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With crime lowest in decades, Virginia Dems set themselves up for GOP attacks -- and must get ready [1]

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Date: 2023-08-20  

Low crime rates have never stopped Republicans from successfully attacking Democrats on crime.

In this year’s critical Virginia legislative contests, several things are becoming clear:

Glenn Youngkin, who desperately wants to be President, will do anything to keep the Virginia House in Republican hands and flip the Senate

He’s prepared to spend tens of millions of dollars on legislative races this year

He’s already got his top issue — schools — but he needs more than that to win it. It seems clear that he’s going to fire up his base on crime, given the attacks we’ve seen in local Virginia campaigns this year despite the lowest crime rates in years

Unfortunately, last year a trio of hyper-ambitious newcomers to the State House — Sally Hudson, Dan Helmer, and Don Scott — decided to hand the GOP this issue on a silver platter. They schemed to oust Democratic Leader Eileen Filler-Corn, who had successfully enacted more progressive legislation than any Speaker in VA history, and replace her with convicted crack cocaine dealer Don Scott who was a driver of a drug epidemic that made the mid 1990’s the most violent period on record and wrought havoc in our cities — particularly for young African American kids who were losing their mothers and their fathers to this violence and were all to often tragically caught in the crossfire.

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So what happened since the legislative coup last year?

Two out of three of them, Don Scott and Dan Helmer, successfully rode that effort into into House leadership.

Sally Hudson was left behind, failing to knock off the highest ranking African American in the House. Obviously frustrated that her plan benefited the others but not her, she declined to run for re-election, challenged an incumbent Democratic State Senator, and lost.

Don Scott continued to run into legal troubles, being publicly reprimanded by the Virginia State Bar for mishandling funds. His colleagues — realizing that they elected him without actually, having the opportunity to review the morass of court documents that make clear that he has been lying in his recent statements about the extent of his crimes -- started to worry about the “hundreds of pages of oppo” that the GOP was building on him.

Dan Helmer laid low, likely hoping to later step up into the vacuum his cynical scheming helped create

It was easy last year for House Democrats to punt on Don Scott’s criminal history and focus on the “redemption” story instead of the story that caused so many kids to die in the mid 1990s. However, it won’t be so easy when they are up against tens of millions of dollars in GOP attacks, asking them “Why did you decide that a convicted crack dealer would be a better Democratic leader than any of the other 47 House Democrats? What does this say about the rest of you?”

As Democrats, we’ve been caught off guard too many times by GOP attacks for which we should have worked to prepare. It’s so obvious that this can happen again in the weeks ahead before the November 2023 election. I hope each candidate for the House will take time to consider how best to address this. Hint: tying yourself to Don Scott is not the answer.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/20/2188544/-With-crime-lowest-in-decades-Virginia-Dems-set-themselves-up-for-GOP-attacks-and-must-get-ready

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