Republicans Hang Their Voters Out To Dry In Virginia

When I texted my grandmother in southern Virginia last week to make sure she got out and voted “No” on the state’s redistricting referendum, and implored her to get her nursing home friends to do the same, I joked with some colleagues that I was whipping more votes than the RNC.

It turns out, I was basically right. From top to bottom, the entire Republican apparatus was too inept to even flail as Democrats gerrymandered themselves 91% of the Congressional seats in a 55-45 state, at best. It was entirely asleep at the wheel. There are nights when the electorate fails the country, certainly, but last night the movement failed the voters.

Let’s start with the RNC, which I’ll use as a stand-in for the national Republican apparatus writ-large, including the D.C. power-levers and donor class. National Republicans simply did not put anything into this race. They reached a consensus early on that this battle would be lost after Abigail Spanberger beat Winsome Sears by 15 points, so they didn’t bother trying.

Almost no money was spent by national Republicans — a reality made worse by the fact that flacks for the RNC and NRCC were fellating themselves the day before for how much more money they were raising than Democrats.

FEC: CASH ON HAND

???? MAGA Inc — $312M
——
???? SLF — $166.4M
???? RNC — $116.8M
???? CLF — $91.4M
???? NRCC — $78.2M
???? NRSC — $43M
——
???? SMP — $74.8M
???? DCCC — $70M
???? HMP — $63.9M
???? DSCC — $36.5M
???? DNC — $13.9M ($18.4M debt)
——
Total
???? GOP/Trump: — $807.8
???? Democrats — $259.1M

— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) April 21, 2026

Source: @IAPolls2022/X.com

As one Republican operative put it to me Tuesday night, imagine how much money will be spent on individual “debatably competitive” races in November versus how much it would’ve taken to potentially save 3-5 seats at once in April.

What stings the most about national Republicans writing this contest off is that conservative Virginians didn’t, which makes it a missed opportunity. That is one silver lining for the long-term.

“Actually, I’m quite proud of the commonwealth. Virginians know right from wrong. I’d venture to guess the majority of “NO” voters never heard from the “NO” side, never saw an ad on TV. It was a massive spending disadvantage,” Jonathan Duke, managing director for Deep Root Analytics (and proud Virginian), told me Wednesday morning. “Democrats had every wind at their back … but look at the public polling. The governor’s approval has cratered. And this is a theme we will see repeated: the second Democrats show voters what they actually want to do with power, the bottom falls out.”

His point about TV ads is especially true — this Arlington resident saw one single “NO” ad in the entire lead-up to the elections, compared to hundreds for “YES.”

Now let’s talk about the media. People who build large platforms have the right to use them how they wish. But couldn’t some of them have used their time on this? We’ve sure spent a lot of time arguing about who has higher podcast ratings, micro-penises, war in the Middle East, and which influencers are undercover gays. Perhaps going forward we can do a little mobilization for actually seizing political power.

Finally, the activist class. We know what it looks like when the activists give a sh*t about something. We saw it with the Indiana redistricting push, and we saw it just a couple of weeks ago over an amnesty bill pushed by some Republicans in the House. The fact we saw only a fraction of it for this election tells me they simply didn’t care about it.

That amnesty bill was going nowhere, by the way — it was introduced a year ago and had seen no meaningful action lately. But as one Congressional staffer put it to me, a random X influencer decided to tweet about it one afternoon and that sparked a weeks-long meltdown.

Imagine if the activists and outrage mongers had applied the same level of pressure to conservatives in Virginia in what was an existential fight for their survival?

Even if everyone had brought their A-game, this referendum still might’ve been lost. Virginia is a blue, albeit light blue, state. It’s a rough environment for Republicans. The failure to even put up a meaningful fight was completely inexcusable. It might have been a useful lesson for November had November not been effectively decided last night.