The Inside Story Behind Glenn Youngkin’s Blockbuster Campaign

As a political nerd, there’s nothing more satisfying than digesting the raw numbers and raw strategy behind a winning campaign. What made Glenn Youngkin’s campaign different than two previous losing Republican gubernatorial campaigns in 2013 and 2017? Yes, the political environment is different nationally, but that doesn’t account for flipping a state that’s been solidly blue for the past 12 years. There has to be more. Beyond Terry McAuliffe being a terrible candidate and running a nationally-focused campaign exclusively entrenched in hating Donald Trump and promoting his love for abortion, why did Youngkin succeed where other Republicans failed in the Commonwealth of Virginia?

Politico has some answers in this in-depth lengthy interview with Youngkin’s top two campaign strategists. Some readers won’t care to get this deep in the weeds, but it’s fascinating to get inside the control room and behind the curtain. Jeff Roe and Kristin Davison both worked at high levels within the Youngkin campaign and they’re finally divulging what went on behind the scenes. I’ll try to break this up for the parts that interested me the most.

You can listen to this entire Politico interview from the embedded player or read some of my excerpts below.

Building a Brand

Glenn Youngkin had never run for political office before. Yes, he is a successful businessman, a multi-millionaire, but what else makes him stand out? According to Roe and Davison, branding is important when running for governor, much more so than running for Congress:

Jeff Roe: … Congress and Senate [races], it’s ideological, politics is not local; it’s all national. But governor? It’s profile, it’s vision, it’s leadership, it’s intrinsic qualities. We even poll it differently. We ask people: Do they care about people like me? What are their right priorities? We approach it differently. It’s a complete brand. You don’t have to brand yourself with the party; [you can] brand yourself on your own personality traits, not policy positions.

So if you have your own brand, like Glenn did — and [that’s] hard; it helps to have about a half-billion dollars in the bank and be able to put about $20 million in the campaign and raise another $40 million so you can have your own brand in a very expensive media market, create your own culture, create your own kind of winning-team mentality, have a fleece vest and a hat for everybody who comes across the Potomac and wants to get on the campaign team and join a winning operation — that’s all good. When you create that kind of culture, and that opportunity and that vision of what the state can be like, then endorsements don’t matter as much anyway.

It goes beyond a smiling face, it gets to the heart of connecting with voters, of making them feel like their concerns are valid, and you are best-suited and positioned to address them. Youngkin fit that bill, and he had the wisdom to cultivate it early on.

Setting the Agenda

Most national pundits don’t know, and most outside observers will never notice, but Youngkin started his campaign in Fairfax County speaking directly on the topic of education to disaffected parents with concerns about the county’s decision to stop teaching advanced math and water down admissions standards for the county’s top STEM school, Thomas Jefferson. This was a hyper-local issue that cut across partisan lines. The issue of education and parental rights go well beyond CRT, but works as an all-encompassing way to empower parents of all backgrounds:

Jeff Roe: … One of our first advertising pieces in the general election — and one of the first things we hammered on — was that the Thomas Jefferson School in Northern Virginia had lowered their academic standards. It was then literally the first stop — May 13, I think, was the day. So we were running on education, on cost of living and jobs and economic opportunity. That was our campaign plan from the beginning.

The education piece is what has gotten the national conversation. And we never gave two s—- about what the national conversation was.

But in education: some people get animated about CRT [critical race theory]; some people get animated about school choice; some people get animated about advanced math; some people get animated about school resource officers. People get animated about different features of education depending on where you are physically, geographically, and the age of your kids. And it also depends on your demographic makeup.

If you’re an Asian-American family going to Thomas Jefferson School and they lower the standards to let in more kids who aren’t in accelerated math into the best school in the country, that’s pretty important to you. Advanced math is a big dang thing. But it also is to the Republicans: Why would you not help and want your children to succeed and achieve? So we were having a hard time; those people don’t fit in the same rooms together. You know, having school-choice people in the same room with a CRT person with an advanced math [person] along with people who want school resource officers in every school — that’s a pretty eclectic group of people.

It’s stunning how poorly the McAuliffe campaign responded on the issue of education. Parents of all stripes were feeling shut out in Virginia, especially in the northern Virginia suburbs which trended strongly blue in 2020. For McAuliffe to dismiss all of these concerns with one simple stated belief that “parents shouldn’t be telling schools what they should teach” was a campaign gaffe for the ages.

McAuliffe’s Debate Blunder

As noted, Youngkin was pushing the issue of education in response to voter concerns. McAuliffe was dismissing and laughing at those concerns. Then, the gubernatorial debate happened on Sept. 28 when McAuliffe uttered that now-famous line about parents having no right to tell schools what they should teach. Here’s the back story on how the Youngkin campaign took full advantage:

Jeff Roe: That’s why immediately — I think within three hours of the debate where Terry said “I don’t think parents should be involved in what the school should be teaching” — we had a video out hitting this because it tapped into just parents not knowing. And *that* was the fight.

We come back to the campaign office, we know we have this moment, and we have an ad up three hours later because we thought for sure he would be on “Morning Joe” walking it back. And we thought he’d for sure be on “New Day” on CNN attacking us for lying about it.

That debate was on September 28, and the debate was over at 9:00, and we had a digital spot up by midnight, and the next spot up [and sent to TV] stations at 10 o’clock in the morning, because we thought he was going to walk it back.

On October 18, he trafficked a spot that said, “Of course Dorothy and I were involved in our kids’ educations, and we value parental involvement, and X, Y and Z.” And yet even then — after 20 long days — he said “Glenn Youngkin took my words out of context,” which then let us go back in and rerun the legs off of it again. So he never understood — or [AFT President] Randi Weingarten wouldn’t let him say it, I don’t know exactly what happened — but that was a mistake that he made that we cannot believe.

By uttering that phrase, McAuliffe gave Youngkin every piece of firepower needed to unite parents of all households, backgrounds, ethnicities, and political beliefs in fighting against a government that believed, as McAuliffe stated, they have no right to question the decisions and actions made by their local school board or school administration. As Roe notes, it took McAuliffe almost three weeks to figure out how badly he messed up, by that time it was too late to explain, and when you’re explaining, you’re losing.

Regional Campaigning

Youngkin’s win would not have been possible without turning out voters in central and southwest Virginia at record rates. Donald Trump did well in these southwest counties, but Youngkin did even better. So much so that it’s stunning how other Republican gubernatorial candidates have tended to discount this part of the state at their own peril:

Jeff Roe: First of all, we advertised to them. We advertised a lot. We needed to get 75 percent [of the rural vote]. So it’s good to hear we got 76 percent.

To get 75 percent of the [rural] vote, I mean, those are kind of Saddam Hussein-type of numbers, [2.6s] right? To get that kind of vote, it’s going to require a couple of things. One, you’ve got to do a pretty good job yourself — but that only gets you so far. Terry McAuliffe did not compete for those votes at all. And then, of your $40 million of direct voter contact that you have at your disposal, if you’re Terry McAuliffe, spend half of that accusing us of being too conservative and just like Trump — [and in rural Virginia,] he of course, did very, very well.

Youngkin spent more time in those areas than any Republican ever has, and it paid off big:

Kristin Davison: Glenn really showed up in these parts of the state that a lot of candidates and electeds haven’t in a long time. When you’re lugging out to Lee County, which is the furthest western county in the state, I can’t remember the last time an elected has traveled there and we had 200 people show up to come see him. I mean, Glenn is a machine in terms of how many events and the hours a day he can work. But we spent a lot of time going through Southwest Virginia and south-side Virginia. And he really connected with the folks out there. We weren’t just dropping by and taking a picture at a coffee stand and leaving; he was staying, doing four events a day in these places — and then, to Jeff’s point, boosting that, amplifying that with voter contact. He’s the only one that has showed up for them in a long time.

Imagine never even traveling to a region of a state you’re hoping to run. Youngkin worked tirelessly for those votes, for all of those votes, and it showed in the end.

The Trump Factor

The name “Trump” was every other word out of McAuliffe’s mouth. It worked in Youngkin’s favor for the duration of the race. Was there friction over the fact the Trump was not invited to campaign in the state despite endorsing Youngkin? Not according to Roe or Davison:

Jeff Roe: I’ve not heard there was tension. I worked with [Trump adviser] Susie Wiles the whole way through. She was awesome. Probably 90 percent of our votes are [from] people who supported the president — 95, maybe. I mean, no tension there.

So I don’t know if there’s tension somewhere else, but from our [point of view], we needed every single vote. We love everybody.

44 percent of [Virginia voters] care about who [Trump] supports or opposes, [and] will act based on his endorsement — pro or con. That number was over 43, but never 45 — it was 44, start to finish. Similar numbers on Biden, by the way — a little bit less, like 35 percent cared about what Biden was going to do.

Every day that [McAuliffe] was talking about Trump was a day that he was not hitting us on something that would be meaningful. If this is a Senate race, absolutely: Stick him to the guy and run until their backs break. I mean, that’s what you do.

In so many ways, McAuliffe rarely attacked Youngkin on anything substantive or that required a response. Voters knew Youngkin was not Donald Trump, but that didn’t matter, McAuliffe hammered it all day every day. As noted, with McAuliffe talking about Trump, Youngkin’s views on education and local issues went almost unchallenged or unrebutted by the McAuliffe campaign, a point that probably sealed McAuliffe’s fate.

Fight For Every Vote

Youngkin did not discount any voting group, especially groups that usually went ignored by both parties. In northern Virginia, a number of diverse communities live and work in the suburbs outside DC. Youngkin worked on attracting them all with a common uniting message:

Jeff Roe: I’ll just add on top: We had 12 different language coalitions. We had bumper stickers in 12 different languages — I’ve got one here… I still don’t know which one this one is.

Kristin Davison: It’s either Korean or Taiwanese… maybe Taiwanese?

Jeff Roe: But anyway, there’s 12 of those. They all have different periodicals in their language, so we advertised in those periodicals. Don’t assume that votes are off limits. That’s one lesson from this. When we first surveyed, non-whites were as movable — even more so than college-educated whites — on issues. So we prescriptively went out to seek those votes.

Again, with issues that cut across party lines, like education, every parental voice matters, and every parent wants a say in their child’s education. That’s not hard to understand, but a simple campaign message about parental empowerment is toxic to a statist party establishment fixture like Terry McAuliffe.

Vote Modeling

They knew where the votes were, and they know how to get them. Virginia can be broken up into four or five regions depending on how to look at it. The northern Virginia suburbs outside DC, the central region of Richmond, the southwestern portion, and the tidewater region to Virginia Beach. They all have some unique local issues to address, and Youngkin needed certain margins from each area:

Jeff Roe: We had our vote model: we needed to win 50 percent plus one at the [Virginia Beach] DMA [designated market area]. We needed to win Richmond by 50 percent plus one. We needed to get 65 percent in the Roanoke media market, 75 percent in the balance media markets, and we needed to get 43 percent in D.C. And we literally got every single one of those . . .

The end result of all this effort was a unified Republican Party and then a unified group of voters to join the GOP and put Youngkin over the top. Finding the broad issues that unite, like parents concerned about school boards willfully ignoring their concerns, and then hammering those issues and letting voters pick them up as it applies to them was key.

One of the little-known tidbits of data that came out after the election was Youngkin winning the Hispanic vote by 55%, an unheard-of margin for a Republican. This trend was started by Donald Trump, and Youngkin kept it going. Again, the issue of education cuts across many lines.

Be sure to read the entire interview as there are parts I couldn’t fit, but you may enjoy it.