whyamihere
Banned
this is painful
https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/...2017-ed-gillespie-governor-virginia-election/
https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/...2017-ed-gillespie-governor-virginia-election/
Gillespies slogan is For All Virginians. Hes apparently taken it to heart because he really does have different answers for different voters, depending on what he thinks they want to hear. At one table, he encounters a 67-year-old African-American woman named Yasmin Harris, who asks him how he plans to create job opportunities for recent graduates. By diversifying the states economy, he tells her: Were too reliant on federal contracts here, were too reliant on military spending in Hampton Roads, too reliant on coal in southwest Virginia.
Sounds sensible. A minute or two later, though, he meets two blond mothers who support Donald Trump. I voted for him, and I want him to succeed in creating jobs and keeping the country safe, Gillespie says. Then he Trumpishly outlines a position that almost directly contradicts what he just told Harris. You know, when you look at Virginia on things like building more ships in Newport News and stopping the war on coal in southwest Virginia and keeping Norfolk the largest naval base in the world and allowing us to develop our oil and gas resources off our deep-sea coast, I want to work with him on those things.
Over the last decade, Virginia has mirrored a national trend. While the state has grown more liberal overall, its conservative pockets have become more rabid. Gillespie lives in a waterfront home in a wealthy cul-de-sac in Mount Vernon. In 2000, nine of Mount Vernons 21 voting precincts, including Gillespies, voted for George W. Bush. In 2008, 4 of 26 voted for John McCain. In 2016, none voted Republican at all. Meanwhile, the GOP-led legislature is increasingly dominated by far-right ideologues. Since taking office, McAuliffe has vetoed 120 pieces of legislation, a record. Among them are bills designed to roll back absentee voting, to make it easier for businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ customers, to allow for weapons to be carried in state office buildings, and to protect Confederate monumentsprecisely the sorts of thing that dont play well in the cul-de-sacs of Northern Virginia. The legislature has also refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.
The day of the primary vote, I attended a Gillespie watch-party at a Hilton in suburban Richmond. Gillespie was up in nearly every poll by at least 15 points, and the mood was relaxed. Early in the evening, I encountered a thirtysomething DC lobbyist who had driven down from the NoVa suburbs to support his candidate. Its never been a better time to be a swamp-ass, he said happily, summing up the first six months of the Trump administration. Gillespie, presumably, would keep the pump primed. He predicted a big win.
But as the night wore on, a big win refused to materialize. Polls were closing across the state, and Stewart, incredibly, remained within a few thousand votes of Gillespie. Horrified partygoers stopped talking to one another and began to refresh their phones. In the lobby, a scrum of middle-school Gillespie fans bowed their heads to pray. At 10:07, young Gillespie staffer Tucker Obenshain, daughter to Mark, bounded onstage to announce that Eds about to come out. Ed did not come out. After another false start, a woman standing on a chair gave up and clambered down. Oh, my God, she said, why do they keep doing this to me?
Around 10:30 pm, the AP at last called the race for Gillespie. His margin of victory was just over 1 percent. Supporters hooted gamely when Gillespie finally emerged, flush-faced, wearing a kelly-green tie. But the implications were bleak. On the one hand, nativist dog-whistling and Trumpian name-calling had almost undone the GOPs prohibitive favorite. On the other hand, anti-Trump sentiment helped turn out nearly twice as many Democrats as Republicans for their primary. Once he was onstage, Gillespies first impulse was to thank his donors and joke sheepishly that he hadnt spent a dollar more of their money than he needed to. The whole thing felt, as one Gillespie adviser put it, like a kick in the nuts.
I tried to make the case to the Gillespie camp that he could use some humanizing, that by opening up to a magazine reporter, the winning personality I had heard about from friends might better reveal itself. I didnt ask for mucha ride-along in the campaign car and maybe a beer afterwardbut they didnt bite. I was granted a 45-minute interview in a Richmond coffee shop, which was subsequently moved to Gillespies one-story campaign headquarters outside the capital.
When I arrive, Gillespie is in the bathroom. I occupy myself by looking at the walls. Theres a photo of Gillespie and George W. Bush and a framed profile of Gillespie from Capitol File magazine. Besides that, the place is without personality. I try to start with an ice-breaker, asking what kind of music he listens to in the campaign car.
Generally, the news stations, he answers. Flip around between Fox, CNN, and MSNBC. And some ESPN. No tunes? Yeah, not really.
Okay, then.
Later, I attempt an awkward segue between Donald Trump Jr. and Gillespies grown children, whom he never mentions and who never appear on the trail. He seems puzzled by the question, eventually answering simply that one of them lives in California and two in New York: Theyre pursuing their own career, and were fully supportive of them. I dont learn what any of them do for a living but am told the family texts frequently.
Whatever I ask, Gillespie seems determined not to reveal anything about himself that he hasnt already said publicly. Why did he run? As if in self-parody, he says he was called to serve. When I ask why he so often pledges to be an honest, ethical governor, he correctly notes that the current governor was at one point investigated by the FBI for a suspicious campaign contribution and that his predecessor was tainted by an ethics scandal. But when I suggest he might also be trying to play down his own swamp-creature past, he returns a blank stare. I just really want them to know Ill be an honest, ethical governor, he says, chuckling.
Thinking of his campaign-trail insistence that he has run a small businessthis would be his political consulting firmI press him again.
He remains unmoved: I think its just a way of saying, This is who I am.
