What goes around often comes around in politics, as Rep. David Brat (R-VA) is learning. Brat is the tea party turned Freedom Caucus guy who stunned the Republican establishment in 2014 when he topped then-majority leader Eric Cantor in a primary—arguably the tipping point for the Republican Party, when the maniacs took over and they ended up selling their souls to the likes of Trump. Now a new wave is coming, led by women, and they're preparing to bring Brat down.
He brought this on himself, whining last year about how he couldn't hold town meetings because "Since Obamacare and these issues have come up, the women are in my grill no matter where I go. … They come up—'When is your next town hall?' And believe me, it's not to give positive input."
So now a candidate who isn't afraid of her future constituents, Abigail Spanberger, a well-credentialed former C.I.A. officer, is up in his grill electorally. She's got the backing of the Liberal Women of Chesterfield County, all those women who were making Brat's congressional life such hell by doing things like asking him to protect their families' health care. They're mobilizing women in the district to do to Brat what he did to Cantor, and they're making the race viable for Spanberger. "Republicans are now feeling like me when the Tea Party emerged," Becky Stuart Conner, a member of the Chesterfield County group, told The New York Times. "I think it is ironic, humorous," says Ms. Spanberger. "I read it as a cautionary tale of coming into the scene saying you want to do things differently, and not really doing it differently."
Virginian's 7th congressional district is one of those, like Ohio's 12th, that has traditionally been rock-solid red but is changing—a mix of conservative rural and increasingly progressive suburbs around Richmond. A lot of that has to do with population growth and that population having many college-educated women. Both Henrico and Chesterfield counties have had population surges in the last two decades—65,000 residents in Henrico, and 82,000 in Chesterfield since 2000. That's changed the face of the district, and Trump's election has made that face much more female. For example, the Liberal Women of Chesterfield County started as a Facebook post by resident Kim Wright Drew looking for like-minded women who shared her pain. Her first meeting had 100 people, and now the Facebook group has 3,000. They don't just hang out in social media, either, meeting to write postcards for candidates and to organize get out the vote efforts locally.
Those are the women who helped now-Gov. Ralph Northam win Chesterfield County by 700 votes last year, keeping the governorship blue. So they are definitely getting up in Brat's grill these days.
Let's keep them scared. Please give $1 House funds to take it back.
