[Bearing Arms] With little fanfare and almost no national attention, Virginians headed to the polls in local elections on Tuesday, and there was a stunning upset in one city that’s been dominated by Democrats in recent elections. Control of the Staunton City Council flipped from blue to red after a surge in turnout among Republican voters, and at least one local pundit believes that Gov. Ralph Northam’s anti-gun efforts are to blame for the massive increase in voter turnout that propelled conservatives to victory.May elections have traditional been a hard nut to crack. Turnout is usually, frustratingly, in the 20 percent or less range, and it can be seductive to look at the relatively low vote totals of the winners and tell yourself, next cycle, man, all we’ve gotta do is get our side to come out, and we can steal this thing!
The tailwind for the Rs, dating back to the winter, was the tumult locally over gun-control legislation being advanced in the General Assembly by Democrats, who had run on gun control as a key issue in the 2019 legislative races that gave them control of the House of Delegates for the first time in more than two decades.
The political payback to Northern Virginia for flipping the House seemed poised to take out the pockets of D control in central, south and western parts of the state, as we all remember, in what seems like distant past now, the Second Amendment sanctuary movement, which was at its height in December and January.
As the Augusta Free Press’s Chris Graham notes, Staunton voters backed Barack Obama twice as well as Hillary Clinton in 2016. Voters in the Shenandoah Valley city also backed Democrat governors Terry McAuliffe in 2013 and Ralph Northam in 2017, but this year gun owners and Second Amendment supporters were energized by the gun control bills approved by the Democrat-controlled legislature and signed by Northam just a few weeks ago.
Graham says not only did Republicans take control of the city council in Staunton, they also flipped the city council in nearby Waynesboro as well.