Rather, what seems to have triggered many white suburbanites is the prospect their children will be taught about systemic racism and how it continues to disadvantage people of color. Dig deeper and one discovers that what really energizes the movement is not just the possibility that children will learn more about the atrocities of slavery or leave American history class with a diminished view of the nation’s founders. Who would argue that parents should play no role in public education? But what this often translated to, as education became the dominant campaign talking point, was a not-so-subtle message that “teacher unions” and “progressives” had hijacked the curriculum to indoctrinate youth into their “woke” cultural views. “Parents matter” was the rallying cry of the Youngkin campaign and, on the surface, that seemed fairly reasonable. Trump’s playbook, though without so much of the coarseness and overt racism that accompanied the former president’s tirades against Latino immigrants. Youngkin tapped into the public’s broad unease with school systems, which have been forced to make all kinds of difficult choices during the COVID-19 pandemic from mask mandates to stay-at-home instruction by computer and into the very specific fears of white parents over what’s become known as “critical race theory.” In this, the Republican candidate took a page from Mr. President Joe Biden’s recent dip in popularity may well have hurt his chances, but this was no referendum on the president or his stalled economic agenda - as much as the national media may claim it to be so.īut there was a referendum in Virginia, and one that’s much more worrisome: a referendum on public education. He was elected the commonwealth’s governor by fewer than 57,000 votes in 2013, and he lost Tuesday night by somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 votes more. McAuliffe, a former Democratic National Committee chairman closely associated with Bill and Hillary Clinton, may be highly influential within his party’s hierarchy, but he was no rock star on the Old Dominion campaign trail. Polls predicted a close election, and Virginia voters have chosen plenty of Republicans for state offices over the years. Claims of a reliably “blue” Virginia were badly overstated. Terry McAuliffe’s loss to Republican Glenn Youngkin in the Virginia gubernatorial race was no shocker.
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