Tipsheet

While Youngkin Is Endorsed by a Black Caucus, McAuliffe Campaign Has Issue with a Minority Outreach Project

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  October 04, 2021 4:20 AM

On Saturday, Republican gubernatorial candidate for Virginia Glenn Youngkin touted his endorsement from the Hampton Roads Black Caucus. This marks the first time the group has endorsed a Republican for governor since its founding in 2012. 

The Hampton Roads Black Caucus maintains that it is not a Republican, or a Democratic, group. Further, the group actually endorsed McAuliffe for governor in 2013, a race he won. Yet Christina Freundlich, who is the McAuliffe campaign spokesperson, mocked that the Youngkin campaign was touting "a Republican group endorsing their Republican candidate."

McAuliffe, during a heated exchange last month with Sheriff Hank Partin about defunding the police, himself touted "I'm proud to accept any endorsements." The group in question was New Virginia Majority (NVM), whose endorsement McAuliffe accepted on July 20. 

As Carson reported at the time about the group:

Despite claiming to promote “democracy, justice, and progress,” NVM advocates for the defunding of police, and the abolition of both prisons and the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The group has consistently expressed these radical views on its Twitter page.

In the wake of last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, NVM promoted a student activist who envisioned “a world without police.” In March, NVM cited an article that called the police “agents of white supremacy.” And in April, the group wrote that “incarceration is a human rights violation.”

Hampton Roads Black Caucus has also endorsed the other Republicans Del. Jason Miyares for Attorney General and former Del. Winsome Sears for Lieutenant Governor.  

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That the caucus chose to endorse Youngkin over former Gov. McAuliffe once again is not the latter's only issue with minority outreach in the 2021 race. 

While Youngkin has had both a Spanish language website and the Latinos for Youngkin coalition since June, McAuliffe last month put up such a website, in time for National Hispanic Heritage Month.

There are examples throughout the website of a Spanish word not containing the proper accent, as with "graduen" instead of "gradúen." There are also examples of links redirecting to English language websites, such as in the Spanish translation about McAuliffe's page on the Economy and Education. 

Further, that not all parts of the English website appear on the Spanish website. On the English website, McAuliffe's issue pages typically involve a subheading on "The Plan," "Terry's Record," and "The Work Ahead." The latter two are missing from most of the Spanish translations, including those pages to do with:

By leaving out "Terry's Record" and "The Work Ahead" of the Health Care page, visitors to the Spanish speaking website are denied more of McAuliffe's promotion of his pro-abortion position, which includes mention of his record and his promise to continue to be a "brick wall" on the abortion issue. McAuliffe has made such a position a highlight of his campaign while claiming Youngkin will "ban abortion." 

When it comes to such a claim, even a fact-check from the Washington Post noted "McAuliffe is twisting Youngkin’s secretly recorded comments into something Youngkin did not say — and it’s especially a stretch to claim he has repeatedly said he would ban abortion in Virginia."

There is also no Spanish translation page for "Supporting Virginia's Seniors" or "Getting Every Virginian Vaccinated."

In August, a Crooked Media/Change Research Pollercoaster Poll of 1,653 likely voters showed McAuliffe leading Youngkin among Hispanics by just 4 percent. The demographic supported Biden in 2020 by 20 percent. 

The margin of error is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points. Crooked Media is the home of the Pod Save America podcast, hosted by former staffers of President Barack Obama.