George Washington Coloring Pages Republican Party Black and White Clip Art

Terry McAuliffe ventured out to address supporters gathered in a hotel ballroom in McLean as the hope drained from his campaign for Virginia governor. It was 10:18 on ballot dark, Nov. 2, a little more than than iii hours after the polls had closed. "We still got a lot of votes to count," he said with a frozen grinning. After thanking family and supporters, he briefly ticked off Autonomous achievements during the past eight years, nether his original term as governor and that of his successor, Ralph Northam, who joined him onstage. Because of those accomplishments, "this is a unlike state," he said. Then the music swelled and McAuliffe was gone, played off Virginia'due south political stage to the strains of "Born in the UsA."

McAuliffe was right — this is a different state, though in more ways than he probably meant. It'due south a different land, too. In Virginia, Democrats tin can point to changes they fostered, especially during the past two years, when they controlled both houses of the legislature and all three statewide elected positions. They abolished the death penalty, legalized marijuana and passed laws addressing voting rights, climatic change, immigrant rights, LGBTQ rights and other priorities. They spurred the process of removing Amalgamated statues and other symbols of white supremacy. Overall, according to McAuliffe, Democratic initiatives have made Virginia more "open and welcoming" than it was.

Yet, presented with that record, Virginia voters responded by giving Republican Glenn Youngkin an edge of nearly two percentage points — an precipitous turnaround later on they chose Joe Biden over Donald Trump by a whopping 10 percent points in 2020. On top of Youngkin's inauguration this month, the House of Delegates has also returned to GOP control.

Meanwhile, the battle lines over culture and identity created by old president Trump, or provoked in reaction to him, crossed the Potomac River just as surely as they knifed through every other state. Virginians — and Americans in general — are dug into bitter stalemates over mask mandates, the role of authorities in people's lives and the extent to which the racial reckoning prompted by the murder of George Floyd requires primal alter. Democratic approaches to those issues crafted in Richmond or advocated nationally past Biden and Congressional Democrats have but fueled further backlash.

Many feel stuck in the centre, similar Skip Smith, an it specialist I met exterior a polling place in Peachy Falls. Smith told me his paramount issues were protecting abortion rights and defending gun rights, which placed him squarely between the ii parties, and he notwithstanding felt undecided every bit he prepared to vote. He lamented how everything has come downwards to fraught either-or choices, and he cited the Founding Fathers' dire warnings nearly the corrosive effects of partisan zealotry. He was particularly concerned by Trump supporters continuing to sow doubts almost the last presidential election.

"We're looking at the collapse of democracy in America," he said. "I cannot state plainly enough how terrified I am." In the stop, he filled in votes for Democrats, with an exception. "I held my nose and voted for Youngkin," he said subsequently casting his ballot. "I even so don't know if I made the correct choice."

Smith is not lone in his sense of terror. Equally Virginians greet the prospect of a new governor and a divided legislature, the politically royal state offers a microcosm of a land clenched in a raging argument over its identity and futurity.

I traveled across the commonwealth late last twelvemonth in search of what has changed in Virginia and what matters to Virginians now, and emerged with a collage of snapshots of a state divided and on baby-sit. From their opposing ideological bunkers, nearly every one of the dozens of people I met said they felt more urgency than ever to be politically engaged, to let their voices be heard. On the surface, they sounded similar a dissonant chorus of passionate disagreement. At a deeper level, though, there was a mutual dread, a commonage anguish. Virginia — and America — didn't used to exist like this, and then biting and unstable, these voters said. As much equally they blamed the other side for the pervasive sense of peril, near of all they wanted to detect a way to a place where politics didn't feel like an existential death match. They weren't sure how to get there. America can't get back, they knew, but is the country fifty-fifty capable of going forward anymore?

JESSICA MENDEZ: "Information technology wasn't the school board members who needed to hear us. Information technology was everyone at home," says Mendez, who joined a parents move opposing pandemic and didactics policies in Loudoun County schools.

I dank Sat evening in mid-November, a few hundred people gathered on a patch of pavement that was arguably ground zero for Youngkin's victory: the parking lot outside the Loudoun Canton Public Schools headquarters in Ashburn. Information technology was here that parents had started protesting pandemic restrictions and "woke" school curriculums more than a twelvemonth ago, touching off a motility that fueled Youngkin's entrada and resonated with concerns nationwide. Now, as supporters waited to greet the governor-elect on his mail-election give thanks-you bout, they bought "Allow's go, Brandon" shirts from a vendor, chuckling at the euphemistic meme for a profane insult of Biden, and waved "Parents for Youngkin" signs. Youngkin climbed onto a flatbed truck to accost the crowd.

"Y'all all started something right here that spread across the commonwealth, across the nation!" he said in a ragged vocalism. "This movement doesn't stop today. … We can't go back to our old lives considering gauge what happens? … We wake upwards and our school boards take moved. We wake up and our kids are beingness taught things we don't want them to learn. Nosotros all of a sudden wake upwardly and Virginia has moved to a place that looks like California East!"

The crowd booed, and the "Parents for Youngkin" signs bobbed in disapproval. The magic that national Republican strategists run into in Youngkin — the ability to evangelize partisan lines while simultaneously coming off as a humble suburban basketball dad who shows no trace of his private-equity millions — was on total brandish. Youngkin is the new prototype of the reality-based-yet-still-Trump-loyal wing of the GOP. His needle-threading moves are being studied and copied. The flim-flam is to harness Trump'due south energy without being corroded past contact with it.

Later on the rally, Youngkin lingered to take pictures with supporters, including Jessica Mendez, who brought her daughters, ages seven and 9. "I wanted them to be a part of this, and to witness history and the effect that yous can have, the alter that any i person can brand," Mendez told me. She had tears of emotion in her eyes.

Mendez first spoke at a school lath coming together when she became concerned that remote learning during the pandemic wasn't the best for her daughters. She thought the schools could be reopened safely. She plant herself joining the vanguard of a parents motility that was growing in size and free energy as it swept up concerns at the middle of the nation'due south culture wars, including transgender bath policy and pronoun apply, library books dealing with sexuality and the reckoning over racial history and equity in public schoolhouse curriculums.

"I used to remember that … nobody was listening to us at schoolhouse lath meetings," said Mendez, who is active in a group built-in of the struggle, Fight for Schools. "Why become? … But I had information technology all wrong. It wasn't the school lath members who needed to hear us. It was everyone at domicile. It was the parents. It was the grandparents. It was the neighbors. They were listening. And they needed to hear the states."

By this past fall, school boards beyond Virginia were facing protests from parents to "brainwash not indoctrinate," and Youngkin seized on their concerns every bit an ballot issue. He promised to ban critical race theory, a college-level analysis of systemic racism that critics take used as a catchall for a variety of race-conscious lessons and policies in schools. "Parents are awake," Cheryl Onderchain, another parent leader who introduced Youngkin at the rally, told me. "We're not woke. We're awake." The schools "tin stand upwards until they're blueish in the confront and say, 'Nosotros don't teach critical race theory.' They push critical race theory ideology into their teacher trainings considering they want the teachers to weave it throughout their lessons." Those parents in Loudoun are seeking to think lath members, in office for participating in an anti-racist Facebook group, saying they violated open meetings laws.

The activism of Mendez, Onderchain and their allies awakened a cadre of parents in Loudoun and across the land with an opposite view. Those parents began speaking out to defend pandemic precautions, library volume policies and the schools' commitments to teach racial history and promote equity.

"I wanted to be part of the other side, the phonation of truth," Brit Jones, who helped form a group called Loudoun 4 All, told me in a cafe in Leesburg. "It's very of import that we vocalize and publicize the fact that that is not what Loudoun Canton stands for. It is a very pocket-sized subset of people who are backed by right-fly dollars, who have an agenda to destroy democracy."

Jones, who is Black, has 2 boys, ages vi and 12, in the public schools. To parents who say the schools should stick to teaching the basic skills needed for higher and life, she says those necessary skills include "empathy and disinterestedness and tolerance." Racism "is uncomfortable to experience; it's uncomfortable to talk about," Jones said. "If you're young enough to feel information technology — my children are immature enough to experience it — [then] it'south age-appropriate to talk nearly, so that my children don't take to experience information technology."

BRIT JONES: "Information technology's very of import that nosotros vocalize and publicize the fact that that is not what Loudoun Canton stands for. It is a very small subset of people who are backed past right-fly dollars, who have an calendar to destroy democracy," says Jones, who helped form a grouping called Loudoun iv All.

"What they're actually confronting is teaching the truth about history and not whitewashing history," says Rasha Saad, some other Loudoun 4 All parent. "We are a community, and what really makes me so sad is that I've been in this community for twenty years … and for the alt-right, the conservatives, to come up in, spread this misinformation and cause this divide in our community — absolutely not. … That's not what America is."

The parents I met on both sides started out wanting the best for everyone's children, but many concluded up seeing each other as tools of larger political forces. And then, together, from their opposing vantage points, they noticed that their comfortable suburban refuge wasn't the same place anymore.

"People became somehow not as friendly equally they were before, and these barriers betwixt people, they started growing bigger and bigger," Omar Toufaily said 1 afternoon in Nov when he and his wife, Maysam Al Ghubaini, had me over for tea in their townhouse. "Suddenly things offset getting very aggressive."

Toufaily first detected the alter afterward the set on on the Capitol terminal year. It deepened with the controversy over the schools. He posted a message of support for the school lath and received online attacks confronting his family and business — much every bit Mendez had told me she received insults from a neighbor. "Things beginning[ed] getting actually, actually poisoned," Toufaily said.

On the wall of the living room were certificates of appreciation to Al Ghubaini from U.South. armed services units for her service as an interpreter in Baghdad, where she said masked militia men broke into her home and shot her in revenge. Toufaily is from Lebanon. The couple settled in Loudoun considering of the practiced schools, where their son and daughter, eight and x, are enrolled, and became U.Due south. citizens in 2018. "We feel like nosotros are in the all-time country in the globe," Toufaily said. "Merely we demand to observe a way to let people live in peace, at least between neighbors in the same communities. … If we keep in the same way, so each party or each one is fighting this aggressively for his own ideas, we will never find a solution."

HERBERT ALEXIS SIFUENTES SHOLS: The days when Latinos should be expected to reflexively vote for Democrats are over, says Sifuentes Shols, a Manassas business possessor. "Now you think, Who is going to practice the best for the country?"

Herbert Alexis Sifuentes Shols rested his hands on a tabular array in the dining room of his eating house, Sabor a Barrio. I could see "Lima" tattooed on the back of his correct paw and "Peru" on his left. His American Dream started with using those easily to work as a melt, re-creating the delicacies he grew up with. Now, after 22 years in this land, he owns two restaurants and is raising iii children. "My hands are from Peru, only my heart is from here," he said.

Sifuentes Shols hosted Youngkin twice at the restaurant — once for a rally to achieve out to the Latino customs a few weeks earlier the election, and in one case for a rally to say thank you less than two weeks after. Both times Sabor a Barrio was packed. A few negative comments rolled in over social media from people who couldn't understand why the eatery would requite a platform to a Republican. But the days when Latinos should exist expected to reflexively vote for Democrats are over, Sifuentes Shols says. "At present you lot think, Who is going to practise the best for the land?"

The restaurateur is an case of how standard political coalitions are being scrambled under the pressure of new realities. Still, he admitted, to vote for a Republican tin can be "scary" because of "what they say nearly Republicans, that they don't like Hispanics." But, he added, "when yous heed to [Youngkin], you don't encounter party, you don't see ruddy or blue, y'all see him." He liked Youngkin's focus on kitchen-table bug like cutting the grocery taxation then the customs could more easily afford fresh produce, and his promise to support pocket-sized business organization. He was impressed at how Youngkin joined in prayer with the people at the eating place. "Yous see the type of person he is," Sifuentes Shols said. "He wasn't faking. He was saying the truth of what he felt." The fact that Youngkin returned to the eating place later the election — when he no longer was hustling for votes — confirmed for Sifuentes Shols that the new governor will keep his promises to the people.

Not far abroad, in the Woodbridge section of Prince William County, the immigrant advancement group CASA of Virginia was giving out turkeys. Thanks to the work of CASA and other advocates, undocumented immigrants in these neighborhoods no longer face hard-line enforcement policies imposed by a previous generation of conservative local officials. Immigrants and low-wage workers made other recent gains despite the opposition of Republicans in Richmond. It was a bitter irony for the activists that Youngkin still made inroads in the Latino vote, while at the aforementioned time reducing Autonomous margins in the diverse, bluish counties of Northern Virginia by wooing White Republicans and independents.

"All these folks that were big supporters of Donald Trump … of a sudden lost their favorite politician," said Kenny Boddye, a Prince William Canton supervisor, who was helping to hand out turkeys. "They were out for claret." Still, the Democrats retained all their delegate seats representing the state's nigh diverse county.

"We know that the political parties take turns, specially hither in Virginia," said Luis Aguilar, CASA's state managing director. "It will be very interesting to see whether [Republicans] have the ability to govern for all."

LYNLEE THORNE: "Nosotros're real tired of progressives and Democrats in the urban crescent speaking of the communities that feed them multiple times a twenty-four hours with disdain," says Thorne, political director for the grass-roots group Rural GroundGame, which supports Democratic candidates.

The Sunday evening after the ballot, Lynlee Thorne hosted a bonfire on her farm in the Shenandoah Valley. The flames blazed atop a colina overlooking a moo-cow pasture. Several dozen guests drew close for the warmth and for the solidarity of others who felt equally crushed by the Autonomous drubbing that was peculiarly astringent in rural Virginia. In places like this across rural America, the ideological chasm seems almost insurmountable.

The people effectually the fire felt downwards — but not out. Thorne set out a huge piece of butcher paper where they wrote their hopes and ideas for activeness going forrad. "I also heard just a lot of conclusion in that location," she recalled. They thought the conservative lock on rural voters could exist challenged if big-city Democrats took country people more seriously as voters who shared many of the aforementioned values.

I met Thorne, who'due south political director for the grass-roots group Rural GroundGame, a few days after the bonfire, when she had a smaller burn going. She and another farmers were cutting bacon, ribs, loins and chops from the carcasses of 4 recently slaughtered pasture-raised pigs. "Something that Republicans have washed really, really well is not offering solutions, just making sure they are present to tell people who to blame," Thorne said. "And that is a really powerful mobilization tool that they've used very effectively."

Northern Virginia liberals could learn something from rural Autonomous candidates who know how to reach beyond ideological lines and have respectful, unvarnished conversations with neighbors, the farmers said. Sometimes empathy is all it takes to earn a vote, even if y'all may disagree over Trump or guns. "Nosotros're real tired of progressives and Democrats in the urban crescent speaking of the communities that feed them multiple times a twenty-four hours with disdain," Thorne said. "It'due south easy … to kind of write people off every bit, 'They're all merely racist, out of touch.' Those folks are loud … but that is not everybody here. Some [rural] people just need [liberals] to testify up and take these conversations … and become back to a identify where nosotros're asking each other how we arrived at where we are."

BARBRA KNUPP: Knupp, of Rockingham County, recalled a time not likewise long ago when she said she could have open conversations with more liberal friends or colleagues. "We would come to realize we weren't that far off sometimes. We just explained it differently."

This part of the valley produced one of the largest vote swings toward Republicans in the governor'southward race. Not far from Thorne's farm, I met one of the women behind the Republican endeavor, Barbra Knupp, who lives in a suburban-style development constructed amid rolling farmland. She held her Yorkie in her arms in the living room as she described her political enkindling. It began with frustration over Democratic highhandedness at the national and state levels. "When they got control [in Richmond] they went so berserk they were doing things merely to be doing things," she said. Trump'southward defeat to Biden caused despair among conservatives in the valley — much similar the desolation felt past Thorne and her circle after Youngkin's victory. Trump supporters plant solace in the creation of a local "prayer and activeness" group chosen Ruby-red Wave. Knupp attended meetings and coordinated volunteers for the local GOP headquarters.

People are "tired of existence called racist. They're tired of being chosen white supremacist," Knupp told me. She recalled being surprised and delighted to discover that the GOP statewide ticket (a White homo, a Black woman and a Hispanic man) was more diverse than the Democrats' (ii White men and a woman of color). Then she caught herself. "Barbra, y'all're actually surprised by this," she said to herself. "They have convinced you that conservatives are racist."

[How Glenn Youngkin shifted the vote toward Republicans beyond Virginia]

Knupp recalled a fourth dimension not too long agone when she said she could have open conversations with more liberal friends or colleagues. "I could say, 'Oh no, why would y'all recollect that?' And they would say, 'I think that because — '. And vice versa. They would say, 'Oh, Barbra, how could you vote for that?' 'Well, await at it this way.' 'Oh, okay, I see.' And we would come up to realize we weren't that far off sometimes. We simply explained information technology differently."

Those days are gone, she fears. "I always felt for the longest menses of time that we don't differ in what nosotros want for our country. We differ on how to become there. Just now I think nosotros're at a crossroads. We're differing on what we desire for our country."

What with the ballot over and the holidays effectually the corner, I thought omnipresence would have flagged at the weekly Sabbatum breakfast of the Virginia Beach GOP, merely past 7:45 a.one thousand. the Golden Corral Buffet & Grill, located several miles inland from Virginia Beach'south actual beach, was teeming with about 80 Republicans. They donned blue plastic gloves, per the restaurant's health rules — a mandate they could alive with — to fill their plates for the $10.49 cafe.

I loaded up at the omelet station and took a seat among this group who, I knew, had helped produce by far the largest vote shift toward Republicans in the state — more 19,000 — compared with the last gubernatorial election. I wanted to know what had fired them upward.

"I've always voted, but I never got involved because I thought: They have people that handle that. Good people, smart people, and they don't need me," said Larry Lane, a government contractor. "But when all the turmoil in our cities happened, you know, with George Floyd and the Black Lives Thing movement. … It was just that I felt like things were kind of spiraling out of command. … I can't sit back and non go involved." He volunteered, worked on the party website, helped get a sound system for the breakfasts, recruited at least one friend.

I heard the outline of Lane's story repeated many times at the breakfast. People had amped up their engagement because something in the potent brew of bug swirling effectually the pandemic, Trump, schools, racial justice, election integrity and personal liberty concerned them enough to move from spectator to actor. The problems were bigger than Virginia — they were national — simply people focused their energy where they could, locally.

"It was simply a whole degradation of everything," said Rebekah Bragg, a political party volunteer. "People only kind of got fed up, at which point we really started to look at the control that [the authorities] had on every element of our lives." Bragg was selling wooden Christmas ornaments she and a friend had made — printed with a behemothic, curling red moving ridge most to break on a beach — for $10 apiece, with proceeds going to the servers' tips. "We wanted a voice," she added, "and nosotros felt throughout the entire twelvemonth what actually got u.s.a. riled upwardly near annihilation is the lack of vocalisation."

In Youngkin, they thought they had found an appealing leader who could restore something of the unity that ideologically moderate Virginians craved. Yet, this fantasy of unity was speedily challenged during the public comment portion of the plan when a woman in a Make America Groovy Again hat accused Youngkin of already going soft on the idea of ending pandemic-related mandates. The governor-elect had just told a reporter that he would go out it up to local jurisdictions. "I'yard disgusted," said the adult female. "I tin't say that I'k surprised, because I think his truthful colors may reveal themselves. I pray to God he's not a RINO" — a Republican in proper name merely.

Many in the crowd muttered disapproval of the woman's comments, just she nonetheless got some adulation. At present that these Republicans were politically engaged — as so often happens with political victors in these times — they seemed to disagree on the extent to which they could afford to lay downward their partisanship.

The stately homes on Monument Avenue wait out on empty pedestals. Virginians can read their own meaning into the voids once occupied by triumphant renderings of Confederate heroes including Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson, J.E.B. Stuart and Robert E. Lee. Their removal following the murder of George Floyd past police in Minneapolis is a long-overdue acknowledgment of the lingering presence of white supremacy — or is information technology an erasure of history? 1 of Northam's last acts every bit governor, a month subsequently the election, was to launch the next phase of the avenue'south transformation, ordering the removal of the massive pedestal that used to back up the likeness of Lee on his horse in the center of a traffic circle.

"Less is more in this situation," Brandon Fountain, a Richmond Black Lives Matter activist improve known as Bee the Gardener, told me. He was one of a pocket-size crowd that gathered the 24-hour interval after Northam's proclamation to watch workers prepare to dismantle the 40-pes plinth. "Without it being there, in that location's less reminder of the ownership or superiority."

Fountain had cultivated a garden in the grassy interior of the circumvolve when protesters occupied the space after Floyd's death. The demonstrators held vigils, brought in a basketball game hoop, served nutrient, helped register voters and festooned the pedestal and grounds with painted messages and artwork. Several blocks away, it was the demonstrators themselves who toppled the Davis statue, while authorities ordered the removal of the other monuments during that turbulent summertime. The protests were mostly peaceful, though initially the police response was harsh, with officers firing tear gas. The metropolis later on apologized.

During the campaign Youngkin didn't oppose dismantling the Lee monument. Afterward the election, equally work began on the pedestal, he told a radio interviewer: "I have been and so clear that, that we can't, we tin can't airbrush away history, and I am really committed to making sure that the monuments that take been removed, the pedestal, end up in a museum or on a battlefield and then that nosotros don't lose our history."

The carting abroad of the statues was a powerful symbol of how Virginia was condign what McAuliffe referred to as a "different state," and it signaled how the nation was evolving, too. The commonwealth and the country are grappling with the abrupt change in the landscape. Supporters of the racial justice protests hoped Virginia would live up to the promise implied past the statues' removal by taking more steps in that direction, such as enacting farther criminal justice reforms and promoting equity in other ways. Youngkin'due south victory, withal — following his campaign against the amorphous boogeyman of critical race theory — chosen those hopes into question.

"This has never been about erasing [history]. It's been nigh not putting information technology on a pedestal anymore," said Laura McClintock, a consultant who had supported the protests in 2020 and was among those who gathered as piece of work began to remove the Lee pedestal. "These were symbols, simply they meant something. And now that they're gone, the real meaning is in what nosotros can practise going forward, to change policy, to change laws and change practices, and to foreclose a lot of pain and suffering."

Youngkin's supporters, though, saw the commotion around the statues equally evidence of things falling autonomously. Just outside the country majuscule, in Mechanicsville, Tywana Hampton had found it "heartbreaking" to see the Confederate statues beingness protested, vandalized and removed. "Information technology shows that if you desire something, you've got to tear up things and act crazy and scream and yell and misbehave, and and then y'all go what y'all want," she says. "If it were upward to me, I would have kept the monuments up, so I would accept added monuments that show progress, similar a monument of Martin Luther King downwards there would have been nice."

Hampton, who works in health insurance, and her hubby, Tony, a sign language interpreter for public schools, are Blackness and think Democrats are exaggerating and exploiting racial bug for political gain. We spoke in their living room, where a portrait of their son, who is in college, was proudly displayed on an easel. "When someone says 'Black Lives Matter,' that makes me feel like, Did you ever remember my life didn't matter?" Tywana Hampton said. "It'due south insulting to me."

Once she took a picture standing on an auction block for enslaved people that was preserved in another function of the land. "Like, Yep, I've conquered this," she said. "It was a power move for me." The statues gave her a similar feeling. They "make me always call up how far I've come and how nosotros can keep moving frontward."

NAOMI HODGE-MUSE: "We are living in a time when everybody's teeth are on edge," says Naomi Hodge-Muse, president of the Martinsville-Henry County NAACP.

Across Virginia, the legacy of the Ceremonious War shares physical and mental infinite with the heritage of the American Revolution. From the quarters of enslaved people at George Washington's Mount Vernon and Thomas Jefferson'due south Monticello to James Madison's Montpelier, the nation'southward ethics and its sins are still argued over.

In Hanover County, north of Richmond and birthplace of Patrick Henry, I visited the historic courthouse where, in a legal case years before the beginning shots of the Revolution were fired, Henry offered ane of the first arguments for the primacy of elected representatives over an unelected king. On the lawn in front of the courthouse is an obelisk commemorating Confederate war dead. The juxtaposition was jarring — memories of the nation's founding carefully preserved alongside a certain reverence for the attempt less than four score and vii years afterwards to destroy the Union.

Today the stakes for the state and the nation are near that high, every bit I heard again and over again from people I met. Sometimes they appealed to the same founding principles of liberty and justice for all to argue opposite points. Equally I contemplated Henry at the courthouse, I recalled the alarm in the vocalism of the owner of an antiquarian clock sales and repair shop I had met a few days earlier in Bedford, to the southwest. "It's time for the people to wake upward and odor the roses," Don Adams, a Youngkin voter, told me over the chimes and cuckoos of dozens of onetime clocks tolling the hour. Some dated to the era of the Revolution. Now Adams was worried virtually how much more than fourth dimension America has. "If you don't, by the fourth dimension you practice, it's going to be too tardily. … If you read [the Proclamation of Independence], it says that it'southward up to the people to oust the government and kickoff over if they want to."

No i was talking about rebellion or civil war but however, though they did sound equally though they were in the late stages of giving republic 1 final adventure. "We feel like we're in an existential battle," Dale Hargrove Alderman, chair of the Hanover County Republican Committee, told me when we met in her firm that predates the Revolution. "If you lot're worried about America … the simply way you lot can brand a difference right now is on the ground, and you'd ameliorate go involved and you improve get people elected."

For the Republicans of Hanover Canton, that meant turning out 12,000 more votes for Youngkin than the GOP got four years earlier, giving the political party one of its highest net margin gains. Alderman knew she was making headway when she saw a Youngkin sign become upwardly on Thomas Leachman's lawn in Ashland. Leachman comes from a family with Democratic roots, and he had voted for McAuliffe for governor in 2013. As we sat on his porch watching the trains pull through the historic railroad town, Leachman explained why he, too, is so worried about the management of the country and the nation.

"I feel like the state of Virginia is a niggling fleck also divided than what I'm used to," he said. "We're not representative of the people we've ever been." He's tired of conservatives insulting Joe Biden with the refrain "Let'south go, Brandon." It "was funny for like two weeks," Leachman said. "Only at present information technology's getting to the indicate where nosotros need to move by this because that's the blazon of stuff that's bringing u.s. every bit a country down." He'due south equally impatient with liberals trying to bandage every conservative as a clone of Trump. "Politicians probably need to lead the fashion in treating 1 another amend than they do, rather than but put one another down all the fourth dimension, considering information technology trickles downward," he said. "Youngkin represents a guy that I feel tin can be similar a jitney-slash-mentor that brings people together."

DON ADAMS: "If you lot read [the Annunciation of Independence], information technology says that it's up to the people to oust the government and start over if they desire to," says Adams, possessor of an antiquarian clock sales and repair store in Bedford.

Whether or not the new governor actually turns out to exist a uniter, Leachman put his finger on Youngkin's appeal as a blazon of politician who might offer a timeout from the existential boxing. The question is whether there can ever be a timeout from the existential battle. It'southward something that people in many parts of the land told me they yearn for.

"Nosotros are living in a time when everybody's teeth are on border," said Naomi Hodge-Muse, president of the Martinsville-Henry County NAACP, whom I'd visited in the southern office of the state. Even though she volunteered for McAuliffe, she said Youngkin "could be a brand new epitome for where America needs to exist. It ain't all to the left. Information technology own't all to the correct. Information technology's correct hither in the heart. … If Glenn Youngkin can utilize skilful sense and not sit down with those crazy white supremacists … and sympathise that he is my governor as much equally he is your governor … he could become the poster child for the new Republican Party that does non race-bait and brings our country back to the centre. … America needs to be America for everybody."

The political center is increasingly endangered, if it even exists anymore. Simply the left and the right don't need to meet in the heart, if they could just retrieve how to communicate "soul to soul instead of credo to credo," Peg McGuire, a Republican in Roanoke, told me. McGuire largely blames the far left for the poisoned atmosphere — progressives who dismiss Trump voters every bit racists, for example — though she faults the far correct as well — conservatives who automatically reject the concerns of Blackness Lives Thing and dismiss Democrats as "socialists."

"Why should anyone be hated for their vote?" she said. "Their vote comes with a story and a belief organization and who they are as a person. … If you're non going to listen to that person's story and why they believe what they believe, you're shutting that down and you're not function of the community. Y'all're not office of America, considering nosotros are billions of individual stories."

BRIDGETTE CRAIGHEAD: "Times are getting scary, and instead of entertaining this national propaganda … we need to be worrying virtually our neighbors," says Craighead, a salon owner in Rocky Mount who got 23 percent of the vote running equally a Democrat for state delegate.

I kept meeting people who idea a solution to our discontent might lie in more openhearted encounters with those who disagreed with them. As I shuttled between ideological bubbles, though, I looked in vain for places where the bubbles merged. The pandemic has but hardened our retreat into bunkers of true believers. 1 morning near the terminate of my trip, I stopped by the EL3ven11 Beauty Lounge in Rocky Mountain, a hilly little town s of Roanoke.

As Bridgette Craighead, the owner, awaited the day'southward beginning customer, she told me how the temper in town had been politically charged since the murder of George Floyd. The tension had continued through the defeat of Donald Trump and the entrada to elect Glenn Youngkin. "Whether you're on the right side or the left side, I just think this is the twelvemonth of enkindling," she said.

Craighead had helped lead Black Lives Affair protests in town and got 23 percent of the vote running as a Democrat for state delegate. "Times are getting scary, and instead of entertaining this national propaganda … nosotros need to be worrying virtually our neighbors," she said.

Craighead was dissecting what she considered one element of that propaganda — conservatives' distortion of disquisitional race theory — when the salon's door pushed open and Christina Morris came in with her girl Bri, who was almost to turn 12. "Hey, Queen," Craighead said to Morris, her standard greeting (men are "King"). Morris, who is White, adopted Bri, who is Black, when the girl was 6. To Morris, who had discovered Craighead's salon awhile back, it was worth the trip from Roanoke to bring her daughter to a stylist who knows how to take care of Black hair.

Continuing the thread of chat, Craighead said, "If we're going to ban critical race theory, then we need to become rid of every single [Confederate] statue."

I wondered if Morris would hold with Craighead about critical race theory — but she didn't, exactly. To her, critical race theory "is actually creating division" considering it focuses on differences, "instead of saying that, you know — we talk about being a melting pot."

I soon realized that the Blackness Lives Affair activist salon owner and the White libertarian-leaning licensed professional person counselor who voted for Youngkin didn't concord on a number of things. Simply as I listened to them talk for the next 90 minutes, I could sense something else emerging.

Morris noted that BLM gets criticized by some because supporters sometimes participate in protests that plough violent. Simply Craighead pointed out that her BLM demonstrations weren't like that. And her grouping responded to the racist taunts of Rocky Mount residents by shouting "I beloved y'all!" (Craighead was accused of using "calumniating language," a misdemeanor, in an incident in September; she denies the charge. The case is awaiting.)

"There are going to exist variations of [Black Lives Matter] and misinterpretations of that," Morris conceded. "That can exist for anything, like a misunderstanding. And I retrieve that happens a lot."

Craighead related how, afterwards one protest, she got a letter from someone saying she should go back to Africa considering "nosotros tried to domesticate you and it did not piece of work."

"I'k deplorable," Morris said. "Only that speaks volumes nearly the person who wrote the letter; it has zilch to practice with yous."

The talk turned to hair. Morris told Craighead that she had taught herself how to give Bri crochet braids. Craighead crossed the room with a delighted smile and open up arms. "White girl, allow me hug you lot," she said. She explained how rare it is for White people to requite Blackness hair its due. Morris said she is starting to pay closer attention to White people'due south interactions with her daughter.

Craighead was elbow-deep in shampoo suds when Morris brought upwardly the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who fatally shot 2 people in August 2020 during unrest in Kenosha, Wis. The stylist paused in scrubbing Bri's hair to pay close attention. Morris explained how, to her, it was articulate Rittenhouse acted in self-defense force.

Craighead shook her head. She told Morris that a Black man in Rittenhouse's place would be in prison or expressionless.

"Nosotros're talking well-nigh two different issues," Morris protested. "We're talking about self-defense, and and so we're talking near race."

Craighead put a flow on the subject: "We're going to ever take different views on that." Simply she said it with a tone that communicated she wouldn't hold it against Morris.

Craighead brought upwards the case of Chrystul Kizer, charged with killing the man who sexually abused her as a teen. At present in that location was a case of injustice they could agree on — Morris and Craighead both thought Kizer was being unfairly prosecuted.

After a while, Craighead had a question for Morris. "You're a Republican, you voted for Youngkin. … Is information technology possible to be a Republican but also back up me? … Why support me when our views don't add up?"

"Because I'yard going to support policy," Morris said. "I don't necessarily vote Republican — information technology'southward the Republican values that I support," and she saw values in Craighead that she could appreciate. She said if she lived in Rocky Mount, she would take voted for Craighead.

"What we're doing here … we are setting the tone for the earth," Craighead said. "I'm willing to hear your views, you're willing to hear my views. We might not concord, merely that doesn't hateful I don't love y'all."

"It's respect for each other," Morris said.

Craighead turned on the pilus dryer, which drowned out farther conversation. I realized that no i had won any arguments, and nobody compromised any principles. But a bourgeois and a liberal had a little meliorate idea of where the other was coming from. For a moment, at to the lowest degree, in this beauty salon in the hills of southern Virginia, a different land nearly seemed possible.

David Montgomery is a staff author for the magazine. Washington Post polling managing director Scott Clement, polling analyst Emily Guskin and database editor Ted Mellnik contributed to this written report.

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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/01/24/virginia-voters/

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