The Virginia GOP held their convention on Saturday, and they’ve been counting votes for 2 days now. In the governor’s race, all the remaining candidates are full on Trumpers who claim that Joe Biden was not legitimately elected president. They cancelled plans to have the convention in ultra conservative southside Virginia (Lynchburg), voted at locations all over the state of VA, and implemented rank choice voting to choose the candidates.
So I thought with those changes there was a chance they would choose Kirk Cox, the only one of the GOP gubernatorial candidates with a chance of winning statewide in November. Cox is a former VA House Speaker, and has a history of being able to win even in the newly Democratic Richmond suburbs.
But it’s apparently not to be.
Counting Continues, Younkin in the Lead (AP)
It’s hard to see a way for Democrats to lose in November against any of the remaining candidates. Especially since every sign points to former governor Terry McAuliffe on a path to get the Democratic nomination. There are many other very good candidates, of course. Probably too many for one to break through against McAuliffe.
But the Democratic party would benefit from rank choice voting too, I’m sure. Even though rank choice doesn’t seem to have set the Virginia GOP on a sane course.
Virginia GOP Narrowing the Field (Washington Post)
The developing outcome demonstrated Trump's enduring grip on the state GOP, despite the fact that he lost two elections in Virginia — by more than five points in 2016 and 10 points last year.
Several candidates had spent the campaign accusing one another of trying to “rig” the nomination contest, and those suspicions did not evaporate after voting ended. Alarms were raised Sunday morning when party officials arrived to find torn security tape on the back doors of the ballroom where the ballot boxes were sealed away. A guard had been posted out front, but it turned out that a housekeeper had entered through the rear to deliver coffee.
Sounds like multiple Trumpista GOP candidates are going to claim the VA GOP convention vote was “rigged” and “stolen”.