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You are here: Home / 2021 Campaign / How Youngkin’s Advisers Would Have Attacked Youngkin

How Youngkin’s Advisers Would Have Attacked Youngkin

November 4, 2021 at 1:50 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Kristin Davison, one of the strategists for Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin (R), told Politico how she would have advised the Democrats if they had been working for Terry McAuliffe (D).

Said Davison: “I would have hit us on education first a lot harder than they did. That’s actually what I was afraid of for most of the time, annoying everyone about it. But Terry focused so much on Trump and made his campaign so much about Trump, then abortion, and then I think climate change was in there for a minute. It’s like they literally took the Rolodex of all the base issues and tried to hit us as being extreme on them.”

She added: “And what they should have done instead was go towards the typical: Democrats are very good at painting Republicans as being bad on education, saying we’re going to fire teachers and cut pay. Having been governor before, he had a record there. He should have hit us first and disqualified the issue.”

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goddard-bw-snapshotTaegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.

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