Glenn Youngkin’s defeat of Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the race for Virginia governor was far from the sole Republican win Tuesday night. ...
Glenn Youngkin’s defeat of Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the race for Virginia governor was far from the sole Republican win Tuesday night.
Winsome Sears, the Republican running for lieutenant governor of Virginia, also managed to defeat her Democratic opponent.
Sears is the first black woman to win a statewide office in Virginia.
Virginia’s historically elected lieutenant governor has quite the history: Arriving to the United States as a child immigrant from Jamaica, Sears later went on to serve in the United States Marines, according to Fox News.
Also, prior to entering politics, Sears “built a successful business as a trained electrician,” led a men’s prison ministry and served as the director of a women’s homeless shelter for The Salvation Army, according to her campaign website.
“I’m telling you that what you’re looking at is the American dream,” Sears told a crowd of supporters as the election results continued to look increasingly in her favor.
“When my father came to this country — August 11 of 1963 — he came at the height of the civil rights movement from Jamaica. He came and I said to him, ‘But it was such a bad time for us, why did you come?’ When he said ‘Because America was where the jobs and the opportunities were.”
“And he only came with $1.75. One dollar and 75 cents. [He] took any job he could find and he put himself through school and started his American dream.”
Virginia’s new lieutenant governor then went on to criticize “some who want to divide us” around racial issues.
In her view, while “they would like us to believe we are back in 1963,” when her father arrived in the U.S., her election is proof that times have changed.
“We can live where we want, we can eat where we want, we own the water fountains. We have had a black president elected not once but twice and here I am, living proof,” Sears said.
“In case you haven’t noticed, I am black and I have been black all my life. But that’s not what this is about.”
Ironically, around the same time Sears made her speech, many left-wing activists and political pundits did, in fact, cite racism as the reason for Republicans’ historic night on Tuesday.
“Whiteness remains undefeated. Let’s wait and see who those white suburban voters went for tonight in Virginia. Any guesses?” Wajahat Ali of The Daily Beast wrote in a tweet.
Senior reporter for CNN Nia-Malika Henderson attributed the Virginia results to “white identity politics.”
Many conservatives were quick to point out that if “whiteness” and “white identity politics” played a part in the results, it is odd that a black woman would win the seat of lieutenant governor and a Cuban-American — Republican Jason Miyares — would win the race for attorney general, as was reported by Business Insider.
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