’s visceral,” said John Whitbeck, a former president of the Republican Party of Virginia from Loudoun County, where acrimonious school board meetings have resulted in arrests, death threats and constant airtime on conservative media. . . “It’s not like, ‘Oh, I’m against debt limits.’ It’s like, ‘You’re destroying our children’s education.’ And behold, angry people vote.”
Polling has shown a tight race in recent weeks, with Democrats less enthusiastic than Republicans about voting. Mr McAuliffe, who was barred by Virginia law from seeking re-election in 2017, is worse off than Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat in the rapidly growing, voter-rich northern Virginia suburbs, when he won four years earlier. was, according to some surveys.
Mr Youngkin’s focus on schools may not resonate as strongly with the wider electorate.
Measures such as masks and vaccine mandates are cutting back on the governor’s race in more liberal New Jersey and are highly popular among Virginia’s independents and Democrats. Critical race theory—an advanced pedagogical concept that isn’t usually introduced until college—is not part of classroom teaching in Virginia and many voters say they don’t know enough to have an opinion about it.
And by railing against equity initiatives to turn schools into a cultural war zone, books with sexual content and public health measures avoid tackling budget cuts and other complex problems facing American education.
But in the election a year later, when both sides anticipate a sharp drop in turnout, victory may rest on which candidate can best motivate his base. Mr Youngkin and his strategists believe they have discovered a rare issue in the feuding schools that could propel their voters, even in places that are shifting the state to the left.
Frustration with education is an issue that unites Republicans, activating moderates eager to ensure that their children stay in school as well as conservatives who seek to inspire their children with this belief. The liberal plot sees that white people are inherently racist.
John Fredericks, who led Donald Trump’s Virginia campaign last year, said, “Former governors are saying, ‘Hey, I’ll decide how to teach your kids, not you’ — that’s really the issue driving it. ” “Glenn Youngkin is the candidate who’s been able to outshine both sides of the party. And so far he’s given us enough to vote for that guy with enthusiasm.
Republicans have centered their closing argument around a statement from Mr McAuliffe in last month’s debate.
The remarks came after Mr Youngkin attacked Mr McAuliffe over his 2017 veto bill allowing parents to opt out of allowing their children to study material deemed sexually explicit . The controversy was fueled by a mother who objected to her son, a high school senior, reading literary classics, including Toni Morrison’s “Beloved”.
Mr McAuliffe counterattacked that he did not believe “parents should tell schools what they should teach.” In the weeks that followed, he persisted with those comments, saying that state education boards and local school boards should determine what is taught in the classroom.
But Mr Youngkin and the Republicans, removing the quote from its context, have turned the footage to the core of their argument that Mr McAuliffe would favor the government over parents.
Video of the comment was featured in digital advertisements and a statewide television advertisement accusing Mr McAuliffe of “assaults against parents”. Mr Youngkin’s team began scheduling “Parents Matter” rallies in outer counties, as they actively supported parent activist groups.
And Mr. Youngkin has also voiced for Byron Tanner Cross, a physical education teacher in Loudoun County. Mr Cross was suspended after announcing at a school board meeting that he would not address transgender students by his preferred pronoun because of his Christian faith.
At a campaign rally last week in Winchester, a small town in the Shenandoah Valley, one of the rapidly growing exorbitant counties around Washington, Youngkin made little mention of Trump, vaccines or the coronavirus. Instead, he repeatedly made school issues a top priority.
When he promised to ban critical race theory on his first day in office and vowed that schools would never close again, he drew some loud applause from an overwhelming white audience.
“This is what big government means to Terry McAuliffe. He not only wants to stand between you and your kids. He wants to make government a weapon to silence us,” Mr. Youngkin said at a farm stand of about 200 Told the crowd of people. “This is no longer a campaign. This is a movement. It is a movement led by parents.”
Mr McAuliffe has dismissed the outrage surrounding the critical race theory as “racist” and “a dog whistle”. He supports mask and vaccine mandates for students, teachers and school staff. (Mr. Youngkin says he encourages Virginians to get vaccinated against the coronavirus but does not support the mandate.)
But there are signs that Democrats are feeling threatened.
Mr McAuliffe’s campaign is back to highlight his education proposals, to reduce any argument that Mr Youngkin might be strong on the issue, calling for investing $2 billion in education, raising teacher salaries, pre- programs and invest in broadband access for students. . On Friday, McAuliffe released an ad saying Mr Youngkin would cut billions of dollars in education funding and “bring the education policies of Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos to Virginia.”
Native organizations in Virginia maintain that they are nonpartisan and focus more on school board elections than national politics. But many are led by Republican activists, raised funds from Republican Party donors and helped by conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, which has held briefings to discuss model legislation to block critical race theory. . Last month, the Republican National Committee ran ads attacking the “fascist mask mandate” and exposed video clips of angry parents yelling at school board members.
Erin Holl, a Republican voter from Frederick County in the state’s northern corner, considered herself conservative but not necessarily political. That was before the coronavirus. Months of online education with her young daughters and the closure of her dog-sitting business have taken a toll on how much she’s running for governor.
“I gave birth to her,” said Ms. Hole, pointing to her daughter. “I have a right to say how she was raised. I have a right to say how she is vaccinated. It has changed how I feel about politics.”