Kaine: Youngkin Campaign ‘Hearkens Back’ to ‘Segregationist Attitudes’

Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Virginia gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin’s (R) campaign “hearkens back” to the days of segregation.

Kaine said, “If you look at the Youngkin campaign, they’ve made it about kind of invented inflated issues like Critical Race Theory. To close their campaign with an ad featuring a parent who waged a campaign against Toni Morrison’s novel ‘Beloved,’ it’s just kind of unheard of. It’s unheard, and it hearkens back to a long tradition in Virginia history. My father-in-law was the governor who ended segregation in Virginia, integrated public schools, and he was hated for it at the time in the 1970s. He died just three days ago. People are writing about how courageous he is. Lynnwood was 98 years old. He thought he had helped Virginia turn away from dog whistles and appeals to segregationist attitudes. Glenn Youngkin’s preaching of the big lie about electoral fraud and copying Donald Trump’s line, which he started the campaign with and now at the end featuring this activist who went against Toni Morrison’s book Beloved, it’s harkening back to a day gone by in Virginia.”

He added, “It was a strategy that used to be successful, but I do see Democrats very much being reminded of why we turned away from that kind of politics. We’ve made such progress, and we want to keep the progress going, not fall back into this kind of division that opens up all of this scar tissue and wounds that Virginia has experienced so plentifully.”

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