Henry Olsen and Chris Wilson on the Virginia Election 54:10

Welcome to Broken Potholes with your hosts Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. Great program for you today. We're talking Virginia. I don't know why we've been talking about Virginia living out here in Arizona, but for some strange reason we are. Might talk a little bit of New Jersey, maybe a little bit of some other places because this has been an interesting week. And on the line to discuss it with us, Henry Olson, columnist for the Washington Post.

Henry, thank you for joining the friend of the program, second appearance. He's a veteran. He's a veteran. Repeat. So, Henry, I want to talk about these races, but one thing that's been amazing watching CNN, MSNBC, reading editorials is progressives and those on the left do not want to simply omit reality. And it reminds me that they're talking so much about the reasons why they think this is not reality. And I want to give an example. It's from Seinfeld, actually, where...

Jerry has to go beat a polygraph because his girlfriend says she believes he watched Melrose Place. If you remember that, you're a trivia guy. And Jerry refuses to admit he watched Melrose Place. So Elaine tells him, you know, the greatest liar in the world, the master, George Costanza, you need to talk to him.

So he goes and sets down the coffee shop of George. And he says, how do I beat this thing? This thing's going to go bonkers. And George says the following for his advice for beating this. Go ahead. Jerry, just remember, it's not a lie if you believe it. Is that what the progressives are doing right now about this election?

I don't know if they are intentionally doing that, but the fact is they believe in a view of America that doesn't permit that the American people can ever disagree with them. So when they see the American people disagree with them, as is so obviously the case that Tuesday's results showed,

They find a way to dismiss that. And it's really an interesting phenomenon looking at the left that looks at America through glasses that make a kaleidoscope look like a clear piece of glass. What stood out to you about Tuesday night?

the uniformity of the swing, that this, for all that people are now saying, oh, look at Glenn Youngkin, he's the wave of the future, maybe he should be president.

All Glenn Youngkin did is the same thing that Jack Cittarelli did and the same thing that Republicans like the truck driver who spent $153 and beat the state Senate president. Is that Richard Durr? Richard Durr. Yeah. This is, we live in almost a throwback that if we remember before the 1950s, people paid attention to the top of the ticket because people voted straight party tickets a lot. So if somebody didn't like

where the party was going they would revolt up and down the ballot we're we're back in 1890s or 1920s politics and so Biden is the leader of the National Democratic Party the National Democratic Party uh are out of touch with what Americans in the center want addressed and so they said no to Democrats everywhere and the shift was pretty much the same whether you looked at a state

Senate seat in southern New Jersey or if you look at a governor's race in Virginia 10 to 12 points and so what they should be doing is saying gee maybe we should actually talk about what the voters care about rather than tell the voters they ought to care about what we care about but so far it does not appear the Democratic Party if any of its wings are willing to do that

Henry, one of the things that I've been seeing and I think this election to me really drove it home is that both parties are being driven by their more extreme wings, which do not represent a majority even within those own even within those parties. And I think that's what's leading to a lot of the really dramatic back and forth swings where every four, eight years.

People are getting swept in one direction or another, and everyone's waiting for someone to just govern. Well, there's really persuadable voters, right? Yeah, I agree with both of that, that, you know, there are different types of people in the American center.

But they do not want to be governed by the Center for American Progress, and they do not want to be governed by the Heritage Foundation. They want to be governed by something in between. But yet what they keep getting generally is one of those two things. And so you have going back now to 2006.

Almost every election sees massive swings on independence. You know, they go for Democrats by double digits in 06 and 08, then they go for Republicans by double digits, and they swing back to Obama, then they swing back to Republicans. The idea that we now have nearly 20 years of this, and yet the experts and politicos in Washington continue to think that catering to their base is the way to build independence.

a durable national majority boggles my mind is that it's completely clear that the first party that gets to a way to satisfy the base and delight the center can remake American history. But so far, we haven't seen anybody willing to take the risk inside the party to make that happen. Well, one thing that stood out to me, too, is that Youngkin won college educated men, which I don't believe

Trump did in 2020. These suburban moms voted for Republican that supposedly were all lost to Biden. And so what it shows me is that these folks still have these right of center leanings on the basic bread and butter issues. And unlike Bill Kristol, they have not sold themselves out down the path of liberalism because they've sort of become enlightened. They still are there, but they're like

You guys say now, what do we have now? 15% are saying, I'm looking at the issues and I really don't care what party they are. Is that where we're at? You know, I think where we're at is

First of all, this election is a dramatic repudiation of the big lie. What's the big lie? The big lie is that the Republican Party is an authoritarian, anti-democratic party that cannot be trusted with the levers of government. You hear that from the Democratic Party. You hear it from their mouthpieces in the media. And yet, seemingly, independents don't believe it. They can, oh, my God, distinguish between maybe Donald Trump and everybody else. Right.

And the thing is that, you know, you mentioned Bill Kristol. Bill Kristol has decided that he's going to propagate the big lie. And yes, I'm intentionally using the phrase that they use about Donald Trump to make a point, which is that you can simultaneously believe that Donald Trump did something really bad after the election and really bad on January 6th and continues to do bad things by without evidence,

saying that the 2020 election is stolen and believe that most Republicans, by staying silent, are not complicit in that and that the Republican Party is generally composed of loyal, patriotic citizens. These things are not inconsistent. And to try and confuse them the way the Democratic Party did has completely

confuse their minds that they think that because they believe that that independent swing voters and moderate republicans believe that and they simply don't and what that does is give sane republicans who talk about a conservative populist coalition message which is basically what youngkin did have an enormous opportunity in

to make a national majority in the face of the willful blindness of the Democratic Party and their, to borrow a phrase from old Cold War days, their running dog lackeys. Well, I think one mistake, too, both sides make is they love to read the social media, the Twitter feeds, and think this is real world. And there was a poll done three or four years ago where it says that 80% of voters do not really pay attention at all to politics.

And so they think because I tweet something out that everybody's going to follow this. And whereas these eight or nine out of 10 people you see every day are like, you know, I got to get my kid to soccer practice. What am I going to do for dinner tonight? What movie's playing? You know, how much should I put here to in how home improvements? And I think both sides have just sort of missed that point. And Democrats in particular, because they live in these bubbles, this cocktail bubble where they go around and talk to each other. I mean, again, not to.

pick him out. But Bill Kristol is the epitome of that. He's, you know, in Georgetown, Alexandria, and thinks that's the real world. And since there are pontificates all day like he is. Oops, sorry. That's the first bleep in the history of broken potholes, folks. And it came from the Mormon.

You just can't beat radio. No, no. I mean, that's raw emotion and deep feeling you've got there, John. Look, I just spent time in a week or so in one of the wine countries in California.

You don't see signs saying, I believe in science or people talking about politics or even CNN on the news. It's quite clear that Twitter represents science.

Only apparently only 18 percent of American voters even use Twitter. Most of them don't use it for politics. It is a niche audience of niche audiences and it skews decisively young and ultra progressive. But cable TV has the same thing. You take a look and say, right. Oh, X million of people watch, you know, watch each these Fox programs. Well, they're.

their tiny share of the american voters there are 161 million votes um most people are not sitting watching sean and then laura and then tucker and then you know god knows what else comes on after that or on the other side you know watching rachel maddow and all the shows that come on after that uh they have lives and so when you're catering to the base thinking about the primary

you sound themes and especially you sound priorities that are not shared by the people who just expect politicians to pay attention and care about the government and try and do the best they can. And so consequently, it's no surprise that they keep

throwing their it's kind of like, you know, in a storm, you've got a whole bunch of sailors who throw their weight one side to keep the ship going and throw the weight the other side. And nobody seems to notice all of this. They seem to think that they seem to think that their policies are working because they take advantage of an independent shift without realizing that it's a reaction against the other guy rather than an endorsement of you.

Yeah. I mean, something that we've talked about and maybe not in this way, but we are all of us in politics are scaring the heck out of your K-12 moms.

I mean, every cycle we're scaring the heck out of them and they're running back and forth desperately looking for cover, looking for consistency and sanity in a government that works and no one's delivering it. Well, I think I think the one thing that happened talking to moms because I had a child in high school and talking to other people is what COVID did was only the schools were closed. You know, so, for example, Fairfax County was not only closed in the spring of COVID, but all last year.

But this is the first opportunity parents had to hear, got to hear over Zoom what their kids are being taught. And that was probably the worst thing that happened to teachers unions by far. Absolutely. We have to go to break here in just a moment. We want to continue with Henry Olson when we come back. Folks, make sure you tune in Saturday, 3 p.m. on 960 KKNT, The Patriot on podcast. Also, Broken Potholes coming right back.

Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your host, Chuck Morin. I'm Sam Stone.

On the line with us today, Henry Olson, columnist for The Washington Post. And as we went to break, we were talking about the elections, talking about some of the results from Virginia and across the country. Henry, what did you see in that election or what stood out to you in terms of the results? Were there any big surprises?

You know, I actually expected there to be a pretty uniform 10 to 12 point shift. I thought Youngkin would win by two to three points and he's won by about two and a half points. So I was not terribly surprised. What I think...

What you see is that there was a unit or engagement by white working class voters that they turned out in droves without Trump on the ballot and they voted as strong or stronger for Republicans than they voted for Trump. That is a huge

relief for Republicans because it means they don't have to depend on big orange man in order to energize that voter. Somebody who is the former CEO of Carlisle or a former moderate Republican assemblyman can do just as well as Trump in a reasonable environment.

Second is that you saw movement in the suburbs and in minority areas compared to four years ago. And what that means is that, again, you've got Latinos, you've got Asians, you've got some white women, you've got a lot of white working class men who are willing to back a safe, sane Republican who still strikes conservative and populist themes. And that too should be both a comfort to Republicans

that they don't have to, again, think they're Trump dependent and also a beacon for Republicans to say, hey, here's a way we can talk about things that unifies a new majority coalition. Let's not under Trump lost by four and a half points. There was roughly a 12 point swing.

from where we can see it, applied nationally, that means that the next Republican candidate would win the popular vote by about the same margin that George H.W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis in 1988. Seven to eight points. Okay.

No Republicans done that since the Cold War. But that's the coalition we saw come up in New Jersey, in Pennsylvania, in Virginia, in Long Island. That's the coalition, a majority coalition for the first time since the Cold War. And I think Republicans ought to take notice and start saying this is the future. Let's embrace. So if you were.

If Mitch McConnell and McCarthy brought you in and said, OK, what should be our agenda for the next 12 months as we go into 2022? That's going to not only be good for America. That's the number one priority, but be good for our candidates. What would you have them push? I think, first of all, what unifies the Republican coalition is support for traditional American patriotic culture.

That doesn't mean waving the evangelical or the traditional Catholic religious flag, but it does mean emphasizing the centrality of families, emphasizing the goodness of America, saying that things need to be taught fairly, but that on the whole, America is a good and noble nation. The police

are generally doing a good job even as there are obviously improvements that need to be made. That's the unifying positive message and finding legislation that you can embrace in order to do that would be a good thing, not simply using the new slogans to put in old policies. Second, to the extent that you want to talk about economics, opposing big government is fine.

Opposing taxes on the middle class is fine, but what's the positive agenda? I think it's very telling that in 2017, Ed Gillespie, the Republican nominee, ran on a old-style rate cut as his tax cut plan, which would, as was pointed out at the time, give lots of money to people who make lots of money and give very little to the working class. Glenn Youngkin inverted that.

his tax cut plan was eliminating sales tax on groceries and doubling the standard deduction again everyone gets a tax cut but proportionally that benefits the poor and the working class for that that should be a republican agenda that should be pushed and that would be a sea change in republican tax policy and the fact that the democrats want to put this huge deduction of state and local income taxes back in the code that is a giveaway to the rich

That is all it is. And Republicans should embrace their inner populace and they should extend on that. You know that I wrote a column yesterday saying here are other unjustified tax breaks for the rich that you can claw back. And a poll came out today that said that 42 percent of Republicans think that you should increase taxes on people making more than $400,000 a year.

So I would say unite your coalition with an independence. It was a big margin. You know, unite your coalition by abandoning old style taxes for the rich and

while embracing opposition to socialism and have a new conservative populist economic discourse that unites rather than divides. Well, and that's a perfect example. For example, there's a 2.5% tax in Virginia on groceries. Let's figure the average family spends $500, and I think that's realistic, $500 a month on groceries, $6,000 a year. At 2.5%, it's $150. You're basically paying for 10 days of food.

Right. I mean, and that's how you that's how you frame it, you know, and you'll and you'll hear some moronic progressive or some somebody else say, well, it's 150 bucks. It's 10 days of food. Well, look right here in Phoenix, they where we threw out the food tax, I don't know, 15 years ago, something like that.

They are trying to bring it back because they want to spend money they don't have. And they see that as one of the only areas we're not taxing. And I think that I think you're absolutely right, Henry, that those kinds of populist tax cuts targeted at people who are working families, people who are middle class, people who are trying to work their way up the ladder is the way to go. The Republican Party has a new coalition and it is a lot of blue collar folks.

That's right. And if you wonder what is the other thing is that the party spent a lot of time in the last decade thinking about how to attract Latinos, but they did it without trying to change their economic message. And the fact is, the vast majority of Latinos and many, many Asians, you know, you think about, you know, educated Asians, but the vast majority of Asians are also not college educated. That's your working class.

So you want to attract Latinos? You want to attract Asian working class voters? Talk to them where they live, which is aspirational, upwardly mobile, working class, non-college folks who would love it if their kid went and got a two year or maybe even a four year degree, but are not yet ready to vault their way into America's elites. Deal with them where they live and they'll reward you. Pretend that they're not there and they'll go to the only alternative they have.

it's a very very good point yeah absolutely we we're going to break here in just one minute uh henry do we have you back for the next segment or we yeah absolutely fantastic fantastic um henry um

When we come back, let's talk about what is Washington's response to this going forward. We know they're debating their human infrastructure bill today. When you come back, let's talk about what is their reaction and how does this affect the good senator from West Virginia and our own Kristen Sinema here in Arizona. So this is Broken Potholes, and we'll be back. It's the new year and time for the new you.

You've thought about running for political office, but don't know where to start. Before you start any planning, you need to secure your name online with a yourname.vote web domain. This means your constituents will know they are learning about the real you when they surf the web. Secure your domain from godaddy.com today. We follow the

Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your hosts, Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. On the line with us today, Henry Olson, columnist for The Washington Post. When we went to break, Henry, we were leading into asking you what you see coming up in the next year or two for the Democrats. What do they do to recover now before 2022? You know, the thing is what they should recover, what they should do to recover is pivot to the center.

That's what Bill Clinton did to recover after the 1994 shellacking. The problem is their party won't let them do that. If you just count the Bernie Sanders wing of the party as the hardcore, it's probably a third to 40% that want rapid transformational expansion of government and movement of secular priorities. So to do what you need to do

to gain trust with the American center necessarily means some sort of an open break or saying no in a serious way to progressives. And they're not willing to do that. So what you will see is not what they should do. What you will see is them try to broker a deal on the priorities that they've already got in the pipeline and try and sell those individual provisions to the American people. They will take the

result of Tuesday as a statement that Americans were as upset at dysfunction as they were over the priorities. And they will take solace in polls that say individual provisions of this build back better monstrosity are popular. And they will do their best to force this

camel through the eye of the political needle and then tell the American voters that they should like camel meat. And I don't think it'll work, but I think that's what they're actually going to try and do. And the question is whether Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are going to let him do it.

Exactly. Well, I want to read an opening paragraph here. This is from Vanity Fair, which should stick to Hollywood profiles and so forth for sure. But they've decided to put their toes into politics and they write a lot of outrageous things. And this is from Eric Lutz. And the title of the article was The Fallout from Democrats Ugly Election Night is Already Here. And this is – and the reason I read this opening paragraph is because this is how I –

believe they view the moderates and Republicans and particularly Republicans. He starts off, the Republican Party in this country is every bit the petri dish of conspiracy theories it was when it elected Donald Trump in 2016.

Which is hilarious.

And even among some in the Democratic Party as something of an equal good faith governing partner is a travesty that this party of Trump has now been rewarded by voters a year after an election he and his allies are still lying about is worse. I mean, you can't negotiate with people who think that way. And I think he probably represents a third to 40 percent of the Democratic base.

Yeah, well, that's exactly right. If that's where the Democratic Party is, and certainly not all Democrats, voters or leaders are there, but that's where about a third to 40% of them are, they won't let their leaders make the sort of statements and make the sort of compromises necessary to make a positive appeal to the center. So what you'll see is them

them trying to tell the American voters that, like I said before, that they should care about what the Democratic base cares about. See, January 6th. See, Donald Trump. See, we're going to give you all this money. But look, if people cared about that stuff, they would have voted Democrat. It's a good point. It's a very good point. I've literally not run into anybody who's not political who's brought to me January 6th.

Right. You know, that's a that's a political class. No, no one has talked about it at all. It's not only it's not only it's not a political class obsession. It is a progressive Democratic political class obsession that, you know, the Republican voter may believe, as polls say, that, you know, two thirds of them say that the 2020 election was stolen.

that doesn't mean they've stopped voting it doesn't mean they're suddenly taking up arms to storm the election bureaus and force their will all of that stuff is fevered fantasies of the left and they will double down they will double down on it now because the russian hoax is coming across as bogus dossier and so forth i mean they'll double down more on january 6 now they'll double down on january so you look the the thing is that

2020 showed that the only thing that unites their coalition is opposition to Trump yep if you actually get them to try and put together suburban moderates who um voted for Biden but have not yet bought into like Mr Crystal uh the doom and gloom scenarios which is say most of those people

The only thing that unites those suburban moderates with Bernie and AOC is opposition to Trump. Yeah, absolutely. Fantastic. Thank you, Henry. Really appreciate having you on the program. Look forward to having you back soon. Great commentary. When we come back, Chris Wilson, partner and CEO, WPA Intelligence, talking Virginia, Poland. It's the new year and time for a new you. You've thought about running for political office, but don't know where to start.

Before you start any planning, you need to secure your name online with a yourname.vote web domain. This means your constituents will know they are learning about the real you when they surf the web. Secure your domain from godaddy.com today. Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. On the line with us, Chris Wilson, partner and pollster for Glenn Youngkin. Chris, thanks for joining the show.

Yeah, you bet. Happy to be on, Chuck. Good to talk to a friend. It's been a while. Yeah, you too, my friend. So MSNBC, CNN all seem to be getting this wrong. We talked about that in the earlier segment. Shocking. Well, they just want to believe something and they're going to double down on it, triple down, quadruple down on it.

What are people not understanding about this great win in Virginia? What are they not getting, and what can you tell us that the narrative that really is the truth? Well, the narrative is that Glenn Youngkin ran a positive campaign in which he had a vision.

Terry McAuliffe ran a negative campaign in which he had no vision. He tried to make it all about Donald Trump. His message was, I'm the Democrat. I'm not Donald Trump. It's my turn again. You know, he'd been elected governor once before. And I think, you know, Glenn Youngkin was just he's a generational candidate. He's the kind of guy that whenever you meet and I remember meeting him way before he announced it was whenever we're still in the thinking about it stage.

He was just one of those guys that you kind of walk away from, thinking, "Wow, this person, you can see him going far in politics. You can see him winning a tough primary." We were running against a guy who was another successful businessman who had run for lieutenant governor before, Pete Snyder, who was a friend. Frankly, I thought I'd be enough working for him until I met Glenn. We were running against a state senator and former Speaker of the House. It was not an easy primary.

And then the general election, you know, running against a former governor who had all the money he needed. We were outspent dramatically. But when it gets down to it, it was Glenn's vision, Glenn's message, and the fact that he just is one of those kind of candidates that you, like I said, that you just, when you meet, you know is special.

And that wasn't just to me. The guy who did his polling and data, that was to every single voter he met. And I think voters came away from meeting him and thinking that, wow, this guy would be an amazing governor. So that's kind of where we went. He seemed to come across as the happy warrior.

A positive warrior. Is that a fair assessment? It was. It is a fair assessment. I think it reminds me a lot of Ronald Reagan that way. But our campaign had to reflect that, too. He could have been a happy warrior, but if we run a campaign like the last campaign for governor, and I don't mean to be critical of Ed Gillespie, but the campaign that was run around him was overwhelmingly negative. I mean, Glenn Youngkin's campaign spots were 57 percent positive.

Terry McCullough's campaign spots were 73% negative. Terry McCullough, you couldn't even count the number of times. We actually tried for a while that he mentioned Donald Trump in his ads and in his campaign. We put one together, and you had to stop it like five minutes because YouTube was going to shut us down. He said, Trump to me, Tom. He was kicked off the platform. And 35% of his spots statewide, 42% in the Washington, D.C. market, mentioned Donald Trump. Well, I heard you guys talk about January 6th in your last segment.

And you're right. Voters don't care about January 6th. Voters don't care about Donald Trump. What's interesting about it is one in six – I'm sorry, one in five – a little bit less. I was way off. So one in 20 voters who voted for Biden in 2020 actually voted for Glenn Youngkin.

So you take that number alone, 1 in 20, and that is a big deal when you look at the kind of state that it is. But here's the other thing I'll say about it, what it means for us. There are 50 5-0 Democrat-held seats in America that are more Republican than the state of Virginia.

So it is – it's really important that any of your listeners or anybody anywhere who hears this, thinks about running for office as a Republican, every seat's up for grabs because Democrats have gone – and this is one of the things that McAuliffe – he tried –

He had kind of run it with a little bit of a moderate in his last race, but this time he had to appeal to his Democrat base. So between the socialist squad that gets all the press in D.C. and Randy Weingartner, who did more than anybody in America to shut down schools and keep them closed, and for any of your listeners who don't know who she is, she's head of the National Education Association, Terry McAuliffe had to capitulate to these people, and so he moved far to the left.

And he didn't want his campaign to be about what he stood for. He tried to make it like I said earlier about Donald Trump. And the beauty of it is that whenever I said that we ran a 73% – or I'm sorry, a 57% positive campaign, it's not like our campaign was 43% negative on the other side. But it was talking about where the issues Terry McAuliffe had taken, the positions he'd taken. And, you know, Chuck, I think back, you and I are about the same age. When we first got involved in politics, we used to make comments all the time. Did Democrats ever actually tell voters what they believe in?

We'll never lose another election. Well, guess what, man? They've started telling voters what they actually believe in. They're being honest. And they are being honest. I mean, they want a socialist United States. They do not believe. And this was everyone thinks that term calls gas when he said that he won a gap. I mean, he actually believes it. A gap is something you say you don't mean. He repeated it. That parents should not be involved in their children's education.

That's what the EAB lead and checked in with so far as they made yards by. Keep parents out of education. Vote McCullough. You know, Chris, my father is not a Republican. I mean, he's kind of an independent. He's always been left on social issues. When he heard that line.

And I'm not going to get our second bleep of the day here quoting him exactly, but he called me immediately and he goes, that is the stupidest GD thing I have ever heard a politician say.

I mean, he was floored. But the thing is, they believe it. But yeah, that's their base. They believe it. We're with Chris Wilson, CEO of WPA Intelligence. You can find them at WPAintell.com. They're one of the premier firms in the conservative universe. See, that's all the stuff I missed when my phone went dark. Chris, you've done this a long time. You've been around some great wins. You've had some close races, disappointing, but...

But the reason you've been in this business for a long time is you have the ability to be introspective and learn something new every time. What is something you learned on this campaign that is new to you and something you can tell us about?

Well, I don't know that I can say anything new. There's no... I mean, the secret sauce here is when you have a candidate who, like Glenn Youngkin, it is, you know, things change. Right. But the one thing that I see evolving, I'm going to speak about that tactically and strategically. From a tactical standpoint, Glenn Youngkin won the Hispanic vote, 55 to 44. And

And, you know, it's amazing. Hispanics don't like being called Latinx. I mean, you've got all these local liberals running around trying to relabel them, and they're not responding well to it. I just – I really hope that Hollywood – I saw Microsoft put out a video yesterday, like a training video in which they were referring to themselves that way. You know, the more the left keeps that up,

we're going to keep electing district attorneys in the city of Seattle. I mean, how shocking was that? But he also won somewhere between 15 and 25 percent. The exit polls are a little bit varied on this, the African-American vote. So I think one,

That was part of our strategy. We appealed, and Glenn actually brought up the fact that he had seen, whenever Reagan ran in 1980, that he had a series of buttons that said, you know, Puerto Ricans for Reagan and Dominicans for Reagan and Irish Americans for Reagan. And Glenn's like, you know, we need to do that in Virginia. We had 12 different language bumper stickers. That's a big deal. And he wanted to appeal across the board.

He promised to continue the funding, uh,

of historically black colleges and universities, McCullough wouldn't take a position on it. So at the end, former African-American governor of Virginia, Doug Wilder, he didn't endorse Glenn Young because he said, hey, Glenn Young is the only one saying he's going to keep funding HBCUs and he'll increase funding to them. I mean, he's going to increase funding across the board, which is part of a larger issue that Glenn Young can win the education vote overwhelmingly by about 20 points. And so I suppose it's as much as 40 points. And that would have, I think back to Chuck, when we first got involved in politics,

You know, Republicans didn't do too well as education voters. That has changed completely because Democrats shut down schools and they try to keep schools closed. And right now they're masking kids, which has shown that it is destructive to education.

And I've got a daughter who's nine years old with Down syndrome. I mean, you can imagine the impact it's had on her educational development whenever she can't. She already has trouble communicating. This has made it even more challenging. And Democrats don't care. And now they're going to try and force kids to get vaccinated with a disease where they have a higher probability, statistically speaking, to be vaccinated.

killed in a car wreck than they do to dying of COVID on the way to school. So it is, I mean, you've got all these things factored in the educational issue. So tactically those things matter or strategically those things matter. But tactically, I would say the other aspect of this that I think is important with the biggest evolution that's occurring in politics and it happens every,

few years is, and I'm not surprised you hear me say this as a guy who runs a data science company, a data science company, is the ability to target voters individually. It used to be the only way we could do that is go to their door and send them a mail piece. But now we can send text messages, we can run ads over OTT, which is things like Hulu, Sling, Fubo, not Netflix yet, but I'm sure at some point it will be. The ability to run ads directly to you and the different ads you're watching.

And that is – to me, that is almost getting politics back to its most important format, whereas I am talking to you about issues that you care about, and I'm talking to your wife about issues she cares about. And if your kids are voters, I'm talking to them about issues they care about. And the ability to deliver messaging individually is a dramatic development in politics, and we as Republicans haven't done a great job at doing that, staying on top of that. And Glenn Youngkin got that, and we did on that campaign.

How many, with that information, how many different messages were you sending out via text, door knocks, phone calls, mail, so forth? You know, because generally most... Oh, that's a great question. Yeah, I don't have a count on that, but it would be hundreds. You know, I remember years ago, I did my first congressional race. He started at 2%, ended up losing the nomination by three votes.

But we had this – the one thing we did is we didn't have the most money back then is that we would ID people. And whatever their issue is, I would personally write a letter. Right.

so if there's taxes this i remember this one guy wrote he goes i'm tired of my neighbor's dog pooping on my lawn and i had a letter from the guy signed it said if i'm elected that dog's going to the pound right and um the guy showed up like the next day carrying yard signs you know so that stuff works chuck chuck you just aged yourself because that could not be any time in the last couple of decades no no no it's been decades um chris um

How big do you feel the movement is for conservatives among Hispanics? You're seeing more and more all the time now. What do you see going forward and what do we need to do now? Everybody should know we used to have a smart guys reunion, which we need to start up again. And Chris is the one. Yeah, well, Mooney's been lazy, but we we had Chris. I remember you doing a polling showing that Hispanics were the only demographic that still believed in the American dream.

Is that still true? And what do we need to do to capture that? I don't agree with it anymore. I do think there has been, because of some of the challenges taking place in the American dream, yet more people believe in it again. But I will say with Hispanics, I think it was shocking to Democrats.

Donald Trump did as well with Hispanics as he did. And for any of you who have read Robert Caro's Path to Power, if any of you haven't, you should. It's a great book about the rise of LBJ. But LBJ was elected to the Senate, beat the conservative governor, Coach Stevenson, by stealing ballots, stuffing a ballot box in Duval County. Well, in 2020, Donald Trump got 30%.

30, between 35 and 40% of the Hispanic vote in Texas and won a majority Hispanic district that included Duval County. And everyone's like, oh, it's an anomaly. Well, on Tuesday night, Chuck, Republicans won another Hispanic district south of the valley of San Antonio, Texas, south of San Antonio, that Republicans had never held, majority Hispanic district. And that is a trend that is going to continue because Republicans are closer to

on issues that they care about. And now the Republicans are the ones who fought for their kids to stay in school and are fighting for them not to be fired from their job if their religion is against getting the vaccination or they don't believe in it or they don't want their kids to have it, don't want their kids kicked out of school. This is going to be a – it's going to continue. And I think you're going to see Hispanics become majority Republican Republicans

across the country. I mean, it was really more of just a Texas to a lesser degree in Arizona thing over the course, and Florida certainly, over the course of the last cycle. But you saw it in Virginia. Glenn Youngkin won a majority of the standing vote, and it's going to continue, and I think you're going to see it spread in the states like California and New York where they're rejecting Democrats

overreach in the authoritarian government. And that's what it is now. It's not even liberalism anymore. I reject it for anyone who calls it. It's illiberalism. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Well, Chris, we appreciate your time today. You've been fantastic as always. We're with Chris Wilson, CEO of WPA Intelligence. You can find him at WPAintel.com. You can also see him on various Fox News segments at times. And he is the poster and data guru

for Governor-elect Youngkin of Virginia. And Chris, we thank you for your hard work and for bringing the victory home. Absolutely. You bet, man. We know when we get our next Virginia coming up, man. We'll plan it for this winter. Plan on it. All right, buddy. Thanks, man. All right, buddy. See you, pal. Folks, make sure you tune in for the final segment on our podcast channels. Everywhere there's podcasts, there's broken potholes.

The 2020 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2021. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web with a yourname.vote domain from GoDaddy. Get yours now. Welcome back to Broken Potholes, the podcast extra special. Folks, share this. Get this out there with your friends because we're getting a lot of great feedback. We know a lot of people have really been enjoying the program. We're going to be talking about the

So make sure you get it out there. I think these two interviews today are kind of one of the things that separates us from a lot of the folks that are on the air and that are talking on your podcast, your radio. We have a program where we're listening to everybody and we're giving them room for their opinions. I think – And that's what the news has failed, right? Yeah. I mean I have been – I'm not surprised but it has been disappointing. Yeah.

the lack of introspection and self-reflection by Democrats about these losses. I mean, this was a one state. It's not an outlier. You have New Jersey, which no one has ever considered Republican. Not only almost have the incumbent governor lose, but the Senate president lost to a

a man who's a truck driver who spent $135. He has no political experience. I actually had a... Well, it turns out he filed an update yesterday. Yeah, that's $5,000. Yeah, less than five grand. But it's funny. I had a friend who's a reporter in D.C. who sent me the video he did. They said, I wonder how much

money people are going to spend trying to make this poor production of a video going forward to like they're a citizen. But you had a Republican DA win in Seattle. I mean, one of the key places for to fund the police and all these things and lost because I have two friends up there who are quite liberal. And I texted him that information. They go, oh, that's that's for the better. That's for the better. I mean, and, you know, they were just done with it. And then you had Minneapolis, which

That defeated the defund police initiative. Right. And a majority of black voters voted against that initiative. Right. You had a social, a declared socialist mayoral candidate in Buffalo lose to a write-in.

And granted, he was the sitting mayor. Right, but he's still a write-in. That's a hard deal. But you're asking people to do something that's just not natural to do. And then also— And he beat her badly. Beat her badly. And then all the Republicans want all the judge seats in Pennsylvania. And all Democrats are saying is Republicans are doing a dog whistle. It's racism.

Well, it's not racism. It is safety. It is public safety. And it is how parents feel about their kids in the schools. Those are the two areas where Democrats have gone the farthest off the rails and where I fully agree with Chris, our previous guest, if you're tuning in. As he said, at the end of the day, they can't walk away from this.

And it's not going to be just these DAs and city attorneys and the judges who turn this around because those folks are following policies that are passed by the state legislatures, by the city councils, those things. I think the next step is those folks are going to be in trouble. I think you're going to start to see Republicans win some of those seats in some of these blue areas. Well, as of all things, they're misreading what happened. Our side will...

have folks who misinterpreted as well. And you mean like the president who tweeted out that he was responsible for Glenn Youngkin's win? Well, yeah. I mean, even social media influencers talking about, well, now you need to audit everything. I mean, we just don't seem to learn. And what if you're a candidate and you're running for office, you need to focus on pocketbook issues. You need to focus on things like what's really being taught in your school. There was a

MSNBC columnist that I read this morning and just went off and saying now Republicans care about the schools and they haven't gone to any school board meetings and all these things and he was right. Oh, he's absolutely true. I remember last year here in Arizona on the east side the number of moms that came up to me said I can't believe the school boards are doing this and I said well have you run for school board? Have you attended a school board meeting? And their response was can you do that? Yeah. Yeah.

And so I can't totally blame. I mean, look, politics to Democrats, to teachers unions is a religion. It is their religion. Right. They have no other religion. They'll try to tell you they do, but they don't. OK, well, and both their funding and their field troops. This is where they get. But they're going to fill this vacuum. And our side has got. And I think the one thing COVID did is you had parents with kids in school and they simply heard what's being taught.

or they saw how unorganized it was or how poor the teacher was and then how long they stayed shut. And they just said, no more. I'm done. Now I'm getting involved. And they woke up, you know, you've never seen anger and a protective nature like a mother who feels their child's being assaulted. And I think that's what you saw happen. You know, and Chris was just talking about micro-targeting. And this is something I've been thinking about for this coming election cycle. Anywhere that a Republican is running, if you are not micro-targeting the

the minority parents who have their kids in charter schools with one simple message, you're making a huge mistake. And that message is, if you don't vote for me, my opponent will try to take your kid's school away. They will try to close it down and go right to those parents with that message. For instance, here in Arizona, 23% of all K-12 students are in charter schools. But it's close to that number. It's about 20% among Hispanics. It's about 20% among blacks. So

I mean, if the Democrat Party starts losing 20, 25 percent of the black vote, they're done. Well, but that's an important. So that number is impressive. But what also is reality, and we've talked about in the show before, is Republicans have to realize that 70 percent plus of all our K-12 kids are going to go to a public school. Yeah, obviously. It's just not going to change. And so they have to start taking this seriously and finding ways to improve publicization.

public schools. I don't disagree. And our side does a horrible job with it. And I understand that, look, teachers unions, I mean, keep it red here, their hands just out all the time. I mean, they could pass a $12 billion tax increase for education and they're going to come back in 12 months and say, we need more. But, yeah,

People don't realize, I think, here in Arizona, we now spend more than $14,000 per kid per year in our K-12 system. If you are in the D.C. public school system, they are spending more than $30,000 per kid per year per

Their results are abysmal. Baltimore, $25,000 per kid per year. They didn't have one, not one student in their entire high school population was proficient in math last year. Not one. Well, you need more money to solve that, right? That's true.

I mean, I mean, a hundred thousand per kid may do it. Right. I mean, that's what we're that's what they're asking for. Look, I have no problem investing in education. No. But what Republicans have got to do is they got to take public school seriously and they have got to make it a focus and say, this is what we're going to do. And one thing they can start with is like, OK, look.

You may need more money. Let's open up all of the books and see where you're spending it now. Right. Let's everybody see. Let's do a series of town hall meetings. Let's make sure we spend the money to invite everybody to them. Let's have them available on Zoom as well. And then let's see what you really need. And I'll tell you right now, that is not something they would ever want done. Yeah, well, when I worked with the superintendent in Oklahoma, we tried to do that to go in to help them with their facilities management, their bus routing, all that kind of thing. The actual management of our schools...

And as someone who's worked with and around all of the various levels of our government, K-12 public schools are the worst run institutions in America. It's a disaster management wise. And so clean that up. I've always said I want our teachers – a good teacher should make $100,000. Well, it's like David Livingston told us when he was on the show here who's running for treasurer is –

Look, the school boards are the ones that determine teachers' salaries. Right. So that's the point. We blame the legislature. We blame these other people. And it's the school board that had the money. So all of these money they put into education to give them a 20 percent pay increase, they're not getting it because the school board's not giving it to them. Well, it's a shell game because if you give it to the teachers and then you take away the best and only real argument you have for more funding, it's hard to go out in public and go, I need to raise our administrator salaries.

and throw some more benefits to our union guys, and we want to build a giant new building even though half of ours are empty. - Sounds like the con Aaron and Kylie do with me all the time, the shell money game thing for raises.

Folks, we want to thank you very much for joining us at Broken Potholes this weekend. You can find us on Spotify, Apple, all those fun things. We want to thank our guests, Henry Olson of The Washington Post and Chris Wilson, CEO of Wilson WPA Intel. We'll be back next week. Have a great week. One thing, last thing, like, share and comment, but we do have a Twitter account. Check out Broken Potholes on Twitter, at Broken Potholes. And folks, if you have questions...

I would actually love to get some questions. We could do a segment like this just answering some of those for you. So if you got those, send them in. Kylie will get them to us, and we'll answer them on air. Broken Potholes, back next week. Turn my head, darkness goes.

The 2020 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2021. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web with a yourname.vote web domain from godaddy.com. Get yours now.