Trumpism lost on Election Day across America, and big time. No one personified this more than Republican gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie, who released more racist ads attacking our immigrant families than you can count on one orange hand. As immigrant rights leader and America’s Voice founder Frank Sharry noted, “Gillespie and the Virginia Republican Party made a deliberate decision to conduct their campaign using the racist rhetoric of Donald Trump,” hoping to turn immigration into a campaign cudgel between Democrats. It backfired. Ralph Northam’s pollster tells Greg Sargent:
“There was a very negative reaction among college-educated voters and swing voters generally to his MS-13 ads,” he said. Meanwhile, some polling had shown the race-baiting might have energized Democratic constituencies. Gillespie’s strategy did allow him to run up enormous margins in deep-red counties. But preliminary analyses suggest he was unable to drum up the enthusiasm levels seen in Democratic strongholds. At the same time, Northam edged Gillespie among college whites, outperforming Hillary Clinton among them by six points and defying predictions by Gillespie’s pollster, who insisted that Gillespie’s immigration appeals were working on those voters.
“Virginian voters are pro-immigrant, support the Dream Act, and support a pro-immigrant policy,” noted pollsters Latino Decisions during a press call. When Virginians heard of Northam’s pro-immigrant stance, noted Latino Decisions, they were more likely to support him. Notably, Gillespie’s embrace of Trumpism mobilized immigrant and voters of color and put Northam over the top, with Asian, black, and Latino voters reporting double-digit increases in voter contact rate during the last three weeks of the race.
“We knocked on over 58,000 doors and reached over 20,000 voters via text and phone calls,” said Virginia immigrant rights group CASA in Action, giving Democrats a blueprint for future victories. “If we want greater voter participation, we must connect with people meaningfully and positively. It matters when voters see their image reflected in campaign materials. To build community and increase political participation, voters need to see that their views and values matter.”
But it wasn’t just Gillespie who fucked with the wrong ones. Early on Election Day, America’s Voice published a blog post featuring some of the worst, anti-immigrant and racist ads put out by Republican candidates and their anonymous backers to attack Democratic opponents in various states. By the end of Election Day, every single one of the Republicans those ads were meant to bolster, lost.
In the Virginia House of Delegate races, horrifically racist mailers from Republicans attacked two Latina candidates, Hala Ayala and Elizabeth Guzman. The mailer targeting Ayala claimed she wanted to "restore rights to felons: thugs, violent criminals, gang members, and child predators,” while the mailer attacking Guzman equated immigrants with "violent felons and child predators.” Another Virginia Democrat, Jennifer Carroll Foy, was attacked for supporting Dreamers. Not only has Foy become the first public defender elected to the House of Delegates, but Ayala and Guzman made history as its first Latina members as well. But “it wasn’t just Virginia,” as Laura Clawson noted earlier.
- In the New Jersey gubernatorial election, Republican Kim Guadagno’s Willie Horton-style ad accused her Democratic opponent Phil Murphy of wanting to protect murderers from deportation. Kim lost by 13 points.
- In the Hoboken, New Jersey mayoral election, anonymous flyers calling Indian-American candidate Ravi Bhalla a terrorist were placed on doorsteps and car windshields. Last night, Bhalla became the state’s first Sikh mayor.
- In the Edison, New Jersey school board election, postcards calling for the deportation of two Chinese-American and Indian-American candidates were mailed to homes in the municipality, “where nearly half of its population is Asian.” Both candidates won.
- In the Nassau County, New York executive election, a flyer from the New York State Republican Committee called Democratic candidate Laura Curran "MS-13's choice" and said she would "roll out the welcome mat for violent gangs." Last night, Curran “made history by becoming the first woman to declare victory in a race for Nassau County executive.”
- In Yorktown, New York, Yorktown Republicans sent a mailer featuring anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant imagery attacking Democrats Ilan Gilbert, Vishnu Patel, and Alice Roker because they support making Yorktown a “sanctuary town.” All three were elected or re-elected last night.
“The punditry was prepared to write the story of how immigration issues were the reasons that Democrats lost—or lost ground—and how immigrant voters didn’t show up to beat back the attack. Well, just the opposite turned out to be the case,” Sharry continued. “Voters rejected the nativist ads and immigrant voters showed up to be heard.”
It’s also important to remember that yes, Republicans took a shellacking, but they’ll be back, and they won’t give up these old tricks so easily. In fact, Trump is already claiming Gillespie’s problem was that he didn’t embrace his ideas tight enough. The tactics didn’t work this time, but we need to be ready for the next time. We need to be ready to defend our values and to stand up for the undocumented immigrants who canvassed for Democrats even though they can’t vote. They fight because their lives are at stake. So our message needs to be clear yet again the next time: fuck your racist, fearmongering ads demonizing our immigrant families.