Richmond Times-Dispatch: Reid leans on retail politics in uphill fight against Hashmi

By: Anna Bryson

Every morning, John Reid, the GOP nominee for lieutenant governor, wakes before dawn, gets in his 2017 Ford Explorer and drives around Virginia trying to meet and talk to as many people as possible.

It’s advice he heeded from former Gov. Doug Wilder, who in 1990 became the nation’s first elected Black governor. Wilder’s 1985 statewide auto tour was credited with helping remove racial barriers to his election as lieutenant governor, in which his chances of winning were viewed as so slim that some Democrats attempted to find an alternative candidate.

Reid faces an uphill battle in more ways than one.

At the last campaign finance filing deadline in July, Reid’s Democratic opponent, Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Chesterfield, had more than eight times as much cash on hand as Reid. Hashmi had $1.3 million to Reid’s $163,000. (The next campaign finance reports are due in mid-September.)

In April, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin asked Reid to drop out of the race over explicit photos that Reid denies he reposted on social media. Reid refused to step down, saying at the time that he was the target of “a coordinated assassination attempt” to force Virginia’s first openly gay statewide candidate off the GOP ticket.

Turning the corner

Reid and Youngkin have since mended their relationship and have campaigned together, including at an August meeting of the New Kent County Republican Committee.

“We’ve turned the corner, I think, from what happened previously,” Reid said in an interview Thursday night in the back seat of his campaign manager’s car on the way back to Henrico from campaign events in Williamsburg.

“We have not had a sit-down conversation about it. But, you know, Glenn Youngkin wants to win. I think it’s important for his legacy going forward. I think he knows that I want to win,” Reid said.

The statewide GOP ticket struggled to unite following the controversy, but Reid has recently appeared publicly with Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican nominee for governor, and Attorney General Jason Miyares, who is running for reelection.

A Richmond Times-Dispatch reporter accompanied Reid to several campaign stops Thursday. The Times-Dispatch has reached out to Hashmi’s campaign and asked to accompany the Democratic nominee at a round of campaign events.

‘It’s not nice’

Reid is honest with voters that the campaign hasn’t been easy on him. In fact, it’s been “the most miserable experience,” he told a crowd of about 50 people at a meet-and-greet event in Williamsburg on Thursday evening.

An attendee asked Reid if he would seek the governor’s office after possibly serving as lieutenant governor. Reid responded that he would have to think long and hard about it, and that Miyares would be an excellent pick for governor in 2029.

“If you were to come up to me and say, ‘John, I’m thinking about running for something,’ I would say, ‘You know what, take about a month and sleep on it, and go check your bank accounts and talk to your spouse, and think of anything that somebody could even make up about you that would ruin your life, and then come talk to me about it, because it’s not nice,’” Reid said.

Aside from the controversy surrounding Youngkin, Reid apparently faced a strained relationship — at least for a time — with Earle-Sears, a devout evangelical Christian who has shared publicly that she does not morally support same-sex marriage.

Recent reporting from the Virginia Mercury disclosed that in answering a 2004 questionnaire, when she was challenging Rep. Bobby Scott, D-3rd, Earle-Sears indicated that she would vote to block same-sex couples from adopting children and oppose workplace protections for gay people.

Reid says he hasn’t talked to Earle-Sears about the survey or heard a response from her about it.

“I’m sure she hasn’t changed on all those positions,” Reid said. “But it’s just not the focus. I have no problem telling everybody what I think, and that’s the best I can do. And I’ve lived in the Republican Party my whole life.”

Reid was the announcer at the 1992 Republican National Convention in Houston, when Mary Fisher, an AIDS activist and daughter of a prominent Republican, had some attendees turn their backs on her during her speech, “A Whisper of AIDS.”

“I’ve been around this my whole life. I keep going every day,” he said. “Here we are, 30 years later, and I’m the nominee of the Republican Party for lieutenant governor of Virginia. Who would have ever thought that?”

Reid recalled a recent campaign event where a woman told him that he would burn in hell.

“I tried to respond in a diplomatic way to say, ‘You know what? I hope you’ll just keep me in mind,’” Reid said. “I’m not trying to be the associate pastor at your church. I’m trying to be the lieutenant governor, and the best I can offer you is to protect everybody’s rights, yours included, even when we don’t agree.”

Transgender policies

Reid has been at the forefront of the Republican criticism of five Northern Virginia school districts over their transgender policies. The school districts are defying the Trump administration’s orders by keeping policies in place that let transgender students use the bathrooms and facilities that align with their gender identities.

Reid appeared with Earle-Sears at a rally ahead of a Prince William County School Board meeting Wednesday and railed against the school district.

While traveling between campaign events Thursday evening, Reid joined “The Jeff Katz Show” on WRVA radio, where Reid hosted the morning show for eight years. Reid talked about his activism on the transgender front.

“I think this is an issue where even people who have never voted Republican before … are going to say, ‘Excuse me, girls deserve privacy. Girls deserve the opportunity to compete in their own sports,’” Reid said on the radio show. “They don’t want boys in the locker room or the gym or the spa, whether you’re 10 years old or 80 years old.”

On Thursday evening, Reid gave a short speech at a forum for local candidates hosted by the York-James City-Williamsburg NAACP.

“I know there are many people in this room who would never consider voting for a Republican. That’s OK,” he said. “I’m still going to come talk to you, because if I become lieutenant governor, you have my word: I will try to lead in a way that is responsible and reasonable and, most importantly, fair for all the citizens of this state. That’s what’s on my heart. That’s why I left my job to run, and that’s why I came to see you tonight.”

Early on in his campaign, Reid said he hopes to open the tent and expand the ticket’s appeal to folks who might not be traditional Republicans. He’s also made his support for President Donald Trump a major part of his platform. Reid says he finds his messages to be consistent and that he’s talked a lot about finding commonality.

“(I think) my presence as a leader in the Republican movement will get people to look up and say, ‘Now wait a minute. All we’ve heard our whole lives is that you’re bigots, you’re racist, you’re homophobes, you’re xenophobes, you’ve never been anywhere, you hate people who aren’t like yourself,’” Reid said. “I think I’m winning people over to the party.”

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