Jill Vogel Embraces Lies and the Trump Agenda in the LT. Governor Race

Jill Vogel with E.W. Jackson at a ultra-far right "Christian" gathering

It seems that almost all Republicans lie nowadays and GOP candidate Jill Vogel may be one of the more devious liars in the Republican field as she runs against Democrat Justin Fairfax for Lt. Governor.  Although some of her campaign ads strive to show her as a moderate, she is no moderate. One can only hope that voters are not fooled by her deliberately disingenuous campaign.  Vogel indeed stands for all of the worst of the Trump and GOP reverse Robin Hood agenda.  Nor is she any friend of the LGBT community even though she has pretended otherwise at a few LGBT pride events where she distributed rainbow stickers at LGBT.  Her true view of the LGBT community is not much different that the hysterically anti-gay E. W. Jackson who ran for Lt. Governor four years ago (Jackson has endorsed her and lauds her in a video on his Facebook page).  If elected, Vogel will be all in on the Trump/Pence war against the LGBT community and likewise all on board with the effort to disenfranchise those who do not vote Republican.  Vogel is a liar, although a very, very smooth one - something that makes her very dangerous.  And yes, she is in bed with the Koch brothers and Karl Rove.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Vogel's wolf in sheep's clothing campaign of deceit.  Here are excerpts:

Jill Vogel was just getting her legal career off the ground — still a “baby lawyer,” as a friend tells it — when she went to work for the Republican National Committee.

Before long, she was chief counsel. Then a top lawyer for President George W. Bush’s Energy Department. From there, she built one of the nation’s most prominent GOP elections law firms and won a seat in the state Senate.

Now Vogel, 47, is running for lieutenant governor of Virginia — in the drain-the-swamp style of President Trump.

“We are going to take back Virginia the way this president is going to take back this country!” Vogel declared at an August rally in tiny Marion, in southwest Virginia.

If it takes a certain chutzpah for a longtime GOP insider to adopt the president’s anti-establishment mantra, Vogel has it.  . . . Vogel is all in.

Hers could be a risky strategy in the only Southern state that Trump lost, a place where the president is deeply unpopular. Her Democratic rival, former federal prosecutor Justin Fairfax, played up her ties to Trump as a negative during their debate last week. Democrats speak less admiringly of her balancing act, which in the course of the campaign has included distributing rainbow stickers at LGBT pride events while also teaming up with E.W. Jackson, a lawyer, Christian minister and critic of gay rights who ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor in 2013. Vogel gained notoriety — and the ire of abortion rights activists — in 2012 for a bill that, as originally proposed, would have required most women seeking abortions to first undergo a vaginal ultrasound and be offered a view of the fetus.

“She is intentionally different things to different people,” said Anna Scholl, executive director of Progress Virginia. “When she is with moderate swing voters, she is trying to sell herself as a mom who’s just working hard for families. But you get her into a room with the base and she’s right there with E.W. Jackson. . . . I think it’s a little bit of, don’t look at the woman behind the curtain.”

Specializing in elections and campaign finance law, [Vogel's law firm] it represents some of the nation’s largest super PACs and their related “social welfare” nonprofit organizations, which are allowed to shield their donors. Among them are Americans for Prosperity, part of the “dark money” political network established by the billionaire Koch brothers, and American Crossroads, the super PAC co-founded by Gillespie and GOP strategist Karl Rove. 

Vogel narrowly won the nomination for lieutenant governor after a mudslinging battle with Sen. Bryce Reeves (R-Spotsylvania). During the primary, Reeves turned up digital records linking Vogel to a pseudonymous email that falsely accused him of having an extramarital affair. Vogel denied any involvement and suggested her family’s electronics had been hacked.  

Her campaign website boasts that she has introduced “more pro-gun bills than any other state senator.” .. . . There was no wavering after the Las Vegas mass shooting, even after the National Rifle Association on Thursday unexpectedly supported a review of regulations on “bump stocks,” devices that allow a semiautomatic rifle to mimic the rapid discharge of an automatic weapon. 

“She comes across as very moderate, very nice — a soccer mom,” Sen. Barbara Favola (D-Arlington) said. “Because of that persona, voters are really tricked because they can’t imagine she’s as strident as she is.” 

[A]head of her primary, Vogel raised all-caps alarms with a mailing about the Obama administration’s order to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms of their choice: “DO YOU WANT BARACK OBAMA TO SET TRANSGENDER BATHROOM POLICIES AT YOUR CHILDREN’S SCHOOL?”

Like most of the Virginia Republican Party, Vogel wants to take Virginia backward in time and to put "those people" back in their place.  Vote for Justin Fairfax on November 7, 2017.