CNN’s Pamela Brown heard from four Virginia voters about why they voted for Republican Glen Youngkin in the Nov. 2 election.
None of the four suburban white women were registered Republicans but they all voted for the Republican gubernatorial candidate. Brown probed during a CNN broadcast for an explanation of what helped them make that decision. Youngkin won 53 percent of suburban voters. In comparison, President Joe Biden won Virginia in last year’s general election by capturing 54 percent of suburban votes.
What caused the flip in voter support between last year and last Tuesday? Brown said CNN obtained a copy of a McAuliffe campaign analysis of their Nov. 2 loss. According to their analysis, education was not a decisive issue in the governor’s race, although they acknowledged it was a weakness that Youngkin pounced on.
The four women interviewed by Brown said otherwise. They were Kay Greenwell, Shawnna Yashar, Dana Jackson and a woman whom CNN did not identify although she responded to Brown. Brown said the women spent months fighting to get kids back into school and now they want more done to make up for learning loss from the pandemic.
Kay Greenwell is a mother of two children receiving instruction from Loudoun County Public Schools. Loudoun County came under intense scrutiny due to reports of an alleged sexual assault on school grounds that the victim’s parents accused LCPS Superintendent Dr. Scott Ziegler of attempting to conceal.
“It affected my family dynamic. It affected my social circles,” Greenwell said. “It affected every part of me that the kids couldn’t go to school. And so I had to figure out what can I do to make sure that that never happens again.”
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Shawna Yashar is a Virginia attorney who was part of a nine-month drive that saw parents collect nearly 20,000 petition signatures in Fairfax County, Virginia to seek a court hearing on whether the Fairfax County School Board decision to keep schools closed last year amounted to a dereliction of duty.
“We were really concerned about our kids’ education and the Democrats were not listening to that,” said Yashar.
Brown asked the group if they felt like not enough is being done to address the learning loss and if that is a crisis.
“Yes, absolutely,” said Jackson. “Yes, it’s part of the emergency.”
Dana Jackson described herself as a swing voter with a daughter in high school. She helped organize rallies to return children to classroom learning and believes school closures harm children.
Yashar concurred that their kids are in crisis because of a loss in learning from virtual instruction. “So we’re in a situation where our kids are really far behind and they need a lot of help,” she said, adding they need a lot of additional tutoring. “They need a lot of additional time after school to help catch them up and they’re still not focusing on that.”
Greenwell said many parents were very angry with teachers’ unions during school closures. She told Brown the nail in the coffin for her came on McAuliffe’s last day of campaigning. “He brought the head of the teachers’ union to his rally and she spoke, and it was like someone just poked me right in the eye and said, ‘You think you want to have a say in your education? Well, you’re not going to,'” Greenwell said.
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