Election 2019: How Political Assassins Took Virginia without Mandate (Part 1)

On Tuesday, November 5th, Virginia Republicans got a taste of what many Democrats felt after the election of Trump in 2016. Many believe that Democrat political assassins stole the election, without honest mandate of the voting public.

The consequences are dire. Virginia is now one of only fifteen states in the USA where Democrats have total domination of political power via legislative, executive, and the judiciary. We will review their legislative intentions at the end of this series.

It is in the interest of all Virginians that the Republican Party of Virginia (RPV) transforms itself. Vibrant, honest competition makes every citizen proud of their representation, and at least comfortable with oppositional power for a few years. For this reason, our most brilliant civic minds should be devoting their energies to making Republicans more competitive. Bifurcating the Republican Party into a radical faction and a Democrat-light emulator faction will ensure that they lose for years to come.

Republicans do not enjoy resident scholars capable of explaining how they lost the Virginia election so badly. Alvarism provides that service in this comprehensive report. I reviewed dozens of primary sources with over 120 linked sources for this report. I then ETL’ed (Extract, Transform, Loaded) the election data with advanced web queries against VPAP official publications.

Think of the numbered points as contributors to election outcome. Some may have had a greater impact than others, but all contributed to the historic defeat of Virginia Republicans in 2019. If Republicans replicate these mistakes across the nation, they will lose everywhere they compete, and they will continue to lose until they fix these problems.

A Tale of Two Organizational Strategies

1. Compare the websites of the two state parties. The Democrats have a gorgeous website, with a plethora of information, presented intelligently. The Republicans’ website looks like it was thrown together by a 1990s AOL-retiree.

2. The Democrats have many outreach caucuses: black, female, asian, latino, youth, veterans, small business, disability, rural, LGBT, and union labor.

The RPV has only young adult and female caucuses:

It is understandable that the Republicans, the party of Lincoln and the party that opposed the KKK, does not want to play into the bigotry of diversity and identity politics. It does not mean that they can avoid a PR strategy that conveys their policies accurately to voting blocs that expect nuanced communication.

The Annual Conferences

3. Comparing the Republicans’ and Democrats’ annual conferences is perhaps the most emblematic microcosm of how aloof Virginia Republican disorganization has become.

The Democrats meet in Richmond (an accessible location, with plenty of decent lodging for the wealthy and middle-class alike). They invite galvanizing speakers who have respectable work history, and national renown. They have the meeting in June, when everyone can feel guiltless to take a few days of summer vacation from their jobs. They present the meeting in an exciting format with photos, and highlight authoritative sponsorship:

By contrast, the Republicans have their annual “advance” conference at a beautiful (and exorbitantly expensive) resort. Rooms cost around $400 – $600 a night after fees and tax. It is located far from population centers. Do you think they would have it in the summer, when people who are willing to part with thousands of dollars can actually enjoy the resort and mingle with each other for a memorable time?

No! They host it in early December, when everyone has holiday obligations with family, friends, and coworkers, and are trying to scramble at their jobs to prepare for the holiday break. For the meager price of a few thousand dollars, eight hours in your car, repudiation of holiday activities, walking past cold and unusable water rides, pools, golf courses, and nature that was delightful just a few months ago, you can attend the Republican annual meeting.

What a welcoming arrangement the Republicans have designed for all voting blocs of Virginians! Even those who have the money to attend would be thrilled to deny their family holidays while meandering about a barren resort in the winter.

The Republicans present a meeting docket with few enthralling speakers, no sponsorships, and effectively no marketing principles at all. It looks like a boring compulsory corporate meeting:

The Republican conference attracts 600 attendees. The Democrats attract 1,500. Can you imagine why? Nothing says “welcoming representation” like teasing you with a barren winter resort, raiding your bank account, and invading your holiday obligations!

What else went wrong for the Republicans?

4. While individual Republican candidates may have communicated clearly, the state party itself offers no articulate policy discussion, and no unifying messages.

5. In a striking display of incompetence, some Virginia districts misprinted or ran out of ballots in 2019. The Democrats often speak of disenfranchisement dramatically and without good cause. These actual cases of rote disenfranchisement are being whitewashed by all but conservative media.

6. The Republicans did not even contest 25% of the seats in the legislature. Even if their chances were slim in those districts, by forfeiting them, they allowed more Democrat resources to be redirected to the competitive precincts. Have Republicans failed to empower local change agents to persuade voters in those forfeit districts, long before Election Day? Are Republican nonprofits organizing influencers within those deeply blue districts? What are they doing to fight the pervasive political visions antithetical to their party?

Gerrymandering (Redistricting)

7. One of the most significant factors for the democrat victory were 25 districts redrawn as a result of Democrat legal action against Virginia. Eleven districts had over 55% black voters, and Democrats won a court battle which resulted in 25 districts being redrawn to their favor.

The Democrat plaintiffs claimed that 12 districts were motivated by racial gerrymandering. Two judges appointed by Barack Obama agreed that eleven districts were racially motivated. One judge dissented.

The dissenting judge argued that race was incidental to criteria like population equality, contiguity and compactness, single-member districts, maintaining communities of interest, economic factors, social factors, cultural factors, geographic features, governmental jurisdictions, service delivery areas, political beliefs, voting trends, and incumbency considerations.

As a reminder, consider how the democrat-favoring districts of Northern Virginia have violated many of those standards for decades. Hypocrisy like this shows that the claims of racial gerrymandering are a phony ploy for stealing elections:

There was no hard evidence that the maps were drawn with racial motivations, considering all of these factors which were agreed upon by the black caucus, Democrats, and Republicans when they were originally drawn.

When I compared the new map to the election results, I arrived at a very suspicious outcome. Democrats won all of the 11 redrawn districts, with eight of them uncontested and the rest complete blowout victories with 10%, 77%, and 43% margins of victory.

There were fourteen other surrounding districts redrawn as a consequence of the eleven challenged in the law suit.

The court decision is proven tenuous by looking at 2017 election results. Democrats easily won all of these “racially gerrymandered” seats in 2017, before adoption of the new map. The impact of the “racial justice” court decision was to give Democrats significant advantage for 14 seats, in the adjacent districts that were not found to have been racially gerrymandered.

How did such a fraudulent outcome emerge?

A single “voter rights expert,” Dr. Bernard Grofman, was hired from California to draw new maps for the eleven districts. The media did not publicize these details. While Dr. Grofman appears to be a highly qualified and respected academic, opposing experts should have contributed to the map, instead of a single expert.

Dr. Grofman

Seven plans were proffered by the VA House of Delegates, the plaintiff, the NAACP, and William & Mary Law School. Dr. Grofman rejected them all and drew his own map.

Two judges are responsible for this travesty of justice: Barbara Milano Keenan, and Arenda Wright Allen. Both of those women were selected by Barack Obama. A single judge dissented: Robert E. Payne.

Ms. Keenan

Ms. Allen

Mr. Payne

Dr. Grofman and Obama’s darling judges of Virginia did not even list the 14 adjacent districts they stacked with Democrat voters to siphon voters from the deeply blue 11 “racially gerrymandered” districts. Nor did they list any data for the 25 districts in the court document. A responsible, honest, and open government would not only disclose all of the data, but they would also establish requisite indicators to monitor the impact of the changes.

It’s clear that Obama’s darling judges of Virginia acted to disenfranchise Republicans of Virginia with a sleight of hand, pointing to a handful of districts where black people choose to live, and using that irrelevant fact to manipulate adjacent districts for the advantage of Democrats.

Every Virginian should be outraged that three unjustified people – Ms. Allen, Ms. Keenan, and Dr. Grofman imposed their will upon Virginia. Without their manipulations, Democrats would not have taken the House of Delegates, and Virginia would still be governed by balanced compromise instead of total Democrat domination.

The series continues in Part 2.