Blaming the former governor for the referendum’s passage may salve the president’s ego, but Virginians know the real fault lies with Trump alone, columnist Bob Lewis writes.
Former Gov. Glenn Youngkin isn’t necessarily a sympathetic figure. It takes something as amoral, ungrateful and casually cruel as the current White House with its recent maltreatment of Youngkin to make that feeling resonate.
Politico reports that senior White House officials blame Youngkin for passage of a Democrat-supported redistricting referendum’s outcome in Virginia — one of only two states that gave voters a say before attempting bare-knuckle partisan remapping.
To comprehend the abject absurdity of that conclusion among President Donald Trump’s inner circle, let’s return to the former governor-turned-Trump loyalist’s political emergence in the commonwealth.
Youngkin came to office in 2022 with a refreshing avuncular style, right down to his campaign-logo zip-up fleece vests. His curated image was that of a Republican different from the one who had inspired a siege on the U.S. Capitol by legions of his backers.
An uber-wealthy hedge fund executive who had golden-parachuted into politics, Youngkin expertly tiptoed a tightrope in 2021. Publicly, he kept Trump at arm’s length — at least enough that Trump would not doom him as it had so many Virginia Republicans since 2016. But he was also careful not to alienate Trump, risking his wrath and that of his MAGA followers who could make or break Republican nominees.
Youngkin won a close election he wasn’t supposed to against a Democratic former governor who had left office four years earlier with respectable job-approval numbers.
Youngkin revealed himself before supper on his inauguration day when his fealty to Trump legacy policies became manifest in 11 executive actions. Among them: ending COVID-era masking protocols in schools; banning the teaching of “inherently divisive concepts” as a first attack on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; restrictions on trans students; and removing Virginia from a multistate pact to reduce carbon emissions. Later, he would issue an “election integrity” decree, one of which removed thousands from Virginia’s voter rolls just before the 2024 election.
By then, Youngkin was full-on MAGA and among Trump’s most loyal and visible acolytes. He traveled the country on behalf of Trump’s bid to win back the Oval Office he had lost to Joe Biden in 2020. By 2025, Virginia was done with the GOP, resulting in a rout last November when Democrats swept Republicans from the top three statewide offices and took a commanding House of Delegates majority.
Youngkin spent a few weeks on the sidelines before he got back in the game to oppose this month’s statewide referendum on a proposed mid-decade redistricting referendum.
On April 21, voters narrowly approved an amendment to the Virginia Constitution that temporarily suspends bipartisan, independent redistricting that Virginia had similarly voted to enshrine in their Constitution barely five years earlier.
Assuming that the Virginia Supreme Court ultimately decides that the referendum was legal, it would permit the Democrat-dominated state legislature to redraw congressional district lines to take away four of the five Virginia seats Republicans now hold.
Virginia’s polarizing action is a response to Trump-inspired actions in Texas, North Carolina and other GOP-run states that minimized Democratic seats ahead of this year’s decisive congressional midterms.
Youngkin and his Republican former attorney general, Jason Miyares, became the face of the “No” campaign. They appeared daily at rallies whipping up enthusiasm and voter-turnout efforts against the ballot initiative in a rare spring statewide general election.
The central arguments on each side were clear.
“No” made cogent, relatable arguments that Republican-voting rural Virginia would be subjugated by Democrats in tailored districts anchored in Democratic-voting suburban and urban population centers, mostly in Northern Virginia.
The “Yes” campaign distilled its message to one compelling word: Trump. He was 0-3 on Virginia’s ballot in 2016, 2020 and 2024, and he had doomed Republicans seeking statewide office while he was either a candidate or president.
“Yes” prevailed by just over 3 percentage points because of the chaos, fear and harm Trump and his administration sowed in Virginia, particularly with thousands of arbitrary federal employee firings by his unofficial and unaccountable Department of Government Efficiency. Without Trump, this referendum is unimaginable.
Which brings us back to the pathetic, face-saving rationalization within the White House that this failure was Youngkin’s.
“The West Wing thinks Youngkin should have done more in Virginia,” Politico quoted an unidentified senior White House official as saying.
Youngkin was considered a prospect after leaving office for a post in Trump’s administration, but that’s off the table now, Politico’s report continued. “He doesn’t have enough friends here,” the unnamed official said.
Nobody — not Youngkin, not Miyares, not former Gov. George Allen, not a resurrected Ronald Reagan — could mitigate the garish liability that Trump is for statewide candidates or causes bearing his stain in Virginia.
Trump and his fabulists are infamous for deflecting his failures onto others. Scapegoating Youngkin for the referendum’s passage may salve his ego, but Virginians know the real fault lies with Trump alone.