The slick campaign mailers are designed to command Virginia voters’ attention: One shows a Jewish Democrat, his nose appearing to have been digitally altered to seem larger, looking at stacks of gold coins.
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The image on a second mailing is of a Black Democrat rendered as a puppet, bound by ropes and suspended in the air. A third shows the Photoshopped image of another Black Democrat on the cover of a matchbox, his face between two flickering flames.
A vote for that candidate, the mailer warns, “is like playing with fire.”
The mailings all were funded by the Republican Party of Virginia, which is seeking to portray Democrats running for reelection to the House of Delegates as tax-and-spend “radical puppets” controlled by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
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But Democrats are seizing on the images — as well as a tweet and comment by two other Republican candidates — as evidence of a more nefarious GOP agenda: tapping into bigoted stereotypes to tarnish their opponents and scare off voters.
“It’s despicable,” Manuel Bonder, a Democratic Party of Virginia spokesman, said in an email. He described the mailers as “racist, anti-Semitic garbage” that echo tactics employed by former president Donald Trump and Corey Stewart, the Virginia Republican whose losing 2018 U.S. Senate campaign was rife with divisive rhetoric.
“These people are completely unfit to lead,” Bonder said.
Rich Anderson, chair of the Republican Party of Virginia (RPV), did not respond to messages seeking comment. Thomas M. Davis III, the former Republican congressman from Virginia, who is advising a candidate who authorized one of the mailers, accused the Democrats of ginning up outrage to excite their voters.
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“It’s politics 101,” he said. “I don’t think anything was intended by it. They’re looking for an issue right now because their base is asleep.”
With less than a month until the election, the heated gubernatorial race between former Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin is the centerpiece of Virginia’s 2021 campaign cycle.
But there are also down-ballot contests, including key House of Delegates races that could determine whether Democrats hold on to their majority in Richmond.
Youngkin, a former Carlyle executive, has poured $1 million of his own money into Virginia Wins, his political action committee. Among the candidates who have received funds from the PAC are three Republicans — Harold Pyon, Tara Durant and Karen Greenhalgh — whose Democratic opponents were targeted by the recent RPV mailings. A Youngkin campaign spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.
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“Depicting any black person as burning or hanging propagates some of the most dangerous, racist tropes in history,” Del. Alex Askew (D), a Virginia Beach incumbent who is Black, tweeted after GOP mailings showed his face surrounded by flames and as a puppet with a rope around his waist and attached to his arms and legs.
Greenhalgh, his opponent who has received $13,000 from Youngkin’s PAC, also authorized the mailing with flames near the Democrat’s face but did not approve the puppet mailing.
In an Oct. 2 tweet to her 209 followers, Greenhalgh, without specifying the mailer to which she was referring, called it “offensive” and said that “neither myself nor anyone on my campaign staff” approved its message.
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In addition to criticizing the mailings, Democrats have assailed a Republican delegate for tweeting last month that he was “surprised to see a pair of eyes and a mouth with that NOSE” in response to a video of House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn (D-Fairfax), who is Jewish.
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The candidate, Hahns Copeland, who later apologized for the tweet, received $3,000 from Youngkin’s PAC in his race against incumbent Del. Jerrauld C. “Jay” Jones (D) in Norfolk.
In July, Democrats also rebuked Julie Perry, a Republican running for a delegate seat in Loudoun and Fairfax counties, for comparing the plight of conservative teachers to Jews in Nazi Germany.
Perry, who received $3,000 from Youngkin’s PAC, later said in a statement: “It was never my intention to be disrespectful.”
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Bob Holsworth, a longtime political analyst in Virginia, characterized the Republican mailings and statements as “major unforced errors” by the party that reflect poorly on the man at the top of the ticket, Youngkin, who is trying to “portray himself to swing voters as an outsider who is going to bring sanity and competence to government.”
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“Usually, the closer we are to Election Day, the worse the mailings are,” he said. “But we’re not even that close to Election Day right now.”
Shaun Kenney, RPV’s former executive director who is supporting Youngkin, said the party’s mailers were particularly egregious in a “post-Charlottesville world,” a reference to the 2017 march by white supremacists.
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“How tone deaf do you have to be to let that slip through your fingers?” he said. “I would never have allowed those were I at the state party.”
The mailing authorized by Pyon targeted Del. Dan Helmer (D-Fairfax), whose nose appears digitally altered as he is depicted looking at four stacks of coins above the words, “Virginia can’t afford anymore Dan Helmer.”
Helmer, whose district includes Fairfax and Prince William counties, is an Army veteran and the descendant of Holocaust survivors. In an interview, he described the mailing as antisemitic and said Pyon “needs to step up and say who he stands with. Is it the extremists or the community?”
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“As the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, I was shocked,” he said.
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Pyon, a Korean immigrant who has received $13,000 from Youngkin’s PAC, called the allegation of antisemitism “unfounded” in a recent statement and described himself as an ally of the Jewish community.
Pyon, who is being advised by Davis, the former congressman, has said Democrats are seeking to “distract voters from the issues and sow division.”
The RPV also sent mailers attacking a group of incumbent House Democrats, including Askew and Del. Joshua G. Cole (Fredericksburg), who is also Black. The GOP used identical designs in separate mailers on the two men.
Cole, who is running for reelection against Durant in a district that includes Fredericksburg and Stafford County, dismissed the mailings as “old-school campaign tactics.”
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“But this is the new Virginia, and it’s not going to work,” he said. “This just excited me to knock on more doors.”
Durant’s campaign authorized the mailing that features the flames, but not the one in which Cole appears as a puppet, according to the mailings. Eric Harpootian, Durant’s campaign manager, said he could not comment when reached Tuesday because he was on his way to an event. The campaign did not respond to a subsequent email.
Karina Elwood contributed to this report.