Civil rights leader calls McAuliffe's race-based teacher plan as 'racist' and 'insulting' 

A black civil rights leader has condemned Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe for his race-based approach to improving the state’s public school system.

‘It is explicitly and implicitly a racist approach to education,’ Bob Woodson, an 84-year-old civil rights veteran and president of The Woodson Center, told Fox News on Monday.

McAuliffe told supporters at a campaign event in Manassas on Sunday that: ‘We got to work hard to diversify our teacher base.

‘Fifty percent of our students are students of color; 80% of the teachers are white, so what I’m going to do for you — we’ll be the first state in America. If you go teach in Virginia for five years in a high-demand area — that could be geographic, it could be course work — we will pay room, board, tuition, any college, any university or any HBCU [historically Black colleges and universities] here in Virginia.’ 

Woodson, who launched the Center’s 1776 United campaign to counter the 1619 project, condemned McAuliffe’s idea, referring to it as ‘insulting’ and ‘racist’.

‘The assumption is that in order to recruit more black teachers that you’ve got to subsidize candidates in order for them to teach, they’re not offering this to white candidates,’ the civil rights veteran said.

‘It’s really insulting, too,’ he added. ‘Why is he talking about providing special assistance to teachers, candidates, and then talking about HBCUs? That’s more than a [racist] dog whistle — that’s a dog megaphone.’   

McAuliffe has previously claimed that critical race theory — an academic movement that class for deconstructing aspects of society to discover systemic racism beneath the surface — is not being taught enough in the state’s public school system. He has said that concerns about CRT are a ‘racist dog whistle’ but Woodson argues that the Democrat’s approach on race to integrate more teachers from different ethnicities reflects CRT.

‘Everything he says echoes critical race theory,’ the civil rights veteran told Fox News. ‘It automatically operates on the assumption that the most important aspect of our lives is race.’

Woodson said that a quality education system ‘has nothing to do with the color of the teacher or the color of the student. It has to do with the presence of excellence.’

Meanwhile, McAuliffe canceled a Virginia Beach campaign event on Monday, less than 24 hours before the gubernatorial Election Day, with polls showing his GOP challenger Glenn Youngkin edging ahead in a race that could be catastrophic for the Biden White House. 

A spokesperson for Democrat McAuliffe said, according to 13 News Now, that he will campaign in a different part of the state in a bizarre move on the eve of the election seen as the first indicator of the administration’s performance ahead of the 2022 midterms. 

On Monday, a new poll said that 44 percent of Democrat supporters want Biden to be replaced as the candidate on the 2024 ticket, and a loss in Virginia could cause a panic in his party, sway voters across the country and create more chaos in his spending packages negotiations. 

McAuliffe and Youngkin have less than a 1 per cent polling gap from each other as Tuesday’s Virginia gubernatorial race comes down to the wire and issues such as parental control in education and critical race theory in places including Loudoun County become central issues. 

Youngkin pulled ahead of his Democratic challenger and former Virginia governor on Saturday in a FiveThirtyEight polling average. On October 28, the two were tied at 47 per cent, then on October 29, Youngkin pulled ahead of McAuliffe in a 47.5 to 46.9 per cent split. On Sunday, Youngkin raised to 47.6 per cent to McAuliffe’s 47 per cent. 

During a campaign in Manassas, Virginia on Sunday, McAuliffe also called for the Old Dominion State to create programs to attract more minority teachers while claiming that Virginia has too many white teachers. 

The reference to Historically Black Colleges and Universities insinuated that the free college program would be aimed at prioritizing attracting prospective non-white teachers to the state.   

In the evening, McAuliffe will head to Fairfax County and Youngkin will finish up in Loudoun County, the wealthiest county in the U.S. with a household median income of more than $142,000 where parents have demanded control of their education during school board meetings during protests. 

There has also been national outrage after a parent was dragged out of a meeting for bringing up that his daughter was raped by a skirt-wearing boy in a school bathroom in May. 

One of McAuliffe’s advisers told Politico when asked for a prediction of the outcome of Tuesday’s election: ‘No one knows. It’s a toss-up.’

A poll from Fox 5 released Monday shows Youngkin ahead by 2 per cent, which is still within the poll’s 4.4 per cent margin of error but is a higher margin than the average survey numbers from FiveThirtyEight.

Former President Donald Trump repeated his endorsement of Youngkin in a statement Monday morning where he said: ‘Remember this, Glenn Youngkin is a good man, a hardworking man, a successful man. He loves Virginia and wants to cut your taxes, save your children’s education, and many other very good things.’

‘Terry McAuliffe is a low-life politician who lies, cheats, and steals,’ Trump said of the Democratic candidate vying to again be Virginia’s governor. ‘He was a terrible high-tax governor and would be, if elected, an even worse governor again.’

He continued: ‘I say to all of our millions of followers, don’t listen to the Fake News and misleading advertisements written largely by already-acknowledged perverts. Get out and vote for a man who will be a great governor, Glenn Youngkin!’

Trump is holding a long distance tele-rally for Youngkin on Monday, in which the candidate will be participating. 

Youngkin’s absence at the upcoming Trump rally makes it seem the candidate is trying to distance himself from the ex-president as Democrats try to link them to each other ahead of Election Day.

Trump said in his Monday morning statement that this isn’t true.

‘The Fake News media, together with some of the perverts doing ads ad nauseam on primarily Fox (Fox shouldn’t take those ads!), are trying to create an impression that Glenn Youngkin and I are at odds and don’t like each other,’ he wrote.

‘Importantly, this is not true, we get along very well together and strongly believe in many of the same policies. Especially when it comes to the important subject of education.’

McAuliffe’s camp feels linking Youngkin to Trump will help their chances of winning, while Trump says a candidate being backed by him will nearly assure them victory due to his base turning out.

Trump said in an interview that aired Saturday that his loyal base will need to turn out for Youngkin to win on Tuesday.

‘I think he should win,’ Trump told Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro. ‘I’ll be honest, my base has to turn out.’

Trump endorsed Youngkin against McAuliffe, who served as Virginia’s governor from 2014 to 2018.

The former president’s endorsement, Trump insinuated, is key for Republican candidates to get voters from his large base to turn out in elections that may have otherwise not gained as much national attention.

Democrats have labeled Youngkin as a ‘Trump acolyte’ to try and deter independents and moderates from voting him in as the next Virginia governor, but Trump said that tactic ‘backfires because I think it gets the base to come out and vote.’

‘The last person that ran as a Republican did not embrace Trump in Virginia,’ Trump said in reference to Ed Gillespie, who was defeated by Democrat Ralph Northam in 2017.

‘He got killed, he was absolutely destroyed,’ Trump continued, ‘I think if my base doesn’t come out, he can’t win. I think my base has to come out very strongly.’

Some feel that Trump questioning the validity of election results in general have hurt Republicans’ chances of winning local elections nation-wide because of pro-Trump voters’ reluctance to turn out if they feel their ballots won’t count.

Despite urging his supporters to turn out and vote, the former president also questioned the integrity of Virginia’s elections on Monday.

‘The reason the Fake News and perverts are working over time is to try and convince people that we do not like each other, and therefore, my great and unprecedented Make America Great Again base will not show up to vote,’ Trump explained.

He added: ‘Also, I am not a believer in the integrity of Virginia’s elections, lots of bad things went on, and are going on. The way you beat it is to flood the system and get out and vote.’

More than 1 million people have already cast ballots in the Virginia governor’s race being watched as an early indicator for 2022 and beyond – in a race certain to be viewed as a barometer for President Biden’s political strength. 

With control of a ‘purple’ state and a potential bellwether on the line, 1.1 million Virginia voters turned in ballots by the deadline last weekend.

Democrat Joe Biden won that race by 10 percentage points, but this year analysts are watching the state to see what how Democrats fare in a lower-turnout off-year election, with Biden’s overall popularity substantially lower than it was a year ago.

The state experienced a record for early voting, and accounts for a fifth of the state’s electorate, which totals 5.9 million, CNBC reported. That compares to fewer than 200,000 early voters in 2017 for the last governor’s race.

It comes amid a push by candidates to bank early votes – and follows a change in state law in favor of ‘no excuse’ early voting, which also took effect during the 2020 presidential election.

Polls close at 7 pm in the state. But in a twist from 2020, the state will first start announcing the results of absentee ballots. That comes after the state General Assembly passed a new law requiring election officials to start processing those votes a week before election day.

That could have a pronounced effect on public perception of the count, even if all the ballots would get counted anyway. Trump, who continues to make claims of election fraud, has repeatedly remarked about how his Election Night lead in some states ‘disappeared.’ In many states, officials began or were required to count Election Day votes first, then started running through their mail-in ballots.