Always look on the bright side of life. That’s the sunny side up advice of the indomitable Mr. Frisbee as he’s being crucified in Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
We’re getting the same stoic message from brave-faced Republicans after Tuesday’s referendum loss in Virginia, expected to give Democrats a bonus four seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“Even in defeat, this is a powerful message,” Brian Cannon, co-chairman of the group No Gerrymandering Virginia, declared after commonwealth voters said “yes” to an “Orwellian” ballot question that clears the way for the Dems’ Frankenstein gerrymander.
“Despite being outspent by well over $60 million and facing biased ballot language, over a million Virginians stood up against a partisan power grab.”
Yes, you’re all winners! Except, you’re not.
Such pep talks come as small consolation following a 3 percentage point loss to a radical party that will do what Republicans won’t: anything to win.
A narrow defeat or a blowout — the result is the same. Moral victories don’t cut it. Democrats won the right to change the Virginia constitution to rig the commonwealth’s congressional maps and turn their 6-5 advantage into a 10-1 domination of the Old Dominion’s House delegation. In so doing, the Democratic Party will have a much easier path to taking back control of the House and making life miserable for the MAGA movement and most Americans.
In short, Virginia’s statewide election was a national election. The only problem, frustrated Republicans say, the GOP didn’t get that.
“This is a clear-cut case in my mind of not enough interest at the national level on this race,” said Matthew Hurtt, chairman of the Arlington County Republican Party, told The Federalist in a phone interview.
That idea is on a lot of minds as the smoke clears on the electoral battle for “fair maps,” even as court challenges continue.
‘Never Stop Fighting’
While the national party has boasted in recent days about record fundraising hauls, Republican soldiers on Virginia’s political battleground tell The Federalist that not much of that money flowed into their effort to stop the Democrats’ unholy power grab. Republicans hold a huge advantage over Democrats when it comes to cash on hand.
An RNC official said the committee “strategically and financially invested in election integrity and [get out the vote] efforts” in the Virginia redistricting fight. The investments, according to the RNC, included recruiting poll workers, expanding poll-watching programs, and supporting a “comprehensive volunteer voter contact operation with door-knocking and phone banking.”
The RNC did not specify the details of said investments when asked by The Federalist. Officials did not specifically answer several questions, including how the RNC would assess the ground game, and what the plan of attack was to reach voters in a spring referendum. Was there any effort to reach the low-propensity voters that proved so critical in the party’s sweeping victories in 2024? RNC officials didn’t say.
The committee’s election integrity team has been active, joining the National Republican Congressional Committee in a lawsuit against the Virginia Democrats’ twisted gerrymander, and the referendum to implement it.
On Wednesday afternoon, a Tazewell Circuit Court judge declared the redistricting referendum unconstitutional and blocked certification of the election. The ruling is subject to change when the Virginia Supreme Court weighs in.
RNC Chairman Joe Gruters called the Tazewell decision a “major victory for Virginians.”
“The RNC will never stop fighting to ensure fair representation in the Commonwealth,” Gruters said in a statement. “[Tuesday] night, Democrats only managed to squeak out a narrow 3-point victory despite burning tens of millions in cash and manipulating voters with misleading ballot language.”
‘Everybody was In’
Just think what a well-timed infusion of cash from national Republicans could have done in a race that close. Hurtt and others are contemplating just that.
Hurtt praised the Republican Party of Virginia and local GOP committees for running the “most coordinated and diffuse” campaign since he arrived in Virginia 17 years ago. He said the state party quickly put up an operation that provided “what limited resources it had” to committees, hosted weekly calls to go over messaging, and listened to Republicans on the ground.
He didn’t see the same effort from the national Republican groups.
“All of these fundraising operations touting how much they raised, but none of them spent any money in Virginia,” the Arlington County GOP chairman said.
The referendum funding gap was wide and deep. The Democrats leading the “Yes” drive outraised the Republicans’ “No” vote campaign by more than three times. Meanwhile, Republicans have reportedly spent north of $100 million propping up the primary and runoff campaigns of Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a long-serving RINO with a record of turning his back on President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.
It would appear Republican funders are prioritizing one Texas Senate race over four Virginia House seats. Feed a cold, starve a fever.
Richard Hudson, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, defended his organization Wednesday, asserting the criticism is coming from “people who aren’t aware of what we spent.”
“Our team collectively made significant investments and we won half the vote,” Hudson told Fox News and other reporters. He did not put a number on it. “The speaker and I gauged this from the very beginning, and within the limits of what we are allowed to coordinate we worked with all of the outside groups and everybody was in and everybody did what they needed to do.”
‘Sitting on Mountains of Cash’
Sources say there was plenty of ball-dropping to go around in the run-up to the Virginia redistricting election. A meeting scheduled between Trump and a Republican congressional delegation to strategize about how to defeat the referendum never happened, sources said.
On The Charlie Kirk Show Wednesday, Turning Point USA executive Andrew Kolvet said the conservative action organization offered to train Virginia conservative groups for a ballot-chase operation. Kolvet said the party turned Turning Point down because nobody wanted to fund it.
“Until our side invests the same amount of money and enthusiasm in GOTV, in canvassing, and voter relationships/voter reg as it does with consultants and media buyers, we’re going to come up just short and the country is really going to be damaged as a result,” Kirk’s longtime confidante said.
The disconnect, Kolvet said, is in ensuring the party and conservative groups are doing more ballot chasing, more canvassing, delivering a cohesive air (advertising) and ground (voter outreach) effort.
“And by the way, if you’re going to continually get outspent when you’re sitting on mountains of cash, which, if you kind of tally it together, all these PACs and all these groups on the right, they have a lot of cash right now. And you can say, ‘Oh, we’re keeping our powder dry for the midterms,’ but you just lost four house seats,” the Charlie Kirk Show executive producer said.
