Exercising the Right
Second-Amendment Subterfuge in Virginia
Many political commentators are talking about the recent surprise victory in Virginia’s gubernatorial race, where Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe, but few talked about the deceptive tactics the Democrats used during the campaign. In one particular example, people dressed similar to rally attendees of the infamous 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville posed as Youngkin supporters but were later exposed as Democratic activists. KLEWTV.com reported on October 29 about the charade and explained that one “of the individuals in the group carrying tiki torches has been identified as potentially being a staffer for the Democratic Party of Virginia. Another allegedly works for Virginia Young Democrats. Both groups are affiliated with each other, according to the Virginia Young Democrats’ Twitter bio.” This didn’t stop high-level McAuliffe campaign staffers from denouncing Youngkin and reacting as if the obvious plants were legitimate Youngkin supporters. Nobody was buying the lie, and it was quickly revealed on social media as Twitter users lambasted the Democrats for their obvious dirty tricks.
Sadly, these types of shady attempts to mislead people even extended to the Second Amendment and gun rights. Axios reported on September 28 that a political action committee that criticized Youngkin for not being supportive of the Second Amendment was actually backed by top Democratic strategists. The Accountability Virginia PAC was very active in posting ads on social media attacking Youngkin from the perspective of a Trump-supporting gun-owner. One ad boasted, “While the NRA backs Donald Trump, they REFUSED to endorse Glenn Youngkin. We can’t trust Glenn Youngkin on guns.” The PAC has a website that is very vague about who is funding it, and records show that the PAC has spent $25,000 on these online ads, which have been viewed millions of times. Axios researched the PAC and reported that Accountability Virginia PAC’s 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.”
These ads were run in rural parts of Virginia where Republican turnout is usually the strongest, and Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, told Axios that the ads appeared to be part of “an attempt to undermine Youngkin’s support in western rural areas, where gun ownership is sacred and the Republican has a big lead — as all Republicans do these days.”
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