If McAuliffe narrowly loses, don’t blame Princess Blanding

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Liberation Party candidate Princess Blanding interrupts a gubernatorial debate between Terry McAuliffe and Glenn Youngkin on September 28 to protest her exclusion from the stage. Photo: Cliff Owen / AP / Shutterstock

The political gossip classes are out of them with excitement and terror as the massively overrated Virginia governor’s race as a 2022 or even 2024 indicator nears its finish line on November 2. All the latest polls show a very close competition between Democrat Terry. McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin. And as a result, new attention is being paid to the third candidate on the ballot, Princess Blanding of the Liberation Party. As one pollster put it: “In this virtual tie, the share of the votes of the third candidate, Princess Blanding, is more important. Blanding is black, identifies as LGBTQ and well to the left of center. So naturally, one speculates that she could harm McAuliffe, who might need every center-left voters available.

In politics, there are few things that lend themselves to questionable interpretations more than a very close election. While the results show a small margin of victory, there are still several assumptions that could have tipped them in a different direction. But the desire for a quick fix is ​​strong, and candidates from minor or independent parties like Blanding often end up being blamed for paringing voters who would otherwise have gone for the narrowly failed big party candidate.

This idea was unleashed in the 2000 presidential election, when many Democrats criticized Green Party candidate Ralph Nader for referring the election to George W. Bush – or to be more precise, for putting Bush in a position where the United States Supreme Court could grant him the presidency by stopping the counting of Florida. But several minor candidates, including some on Nader’s far left, such as those representing the Socialist Workers Party and the Workers World Party, also won more votes in Florida than Bush’s margin on Gore. Were they all guilty? Was it a plot? This is how madness resides.

The truth is, it’s still hard to say whether voters from minor parties would have backed someone else or skipped the race altogether if their options were limited to the two candidates from the main parties. But that won’t protect Princess Blanding from blame if Youngkin gets ahead of McAuliffe. She will likely be accused of being a spoiler candidate or even a secret (or oblivious) ally of Youngkin, although a review of her background clearly shows that to be false and unfair.

Blanding entered politics protesting the gunshot death of her brother at the hands of Richmond Police in 2018; he was a teacher in a mental health crisis. The candidate advocates a platform to “fund the police” that most Democratic candidates shun, as well as a ban on police unions. She also calls for state-funded reparations for black Virginians, the legalization of sex work, the ban on for-profit medicine, the public buyout of vacant ‘company-owned’ real estate and a redesign of “K-12 curricula to reflect the centrality of Black and Aboriginal history and culture. Blanding isn’t just a more left-wing version of Terry McAuliffe; it represents an entirely different point of view, one that is quite plausibly shared by one to two percent of Virginians. She was excluded from the two major candidates debates (moderator Chuck Todd asked security to throw her out of the room during the second when she vocally protested against her exclusion); but she’s rightfully on the ballot and shouldn’t simply be treated as having stolen part of McAuliffe’s vote.

If McAuliffe loses by an eyelash, there are plenty of other factors that could explain it better, ranging from wealth and Glenn Youngkin’s relationship with Donald Trump, to the usual backlash of elections against the party controlling the White House ( who at least partially explained each election for governor of Virginia from 1973 to 2013). And if Democrats fail to engage black voters, perhaps they should have spent more time talking to the first black governor in U.S. history, Doug Wilder, a lifelong gadfly who recently looked down on his former party for underfunding the HBCUs and taking black voters for granted. .

The real solution to “spoiling” candidates, of course, is ranked voting, which allows voters themselves to verify or disprove the assumption that they “should” support a particular candidate from a major party. Other than that, Democrats and Republicans in close races should look at themselves in the mirror if they need someone to blame for a loss.

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