November 12, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Exultant over the November 5, 2019 Democrat takeover of both houses of Virginia’s General Assembly, Governor Ralph Northam used his official web page to proclaim:
Tonight … voters … elected landmark Democratic majorities in both the Senate and the House of Delegates[.] … Virginians … want us to defend the rights of women, LGBTQ[.] … [T]hey want … gun safety legislation, so no one has to fear being hurt or killed while at school, at work, or at their place of worship.
Not wanting to waste any time, Democrat state delegate Alfonso Lopez said earlier this year at a town Hall: “If we have the majority, the work of a lifetime is the work of two afternoons.”
Delegate Lopez is referring to the Democrat Party’s leftist policies for gun control, abortion until birth, the Equal Rights Amendment, and the LGBT agenda.
Expect the following to pass in the 2020 Virginia General Assembly session:
Equal Rights Amendment: The so-called Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which died in June 1982, with even supporters conceding defeat at that time, will be “approved” by Virginia Democrats, along with some Republicans, by a “ratification resolution,” which will claim to make Virginia the 38th and final state needed to “ratify” the ERA almost 40 years after it had expired. This will provoke litigation surrounding the legal status of the measure, since leftists now pretend the original deadline for adoption of the ERA can be abolished.
The ERA, if adopted licitly or illicitly, will require identical treatment of men and women and so-called “transgenders” in all state and federal laws. Separation by sex for any reason (sports, schools, prisons, gyms, locker rooms, sororities, bathrooms, dormitories, hospitals, women’s shelters, etc.) would become illegal as would any prohibition or regulation of abortion. Women would no longer be exempt from the military draft or frontline ground combat. Churches and religious ministries, including schools, will lose their tax-exempt status if they do not adopt the LGBT agenda for marriage, placement of children for adoption with same-sex couples, and teaching requirements.
The ERA will bring about these social ills without legislators voting separately on each offensive policy.
Liberal N.Y.-Style Abortion Laws: With Democrats largely owing their election to Planned Parenthood, EMILY’s List, and other pro-abortion and pro-infanticide groups, Democrats will push to rescind all laws that provide legal protections for the unborn or for medical personnel who have conscientious objections to participating in killing children within the womb. Abortion laws currently on Virginia’s books and soon to be scrapped include restrictions on third-trimester abortions, clinic safety regulations, prohibitions on partial-birth abortion, written informed consent, parental consent, and a 24-hour waiting period before abortion.
Current prohibitions on using state tax dollars for abortion will also be reversed, and taxes will be used to fund abortion. Advocates for child homicide in the womb will seek to amend Virginia’s Human Rights Act to declare abortion a fundamental human right! (I guess Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues missed this “fundamental right” when they issued their Declaration of Independence and moved to separate from Great Britain!)
With millions of dollars currently budgeted for abortifacient implants for underprivileged youths per Governor Northam’s leadership, we might soon see “health clinics” to dispense birth control and abortion to students behind their parents’ backs, in cooperation with Planned Parenthood, set up in government schools across the Commonwealth and, again, paid for with our taxes.
Homosexual Agenda: Virginia’s voter-approved one-man, one-woman Marriage Amendment, which I co-authored in 2006 and which remains part of Virginia’s Constitution although no longer enforced, will be subject to a referendum to remove it from Virginia’s Constitution. It will be removed if voters agree to do so.
“Sexual orientation” and “gender identity” will become protected legal classes for all employees, with no religious exceptions. Employers will not be able to fire employees who use their protected LGBT legal status to remain employed. Private and religious adoption agencies will be required to place children with homosexual couples or lose their agency licenses. State-chartered banks will be prohibited from making loans to churches or schools unless the religious entities comply with the dictates of the LGBT deviant sexual agenda. Transgender ideology will prevail in the government-run public schools, monitored by pronoun speech police. State business contracts will not be awarded to private companies unless the private companies comply with LGBT policies.
More Attacks on Religious Liberty: Other statutes on the Progressives’ chopping block include repealing the religious exemption for childhood vaccinations and abolishing First Amendment protections for counselors who would assist minors to avoid unwanted same-sex attractions. Homeschooling laws could also be modified.
Drug Legalization: Legislation to decriminalize the gateway drug marijuana for pleasure use, despite Virginia’s opioid epidemic, and legalization of doctor-assisted suicide, will not be off limits for Democrat progressives.
Restrictions on Our Second Amendment Rights: Gov. Northam claims that his “gun control” legislation will ensure that “no one has to fear being hurt or killed while at school, at work, or at their place of worship.” Chicago has strict “gun control” (as if guns could control themselves) but continues to have high crime and murder rates. Most criminals ignore “gun control” laws.
Gov. Northam points to the tragic killing of 11 persons in a municipal building in Virginia to justify his gun control proposals. But not one of his “remedies” would have saved even one life that was taken. Fox News reported that on the evening before the killings, Kate Nixon discussed with her husband bringing a gun to work to protect herself from a disgruntled co-worker but decided against it for fear of being fired. Kate lost her life.
One of Governor Northam’s recommendations would allow local governments to pass stricter gun control initiatives than those passed by the state. This would not have prevented the homicidal worker from killing colleagues.
The governor wants “universal background checks,” but the Virginia Beach murderer passed background checks. The Virginia Beach murderer did not use a semi-automatic rifle, 30-round magazines, or a gun-silencer, yet the governor wants all of these banned or severely restricted.
Present federal law already makes it a felony for a person to “receive, or possess firearms or ammunition … who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution.” The governor supports so-called “Red Flag Laws,” which allow police to remove firearms from individuals based on the claims of a third party.
Influence of Abortion-Promoters in the 2019 Election
Virginia’s state Democrat politicians are pro-abortion without reservation, and they fully embrace support from abortionists.
Planned Parenthood of Virginia, one affiliate of Planned Parenthood (Planned Parenthood affiliates together receive a total of about a half-billion dollars of our federal tax dollars annually) gave then–gubernatorial candidate Ralph Northam $1,976,881 in his 2017 race. In 2017, Planned Parenthood Action Fund spent $850,894 on state legislative races. In 2019, Planned Parenthood Action Fund spent $769,201 on Democrat state legislative candidates. Judicial Watch retrieved state documents showing that Governor Northam took his talking points from Planned Parenthood to defend a controversial bill expanding third-trimester abortions and eliminating other abortion restrictions.
In early October 2019, EMILY’s List, which promotes unrestricted abortion/infanticide:
… announced plans to spend $2.1 million in the effort to flip the Virginia General Assembly from red to blue and increase the number of pro-choice, Democratic women serving in the House of Delegates and state Senate. …
Overall, the organization has committed to investing $20 million in the effort to hold majorities and flip state legislative chambers across the county in the 2019 and 2020 election cycles. …
Emily’s List … has raised over $600 million to elect pro-choice Democratic women candidates. With a grassroots community of over five-million members … since our founding in 1985.
2019 Virginia Voter Turnout
The watchdog Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP.org) reports that nearly 40% of registered Virginia voters cast ballots on November 5, 2019, about 11% higher than the prior non-governor’s year election of 2015. Turnout was higher and margins of victory narrower for Republicans who won. In some legislative districts, the 2019 turnout was higher than turnout in the governor’s 2017 election year.
As an example, in 2015, the 8th Senate District Republican incumbent state senator won with 59% of the 27,000 votes cast in a year with no statewide race. In 2019, he won with 52% with almost double the number of votes cast despite no statewide races on the ballot. (Statewide races tend to increase turnout.)
In 2019, in Fredericksburg’s 28th House District (won by Candidate Trump in 2016 with 49% of the vote), a Democrat won with 52% of the vote with an increase of 9% turnout over the 2017 governor year election, despite 2019 being a non–governor year race.
In the 11th Senate District (part of Chesterfield, Colonial Heights, and Amelia County), where 53% voted for Donald Trump in 2016, strong pro-life Republican state senator Amanda Chase, who won with 64% of the vote in 2015, received 55% in 2019. Turnout went from 42,800 in 2015 to almost 81,000 in 2019.
Progressive leftists have been busy for several years registering new voters in Virginia. The very left New Virginia Majority (Democrat) claims to have registered more than 200,000 new Virginia voters and knocked on over 1,000,000 doors in Virginia since 2015. But many out-of-state leftist organizations like CASA in Action, Flippable, Forward Majority, Let America Vote, Human Rights Campaign, Democray PAC, Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, People for the American Way, Moblize America, and Trans United have also been busy organizing.
Composition of the “Liberated” General Assembly
In 2019, 30 of the 100 House of Delegates’ races were uncontested. Democrats held 23 of these unchallenged seats; Republicans held seven. A total of 64 House of Delegates’ elections had the usual Democrats-versus-Republicans contest. In six additional contests, five Democrats had a minor party opponent, and one Republican had a minor party opponent.
Preliminary returns from November 5 indicate that Republicans went from 51 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates to 45. Democrats went from 49 to 55. (Four House of Delegates races could end up within margins qualifying for recounts.)
In the Virginia Senate, 11 of 40 districts were uncontested, where only one candidate filed to run. Ten of these uncontested seats were held by Democrats and one by a Republican. Eight races ran token opposition, with five seats won by Democrats and three by Republicans. The November 5 election reversed the 21-19 Republican majority in the Senate to 21 Democrats and 19 Republicans.
Reasons Why Democrats Won in 2019
Money from out of State
More than $9 million in out-of-state money was spent on Democrats in the 2019 Virginia elections. Republicans received roughly $1.5 million from out-of-state sources.
The New York Post reported in August 2019: “George Soros, the billionaire megadonor, has set up a super PAC for Democrats and has seeded the 2020 campaign fund with $5.1 million, according to paperwork filed with the Federal Election Commission.” (Federal Political Action Committees [PAC] can donate to state candidates, but state PACs cannot donate to federal candidates.)
At least $1,195,000 of Soros money from the Soros Democracy PAC was directly spent on electing Democrats in Virginia in 2019. Planned Parenthood received $300,000 from Democracy PAC as well.
Additionally, Soros spent $2,147,000 to elect new state prosecutors in Fairfax, Loudoun, and Arlington counties in Northern Virginia and Albemarle County near Charlottesville. All of the Soros-funded leftist prosecutor candidates won.
Another Soros-funded group, Faith in Public Life Action, with very ultra-left leanings masquerading as a religious organization, spent $117,850 on behalf of Delegate Danica Roem, who proudly announces his “transgender” status and won re-election. All of these large, out-of-state donations are legal but make it easy for Virginia’s elections to be bought by liberal out-of-state special interests.
Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City for 12 years (number nine on Forbes Magazine’s 2019 Billionaires), who has donated $9 billion to gun control, climate change, and other progressive left causes, entered Virginia races in a big way. Bloomberg is now likely to run for President in 2020.
CNN reported on November 6, 2019 that Every Town for Gun Safety, a gun control group aligned with Bloomberg, spent $2.5 million on Virginia Democrats to help them defeat conservative Republican incumbents or challengers. Every win by a gun control advocate almost always defeats a pro-life candidate.
Mayor Bloomberg uses armed NYC police detectives as personal bodyguards, paying them six-figure salaries. Bloomberg has plenty of money to protect himself while making it harder for the rest of us to protect ourselves and our families.
Federal Court Redrew Delegate District Lines for 2019 Election
In February 2019, in a 2-1 opinion, the U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia mandated new boundaries for certain Virginia House of Delegates districts. The federal court found the delegate districts to be racially biased, “drawn primarily on the basis of race in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
The irony is that every one of these delegate districts had been previously approved by the U.S. Justice Department under Obama’s African-American attorney general, Eric Holder, to ensure their compliance under the federal Voting Rights Act!
The allegedly unbiased new delegate districts were mapped out by a political science professor from America’s Left Coast, Barnard Grofman of the University of California at Irvine. His “anti-gerrymandering” plan affected voters in 12 districts and placed at least 370,000 voters into new districts mere months before the November 5 election! The non-partisan Virginia Public Access Project identified six Republican-held seats that would be potentially harder for Republicans to win. Republicans did lose four of the six races in the newly drawn districts VPAP mentioned.
Some Candidates Chose Not to Answer Certain Candidate Surveys
An unusually high number of Republican candidates across Virginia declined to answer the Virginia Society for Human Life (VSHL) and/or the Virginia Family Foundation (VFF) candidate surveys on abortion and other family issues.
The Virginia Family Foundation noted that “most of the Republican incumbents who lost re-election were the ones who had run away from pro-life, pro-family, and limited government principles that define conservatism. Some … like Sen. Glen Sturtevant and Del. David Yancey, embraced the so-called Equal Rights Amendment … believing they could pull away enough ‘swing voters’ to help them stay in office.”
Lessons for the 2020 Elections
We have yet to find out exactly what the jubilant and now unrestrained Democrats and progressives will do in the Virginia General Assembly’s 60-day legislative session beginning on January 8. I can assure you that their actions will be watched closely and will give us an idea of what we can expect if Democrats win both houses of Congress and a Democrat replaces President Trump in 2020. Will Virginia’s Democrat majority decide to hide some of their “progressive” agenda to appear more “centrist” in 2020? Or will they press the pedal to the metal?
What is certain is that Democrats now have a model for winning in 2020 nationwide: take millions of dollars from leftist sources, register hundreds of thousands of new voters, and pay out-of-state workers to campaign door-to-door! They will most likely shift manpower and money from states like New York, California, and Illinois that they are very confident of winning and organize swing districts and swing states to attempt to defeat President Trump. Jane Fonda, now 81, wrote about her effectiveness in switching Trump voters, one voter at a time, in Scranton, Pa. in her August 30, 2019 article in the Washington Post.
The Progressive leftist group Forward Majority, founded by key Obama campaign strategists, recently wrote:
Beating Trump is not enough. Inaction and under-resourced state legislative races threaten the future integrity of our democracy. Chip in now to help us build upon our victory in Virginia and bring that same fire power to key races across the country in 2020.
In other words, fool the people! Become carpetbaggers for the cause! Pretend, as you campaign door-to-door, that you live there. We will pay for you to move to areas where you can do the most good. Don’t worry — we have limitless resources paid for by billionaires like George Soros and Michael Bloomberg (running for president) who want to destroy our country.
Democrats have the financial resources and ability to easily find students from liberal state colleges willing to move into swing states temporarily to have “conversations,” one voter at a time, at their doorsteps!
We need every serious Christians to pray without ceasing, beg for God’s mercy on our land, and pledge to walk and talk in their own or surrounding neighborhoods, meeting voters at their doors, to hopefully convince enough voters that leftists do not have our country’s best interest at heart! We must win “territory” from the leftist foot soldiers, who have become experts at political ground combat. The war over the direction of our country, and it is a war, can and must be won for our children and grandchildren.
