As Votes from Rigged Virginia Republican Convention Are Still Being Counted, Contenders Range from “Trumpy to Trumpiest”

After a chaotic weekend, the Virginia GOP’s convention has wrapped up, facing no shortage of issues. Long lines, names missing from voter rolls, and an impossibly complicated voting process characterized a convention Republicans have been calling a “logistical nightmare” for months. 

Voting difficulties in the Virginia GOP’s convention are unsurprising coming from a field of candidates who have made pushing Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election and suppressing Virginians’ constitutional right to cast a ballot a central issue to their campaigns. Glenn Youngkin and Pete Snyder both released plans vowing to fight nonexistent voter fraud while refusing to say if Biden was legitimately elected president, as Kirk Cox voted against the landmark Voting Rights Act.

Meanwhile, Amanda Chase continues to insist that the convention process was rigged against her by fellow candidate Pete Snyder. Chase told supporters not to trust her party’s convention’s results and continues to threaten a third-party run if she doesn’t win (a possibility that is appearing more and more likely).

Chase isn’t the only candidate with apparent doubts about his own party’s nomination process. Glenn Youngkin posted his own security guard outside the official ballot counting room, who eventually was kicked out by security.  

The candidates lack much daylight between them. All but one of them refuse to acknowledge President Biden as the legitimate winner of the election, and they all continue to tap into Donald Trump’s far-right base by spreading his conspiracy theories. As we wait for a winner to emerge from tabulations done in a Google Spreadsheet, read what’s been said about the candidates’ values, which range from Trumpy, to Trumpier, to Trumpiest.

• Jim Swift, The Bulwark: “Chase is the Trumpiest of the three candidates with a reasonable shot. She’s like the Blazin’ wing sauce at Buffalo Wild Wings, you have to sign a waiver before you try it—which would make marketing executive Pete Snyder and former Carlyle Group CEO Glenn Youngkin the Wild and Mango Habanero. All are Trumpy and spicy, but to the electorate outside of die-hard Republicans, they might as well all be the same.”
• Washington Post Editorial Board: “Donald Trump’s 2020 losing margin in Virginia was the biggest for any presidential candidate in that state in 32 years, but the Republicans vying for their party’s gubernatorial nomination in the state’s May 8 convention just can’t quit him.”
• CBS News: “The declared candidates have so far largely embraced Mr. Trump’s rhetoric and policies with an eye toward winning the state GOP convention in May, even if doing so makes it more difficult to appeal to moderate voters in the November general election.”
• New York Times: “One candidate brands himself a “conservative outlaw.” Another boasts of her bipartisan censure by the State Senate for calling the Capitol rioters “patriots.” A third, asked about Dominion voting machines — the subject of egregious conspiracy theories on the right — called them “the most important issue” of the campaign. These are not fringe candidates for the Republican nomination for Virginia governor. They are three of the leading contenders in a race that in many ways embodies the decade-long meltdown of Republican power in Virginia…
• Larry Sabato: “You could categorize them in the three silos: Trumpy, Trumpier, and Trumpiest.”

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