By Bill Wilson
For Republicans, the 2025 Virginia elections will leave a scar, mental and physical, for a very long time. Even if, and when, conservatives recover and get back in the fight, the ramifications of the defeats will leave an indelible mark.
To recap, the GOP had the one of the worst showings for Governor in more than a generation, lost the other two statewide offices even when one of the Democrats was clearly undesirable and belonged in jail not in office, and a whopping 13 seats in the State Assembly.
That 13-seat loss reduces the Republican contingent in the Assembly to just 36 of the 100-member body, the lowest number since 1988. The impact of this loss and what looks to be a radical session that will bring Virginia on par with California and Illinois as the most neo-Marxist state in the nation will literally take decades.
So why and how did this happen?
Of course, the mainstream corporate press and the Never Trump zealots on the fringes of the GOP will all point to Trump. But Trump cannot explain this; maybe in the government-controlled region of Northern Virginia where a large number of people are dependent on the government and cannot think about doing anything to reduce or cut their pay and lucre. There are two clear and compelling reasons for the slaughter, and they need to be understood before any chance of recovery in the future can begin.
First, the Democrats employed far superior tactics and implemented their plan near flawlessly. To see how it was done look no further than a small rural state Assembly district down state. The incumbent was Republican Chris Obenshain. The Obenshain name is close to Republican royalty and he had a district that, while tough, was clearly a winner for him. In 2023, however, he barely won after an aggressive push. His margin of victory that year was a mere 183 votes.
What happened after that close call? It would appear that the Republicans did very little. Registration of new voters in the heavily GOP portion of the district in Roanoke County barely moved. But in Democrat turf in Montgomery County there was a totally different story. In just five precincts — very heavily Democrat voting areas — new voter registration increased by 25 percent. On Election Day, the turnout in those precincts was through the roof. When the dust settled, the Democrat margin in those 5 precincts went from 1,422 in 2023 to 2,049 in 2025. That increase in marginal support of 627 may seem small, but it was the difference, it won the election.
Now repeat that highly targeted, micro-registration and turnout operation in more than a dozen districts and it become easy to see how the Democrats scored such gob-smacked results. Nobody apparently saw it coming.
But the second lesson is just that, nobody saw or wanted to see this was happening. The leadership of the Republican effort was totally divorced from and alien to the people who make up the modern GOP, the MAGA voters and apparently had no understanding of what was happening on the ground.
The lead consultant to the GOP candidate for Governor was the Director of Nikki Haley’s Super PAC in 2024. The #2 official at the Republican Party of Virginia was the former Chief of Staff to Representative Eric Cantor. Cantor was joined at the hip to the extremely anti-Trump former Speaker Paul Ryan. And the Executive Director of the Party was a long-time staffer to former Representative Barbara Comstock; the same Comstock who led a No Kings protest in trendy McLean and openly attacks and opposes the President at every opportunity.
How could these people, given their hostility to the voters who elected President Trump and the issues he exposed, ever hope to connect with these people? The short answer, of course, is they couldn’t and probably never intended to. It was a perfect “win-win” for these decaying remnants of uni-party GOP wing. If they win the elections by some miracle, they are heroes who could have claimed their views were vindicated. But if they lost — as they did in the most spectacular way possible — they just blamed it on Trump.
Duplicitous? Of course, but they have contributed a valuable lesson, and hopefully in plenty of time before 2026 Congressional midterm elections. First, in order to win you must do the hard legwork. Think clearly, look at every situation with fresh eyes and act, don’t rely on digital this or AI that. Get off the sofa and do the work. And second, if there is even a hint of a potential staffer or vendor being tied to the ancient regime of the uni-party kick them out the door. Better to have a novice willing to learn and dedicated to the fight than a quisling looking to plunge the knife in your back.
As the President himself has proven, there is no final anything except death. Republicans are still standing and so they have to fight, fight, fight. While the Virginia elections will leave a mark, hopefully the lessons from the defeat will be learned and move on to eventual victory.
Bill Wilson is the former president of Americans for Limited Government.
