A one-time ally of Virginia Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, and unsuccessful state senate hopeful, told The Virginia Star he is still seething from dirty tricks during the primary campaign, and he is running a write-in campaign against the GOP nominee that threatens to block the governor and GOP’s chance to with control of Old Dominion’s Senate.
“Governor Youngkin can do a lot of things today via his executive authority like Democrats do when they’re in the executive office, but he doesn’t, and he doesn’t because he does not want to rock the boat,” said Republican Matt Strickland, who served as an Army combat medic with multiple kinetic tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The former 68 Whiskey said he gained local support and notoriety for his opposition to the commonwealth’s COVID-19, encouraging him to run for office.
Strickland’s write-in campaign puts him in the position of costing the Republican nominee, State Representative Tara Durant, who represents House District-28, the seat by siphoning off Republican voters.
He said Durant and her allies ran an unfair campaign against him, which is why he is continuing his state senate campaign.
“I mean, they sent out flyers, man with my face in between of Barack Obama and Joe Biden and said: ‘Matt Strickland is really a liberal, he’s a liberal’s dream. Glenn Youngkin needs you to vote against Matt Strickland on June 20,’” he said.
Strickland said Youngkin’s political machine allowed Durant’s campaign to use the governor’s likeness and endorsement against him.
“If you came out here to my district, Glenn Youngkin’s face was on my opponent’s signs. It was insane. Everybody, they were like: ‘Matt, are you running against Glenn Youngkin?’”
Another bone of contention for Strickland is a mailer that went out to district Republicans accusing him of supporting gay and transgender ideology.
Strickland said this mailer distorted an incident that happened in 2016 with the food truck he and his wife operated before they opened Fredericksburg’s Gourmeltz restaurant when he and his wife took the truck to an event at a brewery in Arlington.
At these events, it was common for a food truck to either pay 10 percent of its sales to the host or to pay a flat fee, he said.
“The brewery said: ‘Hey guys, instead of you giving us 10 percent of your sales for the fee for setting up, we’re going to give it to Nova Pride, who is an organization that we’re doing an event for today.’”
Strickland agreed. “My wife and I, we didn’t know squat about Nova Pride, and so we were like: ‘Roger that, it’s your money, you give it to whoever you want.’”
From that, he said someone supporting Durant extrapolated in the campaign mailer that Strickland was opposed to parents’ rights when it came to educator-groomers.
“They were sending out straight-up lies about me.”
The Virginia Star spoke to Durant and a member of her campaign staff seeking comment. There was no response before publication.
The difficult political landscape for Youngkin
Virginia holds off-cycle elections. Youngkin was elected in 2021 for the one term the commonwealth’s governors are limited. That same year, Republicans won control of the General Assembly from Democrats with a 52-48 majority. All assembly seats are on the ballot this cycle, and the GOP is expected to hold onto its control.
This year, all assembly seats are on the ballot, as are all 40 seats in the State Senate. Going into the November 7 general election, Democrats control the upper chamber with a 22-18 majority, which they won in 2019.
Suppose Youngkin is going to have a punter’s chance to move on his conservative agenda. In that case, he needs to win at least three new seats in the upper chamber, and there are four state senate districts where Republicans have a chance to flip: Emily Brewer in SD-17; Danny Biggs, SD-24; Durant, SD-27 and Juan Pablo Segura, SD-31.
Then, there is State Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant, representing SD-16. Dunnavant won in 2019 with 51 percent of the vote, and now her post-redistricting district is majority Democratic. It went for Democrat Terry McAuliffe over Youngkin 53 percent to 47 percent.
If Youngkin, the Virginia Republicans, and Durant cannot hold SD-16, they must win all four of the other targeted seats.
With a 20-20 split, the commonwealth’s Republican Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, would have the deciding votes on virtually all matters, except the budget. A tie also empowers individual members, turning routine votes into hostage-takings. A tied chamber also means that party whips cannot give individual senators a day off on a tough vote for their district, exhausting the goodwill of backbenchers.
For Democrats, the math is simple. They assume the win in SD-16, let Strickland take out Durant, and then pour resources into the other three races to block Youngkin’s agenda—and his future as a United States Senator or President of the United States.
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Neil W. McCabe is a reporter at The Virginia Star and The Star News Network. Follow him on Twitter / X at @NeilWMcCabe2.
