Republican Glenn Youngkin’s gubernatorial win in Virginia has a swath of top Republicans rallying around a new party identity and core argument that they hope can propel them to widespread victories in 2022: Become the party of parents.
Youngkin embraced education issues at the forefront of cultural clashes — such as critical race theory influencing curriculum, transgender policies in schools, COVID-19-related closures, and sexually explicit material appearing in schools — that animated the Republican grassroots base and fostered enthusiasm. Building on that, he argued for more charter schools in Virginia and that there should be higher standards for students.
In the House, an election-night memo from Republican Study Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana said that Youngkin’s win should shift the Republican Party’s messaging and policy priorities.
“The concerns of parents need to be a tier 1 policy issue for Republicans,” Banks said. “Youngkin’s success reveals that Republicans can and must become the party of parents. There is real energy from parents that we need to understand.”
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House Republican leadership also emphasized parents in a press conference shortly after the election, bringing up comparisons to angry parents at school board meetings to domestic terrorists. Rep. Elise Stefanik, chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, said the lesson from Virginia’s election is that “Republicans are the party of parents, of education, of small businesses, of freedom, and of family.”
“He took parents’ advice,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said of Youngkin. “There’s a fundamental belief as Americans that parents should have a say in their children’s education. They should be able to know what the curriculum is.”
The focus on parents is music to the ears of American Principles Project President Terry Schilling, who has long argued that conservative candidates should lean into cultural issues and that it would help them win.
“Only 5% of Americans ever even start a business. So when you focus all your message on corporate tax cuts and regulations that have families, they’re going to 5% of the population. So where are you going to get the other 95%? Well, that’s families,” Schilling said. “Even if you come from a dysfunctional family, you know the importance of having good strong functional families in a society.”
Exit polls showed that education was the second most important issue for voters in the Virginia election, a massive jump from 2020 when the issue didn’t even crack the top 5. Youngkin won voters who said education was their biggest issue by 6 points.
But there is some question about whether the factors that made education a big issue in the election are unique to the race. Loudoun County in Northern Virginia was the epicenter of parent vs. school board blowups. Democratic former Gov. Terry McAuliffe uttered a line in a debate that was immediately used against him: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
Other campaigns are already starting to pivot to parent-focused messages though.
The week after the Virginia election, Ohio Republican Senate Candidate Jane Timken launched a “Parents First” statewide tour.
Some analysts have poked holes in the Republican argument that Virginia provided a blueprint to run on parent-focused issues, saying that exit polling suggests education issues did not swing the Virginia election. There was not much of a difference between voters who have a child under 18 at home, 48% McAuliffe and 52% Youngkin, and those who did not, 49% McAuliffe and 50% Youngkin.
Schilling doesn’t buy that argument. He noted Youngkin’s close margin of victory, just about 63,500 votes translating to 2%.
“You can’t deny it. I mean, when did the momentum shift?” Schilling said. “Everyone’s in agreement that the momentum in that race shifted when Terry McAuliffe said in the debate, the final debate, ‘I don’t think parents should be telling schools what to teach.'”
School choice advocate Corey DeAngelis, national director of research at the American Federation for Children, argues that school closures due to the coronavirus pandemic dramatically altered parents’ perception of education issues.
“Parents aren’t going to forget how powerless they felt over their children’s education over the past year and a half,” DeAngelis wrote for the Washington Examiner. “Parents aren’t going to forget how power-hungry teachers’ unions pushed to keep schools closed, holding education hostage in order to secure billions of dollars in ransom payments from the federal government. Parents aren’t going to forget what they saw when they had the opportunity to peer into the classrooms during remote instruction.”
A National Republican Senatorial Committee post-election memo used some data points to argue that education issues can help build a winning coalition of suburban voters and Hispanic voters.
It noted that in a survey of battleground state Hispanic voters earlier this year, 80% agreed that many public school systems are failing. Additionally, a September NRSC poll of suburban voters in battleground states also found that 58% agreed that “Critical Race Theory should not be taught in schools because school children should not be told they are inherently racist simply because of the color of their skin.”
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For social issue-focused activists, the question is whether Republicans will stick to the pro-parent, pro-family activism through the midterm elections. Not every Republican wants to make social issues a major focus.
“The enemies of the family in America, especially ones in the Republican Party, are just so lame,” Schilling said. “They have no bold solutions. They want to kill anything on the culture war stuff so that we can fight on corporate tax cuts. They think corporate tax cuts and getting rid of regulations is the real key to winning elections.”
