Glenn Youngkin is George Allen with better manners.
Mashing the hot buttons of ‘rona and race in his first hours as Virginia’s new Republican governor — in the process, stirring punch-drunk Democrats from their November stupor — Youngkin was alternately reviled as Donald Trump, the former president with whom he held hands but didn’t neck, and Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who ranted about mask mandates and wokeness before Youngkin took ownership of both with his unexpected victory.
The parallels, particularly in a state whose politics are fully nationalized, fit the narrative that has enveloped nearly all of our governors since Virginia became two-party competitive in 1969.
Ten of Youngkin’s 13 predecessors elected over those nearly 53 years — five Democrats and five Republicans — have been mentioned for national office, flirted with national office or sought national office.
People are also reading…
Youngkin makes it 11, if only for the same reason as the others: They start to believe their clips. Virginia governors receive disproportionate national attention because they are elected in the year following a presidential contest, establishing the state election as a referendum on national politics.
Many newly minted Virginia governors, barred from seeking consecutive terms, tell themselves if they can make it here, they can make it anywhere.
Policy similarities with Trump and DeSantis, notwithstanding, Youngkin isn’t as much channeling them as he is another former jock cum governor who affixed a glowing smile to grievance politics: George Allen.
Governor from 1994 to 1998, Allen toyed with a presidential bid before his defeat for a second term in the U.S. Senate in 2006 after he was caught on camera spewing a racial epithet at an Indian American staffer for his Democratic opponent.
A basketball player at Rice University who managed a mere 1.4 points per game, Youngkin has borrowed much from Allen, a quarterback at the University of Virginia, where he tied the school record for at-home interceptions. Youngkin and Allen share an appetite for confrontation perhaps born of their competitiveness; a view of bureaucrats as unnecessary stumbling blocks and a talent for communicating in laden code volatile issues that move important voter blocs.
Indeed, Youngkin used critical race theory in his 2021 campaign as Allen, 28 years earlier, did the Confederate flag and a hangman’s noose: To acknowledge that white Virginians — some in the Democratic-trending suburbs, but many more in the strongly Republican countryside — are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore when it comes to discussing the discomfiting issues of race and culture. (Allen’s campaign said at the time that the noose had been in his Charlottesville law office as a Western reminder about law and order.)
That Youngkin has set up an email-based snitch line for parents and students to report race teaching they deem offensive recalls the intended effect of Allen’s order banning agency heads from talking with legislators: Muzzling the exchange of ideas and information and identifying as enemies of the administration those who do.
And don’t forget the cowboy boots. Youngkin, whose signature prop was a fleece vest, preferably in Republican red, campaigned in square-toed kickers but governs in a sharply pointed model, Allen’s preference.
Plus, their inaugural parties included just-folks affairs intended to reinforce their just-folks personas, never mind that there’s nothing just-folks about their bank accounts, particularly Youngkin’s. Allen had a “Red-White-and-Boots Hoedown,” while Youngkin had a masks-optional, presumed super-spreader event that could have been called the “Vests-and-Ventilators Gala.”
Some of Youngkin’s rhetorical flourishes were first used by Allen in his improbable campaign. Starting 30 points back, Allen vowed a new emphasis on economic development — “that Virginia is again open for business.” Youngkin made that his line, declaring that coronavirus-caused shutdowns of schools and government offices and mask and vaccination mandates would be immediately junked on his watch.
And he did — and in a manner that allowed Youngkin to begin his term as Allen would his: on a combative note that recalled the campaign, seemingly shunning the pretense of bipartisanship.
Allen, in attacking in his inaugural address the “heavy, grimy boot of excessive taxation and spending and regulation,” had an advantage Youngkin could only dream about. Allen was elected with a nearly 17-percentage point majority, instilling in the Democrats whose control of the legislature was fast fading a reluctance to defy him on his marquee proposals: dropping parole for fixed sentences and tightening Virginia’s parsimonious welfare system.
Allen actually had what Youngkin’s claims — a mandate. Having won by 1.9 percentage points, Youngkin, even with a restored Republican majority in the House of Delegates and slender Democratic control of the Virginia Senate, cannot claim the breadth of support for his initiatives that hastened the adoption — largely through philosophical coalitions that spanned the party divide — of many elements of Allen’s program, except tax cuts, which failed.
Youngkin should have some success there, in part, because of a record surplus and forecasts for robust revenue growth.
But his use of executive orders, especially to prohibit student masking requirements that, during the campaign, he supported as a local prerogative, is causing chaos and confusion in the state’s public schools, raising questions about a Youngkin pandemic-management scheme that is laissez faire in comparison with that of his Democratic predecessor and — because of separate lawsuits by pro-masking parents and school systems — has the Virginia Supreme Court and the Arlington County Circuit Court deciding whether the governor is exceeding his authority.
Allen, too, pushed the bounds of executive authority with the artful use of a governor’s power to veto individual items in the budget. He lost that battle in the Supreme Court but, nonetheless, affirmed his bona fides as a scraper resisting wasteful spending and government overreach.
For Youngkin, too, it may be more about the fight than finding common ground. That increasingly drives politics in Virginia, once known for emphasizing the practical over the partisan. Perhaps what George Allen said at a state Republican convention in 1994 — ahead of a U.S. Senate election the party would lose behind Iran-contra figure Oliver North — may, in spirit, be Glenn Youngkin’s watchwords:
“Let’s enjoy knocking their soft teeth down their whining throats.”
Contact Jeff E. Schapiro at (804) 649-6814 or jschapiro@timesdispatch.com. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter, @RTDSchapiro. Listen to his analysis 7:45 a.m. and 5:45 p.m. Friday on Radio IQ, 89.7 FM in Richmond and 89.1 FM in Roanoke, and in Norfolk on WHRV, 89.5 FM.