Pete Snyder knows that Virginia’s bluer and bluer Democratic tilt over the last decade means that Republicans have a tough task in the race for the governor’s mansion in 2021.
But the upbeat businessman-philanthropist, who announced his gubernatorial candidacy on Tuesday, says, “As an entrepreneur, I love a challenge.”
“I am not daunted whatsoever about the fact that over the past 10 years, no Republican has won statewide office in Virginia,” Snyder, 48, told the Washington Examiner in an interview Tuesday.
In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Snyder sees an opportunity for Republicans to sway opinion about Virginia’s Democratic trifecta leadership.
“During the worst crisis that we’ve faced in 100 years, our leaders have failed us,” Snyder said.
His leading message: Open the schools.
“[President] Joe Biden’s own COVID-19 task force, and the CDC, says that it’s perfectly safe to be back in our schools,” Snyder said. “But you have this governor [Ralph Northam], Terry McAuliffe” — the former Democratic governor who has announced his candidacy to return as top state executive in 2021 — “and the extremists in Richmond, that are kowtowing to the teachers’ union.”
“On day one, I’m going to have a COO — a chief opening officer — that’s going to be in charge of the logistics of getting this done,” Snyder said.
Snyder, a College of William and Mary alumnus, started the social media marketing company New Media Strategies at 26 years old and went on to become CEO of angel investment firm Disruptor Capital. He currently lives in Charlottesville with his wife, 6-year-old daughter, and two puppies.
Through the pandemic, Snyder and his wife flexed entrepreneurial muscle again by starting a nonprofit organization, the Virginia 30 Day Fund, which has distributed forgivable loans to more than 1,000 Virginia businesses, starting with $100,000 of their own money. They made that nonprofit technology open-source, and that model led to a partnership with the Barstool Sports Fund, which has raised nearly $30 million for small businesses nationwide.
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way. There needs to be leadership out of the governor’s mansion and Richmond,” Snyder said. “I’m gonna bring it to you, and I’m going to help Virginia lead again. We can be a model for the nation.”
Though Snyder may be an outsider in the sense that he has never held elected office, he is not a political novice. He unsuccessfully ran for lieutenant governor in 2013 but didn’t win the Republican nomination. In 2017, he was chairman of Republican gubernatorial nominee Ed Gillespie’s campaign.
Some political savvy will be necessary to navigate the already-crowded field of 2021 Virginia gubernatorial candidates with ideologies that span the political spectrum.
Republican candidates include State Del. Kirk Cox, who was speaker of the Virginia House for two years before Democrats took control of the state legislature; State Sen. Amanda Chase, who is facing calls for censure for referring to those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as “patriots”; former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Sergio de la Pena; and wealthy businessman Glenn Younkin, who can likely self-fund his campaign.
Virginia prohibits governors from holding back-to-back terms, making Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, who made headlines in 2019 following the revelation of a yearbook photo that labeled him as one of two men wearing blackface and KKK robes, ineligible to run this year.
Northam’s 2014-2018 predecessor, McAuliffe, has announced his candidacy for another term. Other announced Democratic candidates include Democratic Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, who has denied sexual misconduct allegations; state Sen. Jennifer McClellan; former state Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy; and Democratic socialist state Del. Lee Carter.
Snyder, without getting into the specifics, referenced Northam’s blackface scandal, showing a willingness to throw some political hardballs.
“If we’re truly being honest, they’ve only failed us and embarrassed us,” he said. “We’ve had governor after governor that made our Commonwealth the butt of late-night jokes. It’s become embarrassing to be a Virginian because of the behavior of our leaders.”
The fact remains, though, that former President Donald Trump lost Virginia to Biden by more than 451,000 votes in a high-turnout election, and Snyder — should he win the Republican nomination at the party’s convention (the state party decided against holding a primary this year) — would have to figure out how to make up those votes.
“I need to win the broadest coalition possible of Republicans,” Snyder said. “We are going after, aggressively, independent and lean-Democrats who have had enough.”
Virginia’s gubernatorial race has historically been a preview of strategies for midterm elections. In 2017, some blamed Gillespie’s loss on his emulation of Trump by taking hard-line stances on immigration and Confederate statues. The race foreshadowed the 2018 “blue wave” midterm, when Democrats won back the House of Representatives.
Snyder, by contrast, isn’t putting his focus on those kinds of culture war issues, while at the same time brushing off left-wing efforts of schools boards that “spent millions of dollars debating and changing the names of schools” over the last year.
“In this moment, we are in the middle of a pandemic, people are dying, our hospitals are full, our schools are closed,” Snyder said. “This is absurd. This shows you the leaders we have in charge don’t even have the right priorities.”
In the meantime, Snyder, a certified barbecue judge, may bring out the “Pete’s Pig Rig” smoker, which has its own dedicated Twitter account, out on the campaign trail, as he did during his 2013 lieutenant governor race.
“During a COVID environment, Ralph Northam storm troopers will probably want to keep the Pig Rig sidelined, but we expect it to be out there,” Snyder said.
Outdoor dining, after all, is allowed in Virginia.
