Virginia GOP Gubernatorial Nominee Stages Comeback On Dem Trans Policies

In the past month, parents rose up against a school district that let a male sex offender with a history of exposing himself to girls use their locker rooms under its gender identity policy, while another district punished boys for objecting to a gender-confused female recording them in their locker room.

Neighboring districts, meanwhile, asked students for their preferred pronouns.

And to top it all off, a white supporter of gender-identity school restroom policies told a black gubernatorial nominee her opposition was tantamount to Jim Crow, repeating a common progressive talking point used in California’s defense of its coed prison law.

For the second straight race for governor of Virginia, where off-year elections can be a bellwether for national midterms, parental outrage at school districts perceived as indoctrinating their children in cultural radicalism is upending what looked like an easy path to victory for Democrats.

The quickness of frontrunner Abigail Spanberger and other top Democrats to denounce the racially charged sign directed at Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, who gained 10 percentage points against Spanberger between May and August in Roanoke College polling, suggests palpable fear of repeating Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s 2021 mistake.

Four years ago, the former governor, running for a second term under Virginia’s constitutional ban on consecutive terms, stumbled badly in a debate with GOP nominee Glenn Youngkin by saying parents should not be “telling schools what they should teach” and refusing to walk it back, forfeiting his steady lead and then the election to now-Gov. Youngkin.