Panicky Democrats Launch Dirty Tricks in Virginia
Spooked by the Strength of Glenn Youngkin's GOP Ticket in Virginia, Halloween Comes Early to the Commonwealth, Including Voter Suppression. And They May Just Be Getting Started.
Apparently, Democrats have determined to “trick or treat” early in the Commonwealth of Virginia this year. Not waiting until October 31 for Halloween, they didn’t even wait until October 1 to begin their dirty tricks to influence the November 2nd election.
Virginia and New Jersey hold statewide elections this year, the only two conducting major odd-year elections (Louisiana and Kentucky conduct their odd-year elections for major offices in 2023). As previously noted, the GOP ticket for Governor is led by first-time candidate, Virginia native, and successful business leader Glenn Youngkin (his running mates are Jamaican-born, former Marine, and ex-state legislator Winsome Sears; Jayson Miyares, Cuban-American and state legislator, is the nominee for Attorney General).
Youngkin clearly bested Democratic nominee and former Gov. Terry McAuliffe in their two debates. McAuliffe stumbled badly in their September 28th debate when he said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
Oops. Polls show a dead heat, and Youngkin is wisely capitalizing on McAuliffe’s goof, which has outraged parents from across the political spectrum and geographic regions. But even before that colossal mistake, Democrats began hitting the panic button, including a sleazy third-party effort (they always use third parties with “dark money”) to suppress the Youngkin vote in highly-Republican southwest Virginia.
Credit to the left-leaning Axios for being the only news source to unearth and report on it. It has received no attention from major media in the state, including the Richmond Times-Dispatch or the Washington Post, both of whom show no reticence about publishing allegations of GOP “voter suppression.” From Axios:
What's happening: During the past week, Virginians have been targeted with ads on Facebook, Instagram, Google and Snapchat questioning Youngkin's commitment to the Second Amendment.
They're the work of a new political group called Accountability Virginia PAC. Its website says nothing about the individuals or organizations behind it.
"While the NRA backs Donald Trump, they REFUSED to endorse Glenn Youngkin. We can't trust Glenn Youngkin on guns," one of the ads says.
Public records show the PAC has spent more than $25,000 on the ads, which have been viewed between 1 million and 5 million times.
The intrigue: While clearly designed to hit Youngkin from the right, all indications point to Democrats behind the PAC.
Accountability Virginia's online donation page is hosted by the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue. Its bank account is at Amalgamated Bank, a labor union-owned financial institution popular with Democratic political groups.
The PAC was incorporated in Virginia by compliance consultants at the MBA Consulting Group, which works uniformly with Democrats.
Its ads on Snapchat were purchased by Gambit Strategies, a firm founded this year by the Biden presidential campaign's digital director and the former head of Democratic super PAC Priorities USA.
But that’s not the only trick, and no doubt many more are in play with the election still 30 days away. Just a few days ago, my wife received an old-fashioned-looking tabloid entitled “The American Independent,” Virginia edition. Being a former newspaper editor, I looked quickly for the disclosure “box” usually found on pages 2 or 3 in any credible newspaper. Lawyers insist on them. Here’s a typical-looking one from the October 2nd digital e-edition of the Tulsa World.
There was no disclosure of any kind, other than a post office box address on the mailing label and the bylines (two authors) of a few stories, such as Jason Gardenswartz and Josh Israel. I decided to look them up. It wasn’t hard to find out who they are.
The American Independent is the No. 1 digital platform for progressive news, reaching millions of people each month. We strive to report with honesty and integrity, shining a light on those in power, and covering the progressive politics movement.
Founded in 2016, True Blue Media publishes The American Independent, using content from The American Independent Foundation, a non-partisan 501(c)(3) organization, and other sources. We cover presidential politics, the House and the Senate, the Supreme Court, and state politics. We also focus on beats that are important to our audience including LGBTQ issues, economics, voter rights, media accountability, and reproductive rights.
True Blue Media is a for-profit media company that relies on ad revenue and investors, including The American Bridge 21st Century Foundation, a 501(c)4 research organization. The American Bridge 21st Century Foundation was founded with the mission to compare and contrast progressive and conservative solutions to America's public policy concerns and to educate the American people and the nation's leaders on the results of that research. It does not have any input on The American Independent's editorial decisions.
While they don’t try very hard to hire their mission - supporting left-wing causes - they are a classic “dark money” operation led by leftist media hitman David Brock. Who is David Brock? The Capital Research Center tells us.
In 2008, Brock, George Soros, and Paul Begala worked to launch a $40 million media campaign against Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona). Brock, working with Progressive Media USA, said that because “the press is in love with John McCain,” McCain gets away with saying things “without being challenged by facts that will show him to have said something different in the past.”
In 2011, Brock founded the Super PAC American Bridge 21st Century. The PAC was created in order to help elect Democrats in 2012. According to Brock, the PAC tracks “every utterance of every major GOP candidate.” The PAC has Washington, D.C.-based researchers as well as staffers across the nation. In 2011, Brock vowed to engage in “guerrilla warfare” and “sabotage” of Fox News. Former American Bridge 21st Century president Brad Woodhouse said, “there’s no organization that does the level of tracking and research that we do,” explaining that both parties and campaigns don’t invest in research to the extent that American Bridge does.
This is all part of an elaborate left-wing network of well-funded and experienced political activists who have invested their careers to destroy the GOP and their candidates. You can learn more about the organizations directly or indirectly connected to The American Independent and their sponsors here, here, here, here, and here.
And it is the kind of journalism that may qualify for a big bailout currently featured in the $3.5 trillion “Build Back Better” budget reconciliation being negotiated among Democrats right now. That’s not by accident.
They know just where the legal lines are and carefully do not cross them. For example, The American Independent “newspaper” we received contained no express advocacy for the election of Terry McAuliffe or defeat of Glenn Youngkin. But the editorial content is unmistakably pro-Biden, pro-Democratic.
They are very few conservative counterparts, although a few are trying, with limited resources, to catch up.
The Democrats are clearly spooked and suffering from a dramatic drop in polls prompted by Biden’s shameful Afghanistan withdrawal, McAuliffe’s anti-school parent gaffe, and over 285,000 Covid deaths since he took office. By comparison, there were a reported (and likely overcounted) 400,000 Covid deaths during Trump’s presidency, despite the lack of vaccines and most therapeutics until weeks before he left office. Never mind the anti-vax comments from Biden and his vice presidential nominee during the 2020 campaign as Operation Warp Speed was in high gear.
Other Dirty Tricks
McAuliffe’s dirty tricks (that he most certainly will deny any connection to, wink wink) are off to an early start. Most hijinks like this don’t happen until the final couple of weeks when it’s too late to unearth or expose them, but then again, early voting here began on September 17th. What else might we expect over the next 30 days?
Virginia, unlike California and other states, is not proactively mailing out ballots to registered voters. You have to request one. All good. However, Virginia’s voter rolls have had issues, particularly allowing non-citizens to vote. Additionally, a state judge ruled earlier this year against Virginia election officials for allowing late-arriving absentee ballots to be counted for 3 days after the 2020 election, in violation of state law.
And Gov. McAuliffe is largely to blame. John Fund at National Review in 2016:
Take Virginia, where last year Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe vetoed a bill that would have required jury commissioners to forward information to election officials on individuals who were excused from jury duty for not being a citizen. Then James Alcorn, one of McAuliffe’s two Democratic appointees on the Virginia Board of Elections, proposed that rules be changed so that people who left the citizenship question unanswered on the voter-registration form would still be allowed to register. A few years ago, the Fairfax County Electoral Board found close to 300 non-citizens who had illegally registered, about half of whom had also illegally voted in prior elections. No action was taken to prosecute any of those non-citizens.
In Alexandria, Va., local officials could be involved in a cover-up. The Virginia Voters Alliance filed a lawsuit against the city, claiming that the general registrar, Anna Leider, was violating the National Voter Registration Act. The lawsuit charged that Leider failed to make available for public inspection her records related to the city’s voter-list maintenance procedures, records that would obviously include all information about the removal of ineligible voters.
As a result of the lawsuit, the Alliance was finally able to inspect the voter-registration records. Among the items they discovered was a list containing several hundred registrants who had been removed from the voter rolls because they were not U.S. citizens. So far not a single one has been prosecuted for violating the law. And they were caught only because they told the truth when they renewed their driver’s licenses, admitting they were not citizens.
How many non-citizens on the voter rolls don’t make that confession?
When the Alliance asked to photocopy this document, Leider refused. Her attorney said that the state election board was blocking her from releasing that information, a clear violation of federal law.
It has been estimated that in some Virginia counties, some 40 percent of non-citizen registered voters have voted in at least one election.
There are other tools and tactics at their disposal, some documented by this New York Post article from August 29, 2020, citing an anonymous Democratic consultant. It is worthy of your time. You need not dig very deep on your favorite internet search engine for stories across the nation of postal workers dumping ballots, voter impersonation, dead voters, and of course, hitting up assisted living centers to “help” senior citizens with ballots.
I am not suggesting that the election will be stolen. But in a close election, mistakes and fraud can make a difference, are often hard to catch or document, and are worth watching for. But as the title of a 2004 Hugh Hewitt book says, if it isn’t close they can’t cheat.
Let’s hope the election proves not to be that close on November 2nd. I encourage you to vote early in person. Do not vote by mail if possible. Kelly’s Doctrine: The more people who are involved in moving your ballot, the more likely it is going to be lost or destroyed - especially if you’re a Republican.
