In the open race to serve as the Lieutenant Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Virginia Senator Ghazala Hashmi (D-15th) faces John Reid (R). Incumbent Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears (R) is not seeking reelection.
The office of lieutenant governor is established by the Constitution of Virginia, and the office holder’s primary duty is to serve as president of the Senate of Virginia. The lieutenant governor may vote only in case of a tie. The lieutenant governor would also become governor in the event of the governor’s death, resignation, or removal.
Lieutenant governors must be at least thirty years old, citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and have been a resident and registered voter in the commonwealth for five years preceding the date of the election. They are elected to four-year terms and there are no term limits.
There are forty seats in the Senate of Virginia. The Democratic Party currently holds a 21-19 majority.
Ghazala Hashmi (D)
Virginia Senator Ghazala Hashmi (D-15th) stands as the Democratic Party nominee for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia.
Hashmi is an Indian-born American with a PhD in American literature from Emory University. She spent thirty years as a professor at the University of Richmond and Reynolds Community College. At Reynolds, she was founding director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.
In 2019, Hashmi successfully sought election to the Virginia Senate. She was reelected in 2023, and is part-way through her second term. She was the first South Asian American and first Muslim to serve in the senate. If elected, she would be the first South Asian American, first Asian American, and first Muslim to serve in Virginia statewide office.
Hashmi says her legislative priorities have been “public education, voting rights and the preservation of democracy, reproductive freedom, gun violence prevention, the environment, housing, and affordable healthcare access.” She promises to continue along these lines if elected lieutenant governor. Like most modern Democrats, she openly opposes some of the fundamental human rights to life, liberty, and property. For example, she advocates unrestricted “access to abortion” (a violation of the first and most important right) and wants to impose unnecessary and counterproductive limits on self-defense rights.
She says she believes “fair and open elections are the foundation of our democracy,” but opposes efforts to purge outdated and illegal registrations, positively identify voters before accepting their ballots, or otherwise improve the trustworthiness of the election system. She also makes the outrageous, false claim that voting rights are “under attack by rightwing [sic] extremists.” If she’s lying about this to score some political points, she’s evil. If she really believes this nonsense, she’s ignorant. Either way, it’s not acceptable.
The rest of her platform is full of the usual Democratic Party platitudes that have little basis in reality. She says that Virginia is riddled with “LGBTQIA [sic] bigotry, Islamophobia, and antisemitism,” and that “four hundred years of systemic racism continue to affect the lives of Black [sic] Virginians.” She says “immigrants are too often denigrated and made to feel unwelcome.” She says the “effects of human-caused climate change are happening now.”
Come on . . . she doesn’t really believe this stuff, does she? The bigots are a tiny, shrinking minority unworthy of serious attention. Systemic racism is long gone and people of all races—including immigrants—are fully integrated into our society. And most of us stopped listening to the “boy who cried climate change” a long time ago. Give it up already.
John Reid (R)
John Reid (R) stands as the Republican Party nominee for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia.
Reid has worked as an intern for then-President Ronald Reagan (R), television news anchor and investigative reporter for the 8News (WRIC) ABC affiliate in Richmond, communications director for then-U.S. Senator George Allen (R-VA), chief communications officer for the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and founder and chair of the Virginia Council, a cultural preservation organization. Before stepping down to launch his campaign he hosted a conservative talk-radio show for NewsRadio WRVA in Richmond.
If elected, Reid would be the first openly gay person to serve in Virginia statewide office.
Reid says he is “dedicated to promoting conservative values and ensuring that working Virginians of all backgrounds have a voice in shaping the future of our Commonwealth.” He promises to work toward reducing taxes and regulation to improve economic opportunity, stand up for law enforcement, protect parental rights in education, oppose abuses in schools, fight against outdated racist and sexist policies, and enforce immigration laws.
He is also outspoken in favor of the fundamental right to life, religious freedom, free association, and self-defense rights. He says he “believes in the sanctity of life from conception to natural death,” which is the only acceptable stance on the first and most fundamental right. He defends “the rights of churches and private individuals to follow their own consciences.” He wants to preserve Virginia’s “Right to Work” law, which prohibits forcing people to join unions in violation of their free association rights. He opposes “any efforts to disarm or burden law-abiding citizens.”
Reid has faced unusual accusations relating to decade-old posts on a Tumblr blog that re-shared homosexual pornography, including racially-charged and “Nazi fetish” content. The screen name of the blog was “JRDeux,” which is identical to a screen name Reid has used on Instagram and other services. Reid denies any link to the Tumblr account and calls the controversy “a total fabricated internet lie, so basic that a middle schooler could have constructed it.”
The Tumblr blog—which has since been deleted—is not definitively linked to Reid. “JRDeux” is a fairly generic screen name that could easily have been used by different people on different services. But when you consider that the account was re-sharing gay porn, and that Reid is openly gay, well . . . that’s quite a coincidence. And Reid’s implication that this is some kind of crazy political fabrication comes across as “protesting too much.” The content is ten years old. Nobody spent a decade planning to take out a campaign that did not yet exist.
Conclusion
Virginia Senator Ghazala Hashmi (D-15th) says Virginia is struggling with “LGBTQIA [sic] bigotry, Islamophobia, and antisemitism” and “four hundred years of systemic racism,” and that “immigrants are too often denigrated and made to feel unwelcome.” Her own career, and her own candidacy for lieutenant governor, proves her wrong.
The Democratic Party’s slate of candidates for statewide office this year are a white woman, an Indian Muslim immigrant woman, and a black man. The Republican slate is a black Jamaican immigrant woman, a gay white man, and a Cuban American man. If there is any hate and bigotry in the race, it’s coming from the candidates who keep throwing these baseless slanders at their fellow Virginians. Stop flogging the horse. It’s dead.
Hashmi is also openly hostile to the fundamental human right to life, self-defense rights, and efforts to ensure secure, trustworthy elections. She says she wants to protect freedom and defend democracy; most of her platform is designed to do the opposite.
Meanwhile, John Reid (R) might be linked to gay Nazi pornography.
I can’t believe I just had to write that sentence.
In the last pornography scandal that struck Virginia politics (yes . . . it happened before), Susanna Gibson (D), a 2023 candidate for the 57th District seat in the House of Delegates, had performed sex acts with her husband for-pay on a pornographic video website. At the time I said, “This raises fair questions about her judgment (and morals) but is not disqualifying in-and-of itself.” What ultimately disqualified Gibson was her response to the controversy, in which she falsely accused her political opponents of committing sex crimes. I have a high tolerance for differing views on sexual morality (unless it directly harms others). I have a low tolerance for being lied to.
I don’t care if Reid likes gay pornography. I don’t really care if he likes “Nazi fetish” porn either . . . weird as that may be. And I’m not going to assume he’s a racist; come on, his longtime partner, Alonzo Mable, is black. But if the “JRDeux” blog on Tumblr was Reid’s, he lied about it. That would be disqualifying . . . if we could prove it.
Reid is the better candidate on matters of policy; that is certain. I cannot disqualify him on the basis of an unproved allegation. But I am very suspicious.
Vote John Reid for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia . . . but be aware that my endorsement comes with a caveat. If new evidence convinces me beyond a reasonable doubt that the “JRDeux” Tumblr blog was in fact Reid’s, and that he lied about it, I will revise this post and rescind the endorsement.