Chesterfield, Virginia - A Potential Bell-Weather of GOP Troubles

Kim Drew Wright is the founder of Liberal Women of Chesterfield County and Beyond, a grass-roots organization that helped deliver the Richmond suburbs to the Democratic candidate for governor for the first time since 1961.

Since the blue wave in November 7, 2017's Virginia elections, Virginia has received more political focus than at any time I can think of in recent memory.  Areas that were once reliably Republican - e.g., Virginia Beach, Chesterfield County and Loudoun County - flipped to the Democrat column.   Many, especially Republicans, try to lay all the blame at the feet of Der Trumpenführer, perhaps the most morally bankrupt individual to ever occupy the White House.  While Trump has indeed motivated women voters who find him repulsive and a down right horrible individual (I share this view), I would argue that the shift to Democrat involves much more.  Trumpism, which now defines the Republican Party, has finally caused many who were formerly marginally involved politically to belatedly open their eyes and realize that the Republican agenda is toxic for most Americans. Unless one is a Christifascists, a white supremacist, a vulture capitalist or very wealthy, the GOP has nothing to offer.  Indeed, it is probably harmful for you and your family.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Ed Gillespie's loss in Chesterfield County, Virginia, a former Republican bastion, and what it might foretell for the 2018 midterms.  Here are excerpts:

For the first time since 1961, Chesterfield County backed a Democrat for governor — and the driving forces in this Richmond suburb included women who defiantly trumpeted a political label their party has ducked for decades.

“Are we done?” Kim Drew Wright asked members of the organization that she and her allies christened the Liberal Women of Chesterfield County after President Trump’s election last year.  “Noooooo!” the women shouted back.

Until Gov.-elect Ralph Northam (D) won Chesterfield County three weeks ago, the stretch of suburban and rural communities southwest of Richmond had been considered reliably Republican.

Yet voters infuriated by Trump, many of them women and Hispanics who have migrated to the county in recent years, are redefining Chesterfield and alarming Virginia Republicans who have depended on the area to make up for the support the party lacks in urban areas.

The results in Chesterfield are also a potential harbinger of what looms beyond Virginia, in suburbs where anger toward Trump is motivating voters bent on defeating Republican candidates in next year’s midterm elections.

“That’s a huge red flag for Republicans and an opportunity for Democrats,” said Jesse Ferguson, a national Democratic strategist. “There’s opportunity in these traditionally conservative suburbs with college-educated white voters who are unwilling to back a Republican candidate. It’s a function of and proof that Trump has tainted the rest of the Republicans running for office.”

Chris LaCivita, a Richmond-based GOP strategist who works on national campaigns, said . . . . “Midterm and off-year elections are defined by whose base is more animated and engaged and right now it’s the Democrats,” he said. “You’re going to have to work harder than ever if you’re a Republican in this environment.”

[T]he growth in Republican turnout was overwhelmed by the ballooning number of Democratic voters. Northam received 16,000 more votes than Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) got in the county in 2013.

The Liberal Women of Chesterfield County is an example of a new breed of Democratic activism in the Richmond suburbs. The group, which says it has admitted nearly 3,000 followers to its private Facebook page, has established 13 neighborhood chapters and canvassed more than 50,000 homes in a get-out-the-vote effort. On Election Day, the group worked with the local Democratic committee to staff all 75 of the county’s polling places, something that the local party on its own had previously been unable to accomplish.

Besides championing Northam and the statewide ticket, they pushed local residents running for the first time, including the first openly gay woman elected to the House of Delegates . . . “I wouldn’t have done this every day for the past year if I hadn’t gotten so angry about Trump,” said Wright, 46, a mother of three who observed politics from the sidelines before last year’s presidential election. “Once you wake up and see how important local elections are, it’s hard to go back to the shadows and stick your head in the sand. Now we have our eye on everybody, from dogcatcher on up.”

The group’s next target is Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.), whose district includes Chesterfield and who earlier this year complained that “the women are in my grill no matter where I go” — a reference to the activists who protested against efforts by Brat and other House Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

The last Democratic candidate to carry Chesterfield was former governor Albertis Harrison — 56 years ago. . . . . But the county evolved as its population mushroomed by nearly 25 percent between 2000 and 2016. While the number of whites in Chesterfield declined by 10 percent from 2000 to 2010, the percentage of blacks grew by 4 percent and Latinos more than doubled from 3 percent to more than 7 percent.  At the same time, Republicans’ victory margins steadily declined.
 “I don’t think this election was generally about demographics, but in Chesterfield it was,” said Quentin Kidd, director of the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University. “In the next 10 years, it’s not going to be the Chesterfield where you slap an ‘R’ next to someone’s name and they win.” . . . “The challenge for Democrats is, ‘Can you transcend Trump?’ ” Kidd said. “A lot of this is driven by women voters, but can Democrats translate that to a more permanent voter? Or is that woman going back to voting Republican once Trump is gone?”

Geoffrey Skelley, a political analyst at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said the results suggest that voters’ rejection of “Trump’s brand of Republicanism” is potent in suburban areas that are “increasingly diverse and/or highly educated.”  “These results should scare them,” Skelley said of Republicans inside Chesterfield and beyond. 

By acking a presidential candidate who is utterly bankrupt morally and unfit for office and pushing policies harmful to the majority of voters, Republicans have set themselves up for disaster and I hope they reap the whirlwind in 2018 and beyond.  The GOP cannot be reformed from within given what its base has become, it has to die.